James Kirkup is a partner at Apella Advisors and a senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
I’m drinking coffee as a write this. That’s not unusual. I drink a lot of coffee, much of it bought from the Pret a Manger that is almost dangerously close to my office in Westminster. (I judge my days by how many meals I eat from that Pret: often two and sometimes three. My life
First blue passports. Now Brexit stamps. For some, these belong in the same file as the Royal Yacht Britannia and Big Ben’s bongs. See also: filament lightbulbs and fruit and veg sold in pounds and ounces. For some (repeat: some) Remain-voting politicians and observers, this stuff is ridiculous, old-fashioned nonsense, an attempt to drag Britain
Third Cabinet departure in as many months. Loss of close friend and ally. Scandal at the top of government. Cue questions about Theresa’s future. Has she been ‘rocked’ by the ‘sensational’ exit of Damian Green? Is this, at last, the beginning of the end for her? I’m sure some enthusiastic members of my old trade
Some Brexiteers are angry. This is not news. This has been true since about 20 minutes after the referendum result was declared. There are some Leavers who have been looking, since 24 June last year, for a new grievance, fresh evidence they are being betrayed and denied, generally by some shadowy group they describe as
As someone who cares about – and has experienced – social mobility, I’m sad to see Alan Milburn, Gillian Shephard and their colleagues leave the Social Mobility Commission (SMC), and I hope Theresa May is serious about finding the best possible ‘new blood’ for the commission. I have a few suggestions for who should try to
We don’t hear much from David Cameron these days. He’s generally too busy. He fills his time in many ways: writing a book; making bundles of cash; playing tennis; not taking the blame for Brexit. But he’s given an interview to the Financial Times about Alzheimer’s disease and the search for a cure. It’s worth a
My Budget reaction is mostly: Meh. By that, I mean this won’t really change the weather, though it might just gee up some despondent Tories, who are cheered by the Stamp Duty cut regardless of what the OBR and others have to say about it (in short, it’ll push up prices and only really help
Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP for Tonbridge sometimes called a rising star, finds himself making front page news today as a ‘Brexit mutineer’. That strikes me as a novel term for a man who spent several years in the British Army fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, but such are the terms of British political debate
‘Extraordinary’ is perhaps the most over-used word in the Westminster lexicon. Days, statements, speeches, developments – all are routinely described as extraordinary, so often that the word is, well, ordinary. But some extraordinary things deserve the term more than others. A statement issued yesterday by the Department for International Development about Priti Patel’s holiday is more
Did a male MP allow three other men to urinate on him, for sexual gratification? That is one of the more exotic suggestions on a spreadsheet of allegations and rumours about MPs and their conduct that is circulating at Westminster. ‘Video exists of three males urinating on him’, the spreadsheet is said to record. That
Last week I wrote a column elsewhere arguing, among other things, that it is time for the government to look beyond its (almost impossible-to-meet) commitment to a budget surplus at some point in the 2020s and think about a looser target that might allow more public spending, seeking perhaps a primary but not overall surplus.
The volley of accusations against Harvey Weinstein has been extraordinary – and, to some, suspicious. Why keep silent after so many years? If an actress says that he raped her, why did she agree to go for lunch afterwards? The Spectator, in keeping with its tradition of saying things you’re unlikely to read elsewhere, has
It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve got my head around this now. Grant Shapps is proposing that the Conservative Party should hold a protracted contest to select a new chief, and thus render itself and the Government of Britain leaderless for several weeks, at a time when the UK economy and public
It’s always easy and usually wrong to describe single political speeches as pivotal or decisive. Always remember: almost no-one in the real world watches anything except a few clips on the news the evening the speech is given. The amount of coverage devoted to leaders’ speeches at party conferences is usually excessive, beyond what most
For perfectly understandable reasons, neither she nor her employers want to talk about it, but the fact that Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC is covering the Labour Party conference in Brighton accompanied by a bodyguard is an outrage that has not been greeted with the anger and disgust it merits. Imagine, for a second, if
As the sort of treacherous, Britain-hating invertebrate who betrayed his Queen and country by voting Remain and still doesn’t believe leaving the EU will make us happier or richer, I should welcome Theresa May’s Florence speech. It is, after all, confirmation that the British Government has – far, far later than it should have done –
I used to have a lot of time for Boris Johnson. Sometimes whole days, in fact: from 8am until 8pm, I’d ring and text and email him, politely urging him to tell me what he planned to write his exquisitely expensive Telegraph column about, and when he’d deign to send it to me. It was, as
The general election in June changed the politics of Brexit in ways that some pro-Leave commentators are desperately trying to ignore but which anyone actually doing politics has now accepted: ‘no deal’ is not an option, because there is not a Commons majority that would accept the steep drop out of the EU onto the
I’ve been arguing since June that it is at least possible that Theresa May could remain in office longer than the Westminster village consensus dictated, so I’m not too surprised by her statement of intent in Japan. Besides, what else could she say? Like most people, I still don’t expect her to fight the next
Some of his friends will tell you that beneath all the bluster and fluster, beneath the posture and the persona, Boris Johnson is actually quite like the rest of us. He has doubts and fears, good days and bad days, times when he’s up and times when he’s down. ‘Boris’ in a sense, is a
