The British Tory Party has never seen a state handout that it didn’t love[1]. But in the years following the 2008 crash, the programme of tax increases and public spending costs which has left the majority of people worse off has made if far more difficult to justify measures which …
Read More »
There are those who mistake Boris Johnson’s “Bojo the Clown” façade for the man himself. But nobody gets to rise to the rank of Prime Minister without a degree of cunning and ruthlessness. Nevertheless, Johnson does stand out as something of a chancer who, thus far at least, has won …
Read More »
Welsh Government ministers and officials so enjoyed their time in France this summer that they’ve decided to import some contemporary French culture of their own. That, at least, is one conclusion we might draw from the recent consultation on introducing selective road tolls on two of Wales’s main arterial roads …
Read More »
It is surely bad luck that Extinction Rebellion’s week of protests leading up to the August bank holiday was overtaken by the worst military defeat of a global empire at the hands of tribesmen since the Battle of Isandlwana in 1879. With the media focused on the cack-handed American withdrawal …
Read More »
You can tell a lot about someone’s politics by the way in which they quote Michael Gove. Anti-democratic supporters of technocracy tend only to repeat the first part of what Gove said on the eve of the Brexit referendum: “I think the people in this country have had enough of …
Read More »
Labour spokespeople have spent the weekend proclaiming to anyone who can be bothered to listen, that a seven percent decline in vote share and a loss of some 3,200 voters since the calamitous 2019 general election is an unqualified triumph. Yes, Labour hung on by its finger tips to the …
Read More »
The elections across Great Britain on 6 May were the nearest thing to the US midterms that we have. And just as in the USA, they are generally held to be as much a verdict on the performance of the incumbent national administration as a judgement on local politics. And …
Read More »
In four weeks’ time, Britain will hold the nearest thing here to a US mid-term election. Up for grabs are the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, the London Mayor and Assembly, several regional mayors and local councils across England. And although not strictly mid-term – the current parliament could sit until …
Read More »
It goes without saying that online retail has had a good pandemic. And when it comes to online retail, Amazon leads the pack. At the same time, “bricks and mortar” aka “High Street” retail has taken a pounding, as the retail apocalypse gathers pace. Understandably, demands for a new “Amazon …
Read More »
There was something vaguely Churchillian about Boris Johnson’s address to the nation on 12 March last year: “We have all got to be clear, this is the worst public health crisis for a generation. Some people compare it to seasonal flu. Alas, that is not right. Due to the lack …
Read More »
Consciousness of Sheep