The stricken Tory party was motivated by the barnstorming performance of the new Prime Minister yesterday. He is the best crowd pleasing politician in the UK, perhaps in Europe and among the world’s top five. And so far getting elected leader of the party has been all about pleasing crowds. Indeed it has been, and […]
Nobody saw it coming. Within a few hours of his arriving in Number Ten in the late afternoon, the biggest cabinet massacre in modern history was complete. 17 gone in record time and replaced. Nothing like it in living memory. The full cabinet gathered for its first meeting at 8.30 am today. Theresa May received […]
Politics is never straightforward. Nor is is it always obvious. So while the eyes of the world are now transfixed at the spectacle, and spectacle it certainly is, of Boris the Clown becoming Boris the Ringmaster (more about that later) it may be that history will see greater significance in the election of Jo Swinson […]
It is bad enough that the whole government is paralysed by Brexit dysfunction and a change of leadership. Add to that by using military force to seize an Iranian tanker off Gibraltar at the bidding of the United States, with whose policy on Iran we profoundly disagree, and you create inevitable problems, at a time […]
Unlike most people on this side of the Atlantic I do see some merit in Trump. I disagree on Iran, climate change, trade wars, abortion, indeed the whole neo-con agenda. But I do like the sentiment of accepting that not all countries want to be, or should be, clones of America, that foreign wars are […]
No It means the opposite. Instead of this country having more control over its destiny it will have less. More to the point, politicians will have far less authority than they have now. Why? Because the world’s largest single market, through which we enjoy advantageous trade with about 40 countries and which now has free […]
This blog has said many times that there can be no realistic attempt at a post Brexit recovery unless the pound is worth close to one dollar and marginally less than a Euro. I stand by that conclusion. But I also say that the current predictions of a rapid fall to dollar parity in the […]
What the British ambassador said about the Trump administration not only comes as no surprise, but it is common currency among diplomats and politicians the world over. He also said Trump should not be written off. Wise words because the definition of populism is in an unorthodox form of politics which breaks all rules and […]
It is three years since the Brexit project began; a simple in or out concept which would be, according to its promoters, the easiest negotiation in history, if out were the choice. It was. And here we are, three years on in political, constitutional and Brexit chaos. Positively nobody knows what is going to happen. […]
The unique contest between Boris and Hunt, the first when the membership outside parliament of a political party has elected a leader when that party is the government, is becoming increasingly unreal. Unreal because Hunt is making wildly optimistic assertions of his powers as a negotiator when he knows very well that the chances of […]