Stephen Daisley

‘Rorymania is over,’ Isabel Hardman pops into my inbox to tell me, in last night’s Evening Blend. Rory Stewart’s elimination from the Conservative leadership race cuts short a seductive insurgency that began with pseudo-selfies and flirted with the opportunity, however wishful, of a political realignment. One place Rorymania never took off was inside the Conservative

One of the most awkward moments of Tuesday night’s Conservative leadership debate was when a Muslim voter challenged the candidates on anti-Muslim prejudice within their party. The BBC identified the man as ‘Abdullah Patel from Gloucester, speaking from a studio in Bristol’, and described him as an imam. His question stood out because it left

If you’ve ever been in group therapy, you will have recognised many of the behaviour types in the BBC’s Tory leadership debate. There was Mr Avoidance (Boris Johnson), who kept his head down and let the clock run out, and Mr Calculating (Jeremy Hunt), who kept his interjections to a minimum and studiously ignored his

You might not have realised from his lack of appearances but Boris Johnson is standing to be Tory leader. There are MPs on the left of the party, and so he’s told them he’s a One Nationer. There are MPs on the right of the party, and so he’s told them he’s a tax-cutter. And

The Conservative Party was founded 185 years ago and may not survive the next five. YouGov and Opinium both put the Tories in third place and on less than 20 per cent of the vote. They managed just 8.8 per cent in the European election, coming fifth behind the Greens and losing all but four of their MEPs. The

Brexit may yet kill the Conservative party but it is exacting a cruel psychological torture on liberalism. Liberals are supposed to be the measured voice of reason – earnest, insufferable but reliably level-headed. Not anymore. Liberals – or at least some of them – have gone quite mad over Brexit. There is almost no intrigue they

In August 2007, three months after coming to power at Holyrood, the SNP launched its National Conversation on Scotland’s constitutional future. We have been talking about little else since. Among the many national conversations postponed is one on immigration. The CBI has tried to kick-start such a discussion by warning that, within 20 years, just

‘It is better to ride the tiger’s back than let it rip your throat out’ is reputedly how Tony Blair rationalised his close relationship with the Sun. The quote is thrown back at him by critics who imagine their preferred mode of politics untainted by tiger-riding. In fact, Blair is not alone: Bill Clinton rode

Joan McAlpine is an unlikely rebel against the Scottish political establishment. The SNP MSP is chair of Holyrood’s culture and external affairs committee, a former parliamentary aide to Alex Salmond and a past editor of the Sunday Times Scotland. She has a reputation as a firebrand Nationalist and, in the interests of full disclosure, I have

Jews are familiar with the malice, prejudice and stupidity that governs the Labour Party’s complaints process when it comes to anti-Semitism. They will find no comfort in the news that other allegations of racism get short shrift too, even when the complainant is a prominent Labour politician. The party has said there is no case

There’s an episode of Father Ted in which the simple but endearing Father Dougal gets stuck on a milk float booby-trapped with a bomb. The finest clerical minds in Craggy Island convene to devise a solution and as they discount each increasingly far-fetched fix, the well-meaning Father Beeching pipes up: ‘Is there anything to be

It was once said that every Jewish holiday could be summed up with the same nine words: ‘They tried to kill us. They failed. Let’s eat’. Now it only takes eight: ‘A Labour spokesperson apologised for any offence caused’. On Friday, the Labour party tweeted warm wishes to Jews celebrating Passover. At this stage, most