Like its bedfellow ‘Orwellian’, the description of something as ‘Kafka-esque’ has been rendered trite to the point of meaningless by its overuse as a political pejorative. Yet how else can one explain the experience of trying to sponsor a refugee via the Government’s Homes for Ukraine scheme? Like Josef K. in Kafka’s The Trial, I’ve […]
One could forgive Rishi Sunak if he pined for an easier life. Whilst politics at the top table is rarely a comfortable experience, arguably no peacetime Chancellor has had to endure an in-tray quite as daunting as his. Indeed, so starkly symbolic were events on February 21st 2022, that I would wager any aspiring TV dramatist […]
Even in the Greek tragedies the Prime Minister so enthusiastically references, it is hard to find many examples of peripeteia as dramatic as his own recent reversal of fate. From dreams of a decades-long hegemony at Conservative party conference, to a winter where at times it has felt his Government might be happy just to […]
Just when you begin to think there is nothing new under the sun in British politics, along comes a conference fringe event to set you straight. So, thanks then to Chris Loder, the Conservative MP for West Dorset, who yesterday said that he hoped supermarket supply chains would ‘crumble’ and ‘break’ so ‘the farmer down the […]
Political life as Her Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition is tough. A Shadow Minister must compete on equal terms with an opposite number able to call upon the services of approximately six hundred times as many people. Just about everyone – the media, your members, concerned mothers – overestimates your ability to affect political proceedings. Meanwhile, […]
The erasure of decades of footballing trauma from the national psyche can lead to a distorted perspective on the passage of time. Yet it is in fact just a week since a run of politically revealing by-elections was rounded off by Labour’s narrow win in Batley and Spen. One should not overread the results as […]
One would think the script was settled by now, but it appears the profound realignment of English politics retains its capacity to surprise. Once again for those at the back: Labour is picking up voters in London’s exurbs and other socially liberal towns scattered across the South East; the Conservatives, pretty much everywhere else. And, […]
Luck is an essential quality of political success and few contemporary politicians have been as lucky as Rishi Sunak. Had it not been for Covid-19 there is every chance that, like many Chancellors before him, the public would barely know him from Adam. Not only that, with the furlough scheme, the pandemic has forced him […]
And so Joseph R. Biden becomes the 46th President of the United States, sound-tracked by a global exhalation, Lady Gaga and the furious scribbling of British foreign policy commentators fretting about ‘the special relationship’. The collective neurosis seems to be that Biden may be ill-disposed towards Britain due to his dim view of three B’s: […]
I should probably begin this column with a confession. Which is that other than the relief which comes with finally avoiding the needless self-harm of the no deal option, I care little for the finer points of the Prime Minister’s newly minted Brexit trade agreement. There are of course legions of trade experts on social […]
It may have somehow escaped the notice of this site’s readers, but on October 15 the Labour Party lost two left-leaning frontbenchers, Dan Carden and Margaret Greenwood, due to the party’s parliamentary position on the MI5 bill. It was the same earlier in September, when three junior frontbenchers resigned after votes on the Overseas Operations […]
Very occasionally in politics, the stars of personal and political biography align with the needs of the moment to elevate a politician into a more exalted register of communication. The celebrated example is, of course, Churchill – considered ludicrously overblown in peacetime, his style seemed somewhat less grandiloquent when juxtaposed with the devastation of war. […]
Towards the beginning of summer, Boris Johnson made a speech which deliberately courted comparisons between himself and the Depression-slaying, war-winning American President, Franklin D Roosevelt. One suspects the analogy with yet another 20th century titan was always somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Still, as we lurch shambolically towards the second wave of the pandemic, it is increasingly difficult to […]
Rishi Sunak is getting ahead of himself. With the back benches restive, one understands that an upwardly mobile Chancellor wants to return to Parliament with some eye-catching ideas about his personal brand of Conservatism. And so this week we learn that the Chancellor is drawing up plans for a £30bn “tax raid on the wealthy” […]
Viewed from almost any angle, the UK government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme — to give the furlough policy its official title — is a staggering departure in the state’s relationship with the economy. Not since the foundation of the welfare state in 1948 has a British government intervened so emphatically to ameliorate labour market outcomes. […]
It is now just over 100 days since Keir Starmer ascended to the hardest job in British politics. And, at least as far as the polls are concerned, things are going well. Labour under his leadership has closed the gap with the Tories significantly from a 24-point peak earlier this year (though not much beyond […]
The Prime Minister made a speech last week. About the economy. In the nadir of the biggest economic shock the country has seen for three centuries. Not long in advance of arguably the most important fiscal event of the pandemic thus far, with a ‘mini-budget’ expected this week. If you detect a hint of irony in my […]
So much furious ink has already been spilt on the Dominic Cummings’s lockdown movements that I apologise in advance for those who have had their fill. Nevertheless, the affair is, remarkably, the most electorally significant moment of the pandemic thus far. In the short term that is almost objectively inarguable – the Government has suffered […]
There’s a withering John Maynard Keynes quote for almost any conceivable economic situation. Naturally, most of them are apocryphal, including – probably – the one that seems most cuttingly appropriate for our current Covid-addled nightmare. Still, Keynes’s alleged Depression-era anxiety that “the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent” must surely carry […]
At this rate we shall soon find it easier to count the evenings when Rishi Sunak is not announcing multi-billion economic rescue packages. Last night, finally, it was the turn of Britain’s self-employed and gig economy workers. Mirroring the wage subsidy scheme for employees, taxable grants will now cover 80% of a self-employee’s average profit […]
