Stephen Daisley is a Spectator regular and a columnist for the Scottish Daily Mail
The December election that now looks inevitable will be, as all elections are, a test. A test of a decade-old government that isn’t entirely sure what its achievements in office have been. A test of the public’s continuing appetite for Brexit and its tolerance for parliamentary histrionics. A test, too, of whether the country is
The prospect of a Christmas election is one the Scottish Conservatives do not greet with enthusiasm. The party has lost its leader, must fight a Brexit election in a country that voted 62 per cent Remain, and faces an SNP riding high in the polls. It is not difficult to imagine a scenario in which
Rumours of the Prime Minister’s death in a ditch have been greatly exaggerated. Parliament’s rejection of the Government’s programme motion for its withdrawal agreement bill makes it all but impossible for Boris Johnson to extricate the UK from the EU by 31 October as promised. It is an obvious defeat for a PM who got
It must feel pretty lonely being Caroline Flint right now. The Labour MP has made herself unpopular with her comrades by backing Boris Johnson’s deal to leave the EU. Flint campaigned for Remain but accepts that her Don Valley constituency voted 68 per cent Leave. In the former mining towns of her South Yorkshire seat,
Some things just don’t pass the gut test. Your head tells you they’re right, all the facts point in their favour, but you can’t suppress a dyspeptic rumbling. The jailing of Catalan separatist leaders should give us all political indigestion. On Monday, Spain’s Supreme Court sentenced 12 activists and key figures from the autonomous government
There is something endearingly British about Mumsnet’s bloodymindedness. A website that, in theory, should be about the extortionate cost of childcare and moaning that Dear Husband forgot to take the bins out again has somehow found itself in the vanguard of the radical feminist movement. That quirk has now cost the site a partnership with
What if they succeed in thwarting Brexit? The odds seem weighted against Boris Johnson delivering his do-or-die (-in-a-ditch) promise to get the UK out of the EU by Halloween. The Benn Act has tied the government’s hands so there is no need for Brussels to budge. Donald Tusk can wait until Johnson cracks and complies,
We told them so, didn’t we? We said it was a terrible idea and would all end in tears. We pointed out that the UK doesn’t send £350 million a week to Brussels, that Turkey was not about to join the EU, and that Britain held the weaker hand and couldn’t dictate the terms of
Ruth Bader Ginsburg likes her office. The US Supreme Court justice, a spry 86-year-old who trains twice a week with an ex-Special Forces soldier, is a liberal icon on America’s highest court. A decade ago, she gave an interviewer a tour of her chambers, explaining: ‘I like a quiet place and I am glad to
One of the downsides of all this snarking at David Cameron over Brexit is that the rest of his legacy is getting away relatively snark-free. Fraser Nelson has resumed his valiant campaign to repackage the Cameron years as a well-spring of progressive Toryism, specifically in job creation, the expansion of academies, and shifting the tax
I don’t like to say I told you so — I bloody love it. Lo, a whole 19 months ago, I wrote on Coffee House that there was something iffy about Justin Trudeau’s behaviour on an official visit to India: ‘He turned up for one event in a gaudy golden kurta, churidars and chappals. At
Happy Union Day, the fifth anniversary of Scotland’s vote to remain in the United Kingdom. It’s gotten so commercial, though at least voting No to independence means the Scots still have a currency to buy their celebratory Union Jack bunting in. Only there’s not much in the way of celebrations today. In 2014, the Better
‘King Bibi’ they chanted at Likud’s victory party last night but Benjamin Netanyahu has not clinched victory and the crown could yet be snatched from his head. Israel’s second election of 2019 — a poll in April ended similarly in deadlock — is poised to end the reign of the country’s longest-serving prime minister. Votes
The Guardian has achieved the not inconsiderable feat of whipping up sympathy for David Cameron. A leader column written for Monday’s edition of the paper, and posted online on Sunday, contained this bilious burp: ‘Mr Cameron has known pain and failure in his life but it has always been limited failure and privileged pain. The
For something that has yet to and may never happen, Brexit has reordered the fundamentals of British politics in just three years. The Tories have shifted decisively from post-Thatcher ambivalence about their role as upholders of the prevailing order to a right-wing radicalism that views Parliament, the legal establishment, and captains of industry as threats
John Bercow’s decision not to stand for re-election will bring some satisfaction to Brexiteers after several miserable weeks. The Speaker has been nakedly partisan, personally spiteful in the chair and done more to resist Brexit than the entire Labour Party put together. Many Tories consider him a jumped-up little twerp with an over-inflated sense of
A general election looms, the outcome could go almost any way and those who normally offer themselves as experts are seized by panic. Parliamentarians, journalists and academics who previously exerted a degree of control over policy, debate and knowledge — or flattered themselves to think they did — worry their grip is being loosened. Behold
In 2014, a young SNP activist called Aidan Kerr caused some consternation when he contended that Scotland was undergoing ‘Ulsterisation’. The nation’s politics, which for the past generation had pitched nationalism against social democracy, was becoming a battle between nationalism and unionism. The casus belli would be identity, not class or income. Kerr’s critics were
Ruth Davidson is set to quit as Scottish Conservative leader. A party source is quoted in the Scottish Sun saying Davidson’s departure will be as a result of the ‘huge pressure’ of new motherhood — she gave birth to a son, Finn, last October — and finding herself ‘at increasing odds with the new leadership in
Gordon Brown has broken his silence again. The former prime minister told the Edinburgh International Book Festival that the Scottish Parliament had ‘failed to deliver a fairer and more prosperous Scotland’ and had instead become a ‘battering ram for constitutional warfare’. What’s that, Lassie? Timmy’s trapped down the well? And creating a Scottish parliament to
