18.12.2024

Turning us all into devils

Our inability to see good in opponents is not just weakening democracy, it is making us worse people ...

Conservative Home

04.12.2024

Labour’s small boats lie

We blame "the gangs" because we are reluctant to blame the illegals themselves...

Conservative Home

24.11.2024

This is how Labour will fall

It won't be the sleaze that brings it down, but the associated piousness, prissiness and puritanism...

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16.11.2024

How to sell smaller government to a subsidy-junkie electorate

Voters complain that taxes keep going up while public services deteriorate, but recoil at the only possible solution...

Conservative Home

28.10.2024

Conservatives won’t win by being nice

They'll win by being (or at least being thought to be) efficient...

Conservative Home

27.09.2024

My choice for Tory leader

Remember that we are picking a Leader of the Opposition and not (yet) a PM...

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17.09.2024

How the British state persecuted Eurosceptics

Alan Halsall was hounded for four years by a politicised Electoral Commission...

Conservative Home

05.09.2024

Law-and-order conservatives versus authoritarian radicals

Mobs are fickle, stupid, dangerous and cruel; no conservative should ever make excuses for them...

Conservative Home

20.08.2024

Don’t restore the winter allowance

Forget that it's Labour, and forget that it's a broken promise. It cannot be right to keep paying unconditional benefits...

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20.07.2024

Sir Humphrey’s final victory

The Tories were doomed by their inability to get things past the standing bureaucracy...

Conservative Home

02.07.2024

“Stop the landslide!”

The Tories are headed for their worst result ever...

Conservative Home

18.06.2024

What killed the Tories?

Nigel Farage, more than any other campaigner, grasps how screen addiction has changed our politics...

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04.06.2024

Can the Conservatives hold together?

The end of the Cold War means that the old Tory/Whig alloy is separating into its two constituent elements...

Conservative Home

20.05.2024

The next Tory leader will be sound

Tory leaders always are - in Opposition...

Conservative Home

06.05.2024

The Tories are now blamed for Labour’s policies

Labour's determined resistance to the Rwanda scheme comes across to most voters as Tory dithering...

Conservative Home


20.04.2024

Forever frenemies

Despite everything, Britain and France have been on the same side for the better part of two centuries...

Conservative Home

21.03.2024

Why is Britain holding out against Europe’s populist tide?

Portugal has joined the swing from old Left to insurgent Right. What makes Britain different?...

Conservative Home

10.03.2024

Islam is not Islamism

One is a religion founded by Mohammed in 610, the other a political movement founded by Hassan al-Banna in 1928...

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24.02.2024

Everyone hates the Conservatives

The country is in a Left-wing mood, and nothing short of a full economic crisis will shift it...

Conservative Home

05.02.2024

OK, but what’s your alternative?

It is easy to list the defects of the Rwanda scheme, but critics never say what they would do instead...

Conservative Home

22.01.2024

Biffing pirates and slavers is what Brits do

Not for the first time, the Royal Navy is acting on behalf of humanity - and getting little thanks for it...

Conservative Home


10.01.2024

Mark Littlewood belongs in the House of Lords

We can't have committees of grandees blocking people of whom they happen to disapprove on ideological grounds...

Conservative Home

26.12.2023

Remember why we are backing Ukraine

If Putin wins, liberal democracy will suffer a massive global setback...

Conservative Home

08.12.2023

The West faces a collective Suez moment

Once again, a dictator has found that attacking the old colonial powers guarantees global popularity...

Conservative Home


30.11.2023

The Peronist deep state is mobilising against Javier Milei

Too many interests are at stake to let his free-market reforms succeed...

Conservative Home

10.11.2023

Israel must be careful not to play the part of Vladimir Putin

Population transfers, energy boycotts, talk of nuclear strikes - these things are never acceptable...

Conservative Home

29.10.2023

Yes, but then what?

There are no good options for Israel...

Conservative Home


14.10.2023

There will never be a peaceful, prosperous Palestine

Hamas has, as it intended, killed any prospect of a two-state solution...

Conservative Home

29.09.2023

Why Leave is behind in the polls

The EU has dropped out of the news, and we no longer hear about its problems...

Conservative Home

14.09.2023

We need SOME non-local candidates

A House of Commons composed almost wholly of local councillors will refuse to build anything...

Conservative Home


02.09.2023

The Letby horrors must not produce more bad laws

Our response should be proportionate to the likelihood of a repetition, not to the sense of public outrage...

Conservative Home

20.08.2023

Are spending cuts possible in a democracy?

Generally only after an economic calamity, like Britain's 1976 IMF bailout...

Conservative Home

10.08.2023

Let Russia fragment

Russia in its present form - an imperial Eurasian state - cannot but be a menace to the free world...

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29.07.2023

Who’d want to be an MP?

One way to make our parliamentarians behave better is to expect it of them...

Conservative Home

09.07.2023

Why France? Why now?

The riots reflect the global BLM-inspired grievance culture, and things will only get worse ...

Conservative Home

23.06.2023

The Windrush migrants came to work, not “to help”

Why turn the honest story of ambitious people coming for higher pay into a Leftist morality tale?...

Conservative Home


09.06.2023

The Jacobean Kane and Abel

Jesse Norman's first novel treats Francis Bacon and Edward Coke, quite properly, as ambitious rival MPs...

Conservative Home

25.05.2023

The Blob Won’t Stop

First it was Priti Patel, then Boris Johnson, then Dominic Raab, now Suella Braverman - civil servants don't like Leavers...

Conservative Home

13.05.2023

Won’t somebody please think of the deficit?

This Coronation, like the last, was a distraction from the immensity of our debt crisis...

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28.04.2023

Yes, we should forgive Diane Abbott

Either you're against cancel culture or you're not - and, if you are, you have to be consistent...

Conservative Home

14.04.2023

Am I the last critic of the Belfast Agreement?

That deal is treated almost literally as Holy Writ - except among ordinary Unionist voters...

Conservative Home

06.04.2023

Free countries don’t go in for political arrests

Lawfare, malicious investigations, trumped up charges - these things are our future if we keep elevating outcome over process...

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17.03.2023

Why the quangocracy grows

A return to the Oxford Union showed me why governments keep setting up executive agencies...

Conservative Home

02.03.2023

Why did Brussels fold so suddenly?

The EU's movement on the Northern Ireland Protocol suggests that it is finally getting over its pique...

Conservative Home

19.02.2023

The silliest smear in politics

With vast amounts being firehose away by the state, it is bizarre to focus on ministers' declared and legitimate hotel bills...

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03.02.2023

Britain is CANZUK’s Leftist outlier

Why are Labour Australia and New Zealand and Liberal Canada more free-market than Tory Britain?...

Conservative Home

21.01.2023

Can Rishi win?

Not simply by not being Keir Starmer, that's for sure...

Conservative Home

30.12.2022

Why do Argentines celebrate a war where they were clearly the baddies?

And why do Russians associate themselves with an unprovoked attack by a fascist dictatorship on a neighbouring democracy?...

Conservative Home


09.12.2022

One rule for MPs, one for everyone else

But in precisely the opposite way to what most people mean...

Conservative Home

14.11.2022

The Tories are out of options

Voters don't believe the money has run out and, without an early election, nothing will convince them...

Conservative Home

01.11.2022

No more Tory democracy

The Conservative Party's leadership election rules make the system used to select the Dalai Lama look rational...

Conservative Home


14.10.2022

We know what is needed - but do we have the courage to do it?

There is no way that the spending increases brought in after Covid can become permanent...

Conservative Home

29.09.2022

You really think this is about a tiny tax cut?

There was always going to be a reckoning after all the money-printing; cutting taxes will at least help...

Conservative Home

17.09.2022

And when Putin loses?

Thoughts from Odessa about an unexpected turn of events...

Conservative Home


05.09.2022

Spending cuts can’t be put off until the election

A Centre-Right party can win during a downturn - but only if it has visibly started to fix the problem...

Conservative Home

19.08.2022

Identity politics leads to unspeakable horrors

Indian and Pakistani immigrants to Britain were able to put the communal violence behind them by choosing individualism...

Conservative Home

05.08.2022

Food nationalism - always popular, never right

A prolonged leadership race is terrible for rational policy making...

Conservative Home


22.07.2022

Never use these rules again

They encourage dirty tricks and gamesmanship, set MPs against activists and ensure that the winner makes enemies along the way...

Conservative Home

08.07.2022

We didn’t leave the EU to embrace even more protectionism

There is no case whatever for steel tariffs in the UK, and ministers know it...

Conservative Home

25.06.2022

What if Boris had become PM in 2016?

Consider the counterfactual - a swifter but softer Brexit, public sector reform, Michael Gove as the CEO...

Conservative Home


13.06.2022

Can Boris pull it back?

Maybe - but he needs to understand the anger about our spending levels...

Conservative Home

27.05.2022

The Northern Ireland Protocol is SUPPOSED to hurt

It wasn't designed to keep British sausages out of Co Cavan, it was designed to punish us for Brexit...

Conservative Home

13.05.2022

Sinn Féin’s victory makes a united Ireland less likely

Plenty of Irish Catholics dislike the idea of being governed by a party connected to organised crime...

Conservative Home


29.04.2022

Britain is defined by the rule of law

To claim otherwise on the basis of disagreements over asylum or parties is trivial and insulting...

Conservative Home

14.04.2022

Why Poles have risen to the Ukrainian challenge

Few countries have suffered more at the hands of occupiers, and few better understand the value of sovereignty...

Conservative Home

01.04.2022

War is inherently collectivist

Our individual vices and virtues are dissolved into national blocs - more's the pity...

Conservative Home


18.03.2022

Is it racist to feel close to Ukraine?

We are bound to be more attached to familiar cultures - something that only the West is meant to feel guilty about...

Conservative Home

04.03.2022

We overestimated Putin

His unforced errors have undermined him, and a Kremlin coup is no longer unthinkable...

Conservative Home

22.02.2022

What does Russia want?

His chief aim is to keep his people in a state of scared, wounded patriotism. It's not victory he wants. It's permanent conflict...

Conservative Home


04.02.2022

Brexit has been squandered

Far from liberalising, the UK is adopting more regulations than it had to as an EU member...

Conservative Home

21.01.2022

Meritocracy raised the West, identity politics will sink it

China is much more ruthless about appointing the best talent, which is why it is overtaking us...

Conservative Home

07.01.2022

There is no point in taking back powers if we don’t use them

Brexit allows us to make different choices, but we seem determined to copy the EU from outside...

Conservative Home


26.12.2021

Who would have done a better job than Boris?

Obviously, Leftists and lockdowners loathe him. But why do libertarians?...

Conservative Home

09.12.2021

Everything white is racist

That, pretty much, is the view taken by Tate Britain - and the rest of us keep putting up with it...

Conservative Home

01.12.2021

In Peppa Pig World, no one would need to vote Conservative

Boris Johnson's critics are, as so often, wide of the mark...

Conservative Home


12.11.2021

We should want MPs to have second jobs

Ideally, being an MP would BE someone's second job...

Conservative Home

29.10.2021

There is no money left

The Conservatives are spending as if the past 18 months hadn't happened...

Conservative Home

15.10.2021

The Northern Ireland Protocol has revealed the utter smallness of our Europhiles

"Yeah, well you signed it!" Seriously, guys, is that all you've got? ...

Conservative Home


30.09.2021

Why Labour can’t win

Even its supposedly moderate and centrist figures can't help lapsing into self-righteous wokery...

Conservative Home

16.09.2021

Sir Lindsay Hoyle is right to insist on formal dress - more’s the pity

I hate wearing ties but, as a conservative, I see why they should be required...

Conservative Home

22.08.2021

David Gauke should be a Conservative

His return would indicate that the party has moved on definitively from the fevered rows of 2019...

Conservative Home


06.08.2021

Party donors should be thanked, not demonised

It is better for rich people to support causes bigger than themselves than to live lives of sybaritic indulgence...

Conservative Home

24.07.2021

Is there any point in unilateral decarbonisation?

Britain is well placed to develop clean energy technology, but there is no purpose in acting alone...

Conservative Home

10.07.2021

The EU’s assault on the City has failed

Now we need to deregulate in order to compete with the rest of the world...

Conservative Home


24.06.2021

Oriel should market itself as a “safe space” for conservatives

Is one non-Leftist Oxford college out of 39 really too much to ask?...

Conservative Home

12.06.2021

How to level up? Localism

We can't decree regional prosperity from the centre. We need to devolve power...

Conservative Home

28.05.2021

Don’t respond in kind to the authoritarian Left

We need to preserve basic liberal principles - free speech, free association, free contract...

Conservative Home


14.05.2021

Wallpaper for Boris, curtains for Keir

Labour is on its way out. So, sadly, is fiscal conservatism...

Conservative Home

30.04.2021

The epidemic is over in Britain, so why are we not reopening?

On every measure things have gone better than expected, but public opinion remains hostile to any easing...

Conservative Home

16.04.2021

The Eurosceptic whom even Eurocrats liked

Jens-Peter Bonde, who has just died, established a truly pan-European anti-federalist movement...

Conservative Home


02.04.2021

Lockdowns have brought out the very worst in us

We are turning into a nation of mean-minded, intolerant, authoritarian, servile snitches...

Conservative Home

19.03.2021

Laws must be general, equal and certain

There is a terrifying readiness to argue that sanctions shouldn't apply to people we happen to like...

Conservative Home

05.03.2021

Higher spending and regulation are here to stay

The epidemic has made big spenders of us all...

Conservative Home


19.02.2021

Trade sanctions don’t work

They hurt ordinary people and prop up autocrats...

Conservative Home

05.02.2021

Britain’s Pacific Pivot

Joining the CPTPP will strengthen the Anglosphere and boost jobs and growth...

Conservative Home

22.01.2021

Free association is an absolute right, not conditional on identity politics

A club can insist you wear a tie, a gym can refuse to admit men, a platform can refuse to host people whose opinions it dislikes...

Conservative Home


07.01.2021

We need to grow our way out of this mess - here’s a list of EU laws to scrap

Britain has been uniquely badly hit by the lockdowns, and economic recovery must now be the sole aim of public policy...

Conservative Home

10.12.2020

The EU’s attitude to Britain is that of an empire toward a renegade province

The EU is offering deliberately hostile terms in order to make a point - even at cost to itself...

Conservative Home

25.11.2020

Vaccinate staff, keep kids in class, hold exams on time

It is almost literally unbelievable that we might repeat this year's exams fiasco in 2021...

Conservative Home


12.11.2020

Republican candidates outpolled Trump - yet they are too scared to act against him

The idea that Trump has a unique appeal to blue-collar voters is hard to reconcile with the results...

Conservative Home

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