There are all kinds of legitimate positions about reform of the House of Lords. All elected, all appointed, some combination of both, even the abolishment of the house altogether. But saying that the issue is not important is not a legitimate position. The composition and format of one of the...
Christopher Howarth of Open Europe has written an eminently sensible* piece for Conservative Home about how David Cameron needs to get his EU policy sorted out. Howarth’s case is that Cameron should appoint a Europe Secretary – one minister in Cabinet with the responsibility for policy towards the EU. The...
Stonewall has been running an excellent campaign on 1000 buses with the slogan “Some people are gay. Get over it!” So – surprise, surprise – some bigots decided to run a counter campaign on 25 buses with the slogan “Not gay! Ex-gay, post-gay and proud. Get over it!” Only Boris...
Whether (and indeed how) Scotland would remain in the EU if it became an independent state has been an issue that has risen up the political agenda over the past few months. Theresa May has weighed into the debate today, stating that border controls would have to be imposed between...
On Wednesday this week I was a speaker on the course Parliament, Government and the Civil Service (PGCS) run by my former employers National School of Government. The course chair this week – Paul Grant – is the same person who ran my PGCS when I was a wide-eyed Fast...
It’s budget day in the UK today. Others are far more qualified than I am to discuss the ins and outs of what George Osborne announced. I will instead – with prompting earlier on Twitter from Liz Disley – look at that old nugget of the budget: how it impacts families....
Yesterday current Mayor of London Boris Johnson renamed the Twitter account from @MayorofLondon to @BorisJohnson and kept more than 200000 followers. The URL listed with Twitter is now the website of Boris’s re-election site and not the GLA site as previously. There are posts at Liberal Conspiracy and Political Scrapbook...
All was going so well. Eurostar 9156 departed on time from St Pancras at 1904, and arrived at around 2057 (local time, as scheduled) at Calais Frethun. Then nothing. No departure. Silence. Then the announcement that “for service reasons” we were to wait 10 minutes at Calais. At 2108 a...
I’ve just arrived home, having taken Eurostar 9133, the 1256 departure from Brussels Midi to London St Pancras. The security paranoia on the route is now so absurd it’s worth a blog entry. The first check at Gare du Midi is a ticket check, where the QR code on a...
There’s a depressing piece at Conservative Home by Tim Montgomery summarising results of a YouGov survey about the British population’s thoughts about their politicians and political system. One of the interesting findings is this: 38% agree that Britain would be governed better if our politicians got out of the way,...
“At one level I can’t get very worked up about Roger Helmer MEP defecting from the Tories to UKIP today. Helmer has long held views on the EU-phobic right of the Conservative Party, in many ways closer to UKIP, so his defection is not a great surprise. Conservative Home has...
The Independent has been creating a bit of a stir today with its “The Twitter 100: Britain’s titans of the Twittersphere“. Sunny Hundal was particularly happy that he ended up joint top of the Politics Top 10. The problem is that the methodology of this list is highly questionable. Indy journalists...