William Atkinson
“Nothing. No interviews. No social media clips. No speeches, no calls for national calm, no demands for Parliament to be recalled. He has left it to his Shadow Home Secretary to trawl the broadcast studios to critique the Government’s plans and condemn the rioters as racists.”
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Means-testing the Winter Fuel Allowance somehow manages to be feeble and brutal at the same time
Harry Phibbs
“The Chancellor estimates that £1.4 billion will be saved by means testing the Winter Fuel Allowance. So not one per cent of public spending. Just over a tenth of one per cent of public spending.”
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The riots have exposed our failure to deal with serial, persistent offenders
John Oxley
“When riots break out, attention is often focused on political or economic drivers. This ignores a big one: that smashing things and fighting can be fun, and for some people, that fun outweighs any other sort of consideration. ”
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Are the leadership candidates lagging the public in their response to the riots?
Dr Patrick English
“There has been a marked division in how the Conservative leadership candidates and the Labour government have been discussing the violence, its causes, and its targets. This division matters because the Government is closer to the public view.”
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How Teesside can provide a blueprint for Conservative renewal
Ben Houchen
“Conservative delivery looks very different in Stockton than it does in Surry and we should accept this, embrace this, and allow for divergence in our offer to people.”
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Can the Conservatives make any dent in Labour’s legislative juggernaut?
Katharine Howell
“It is hard to count in the Lords for many reasons. Whipping there is a peculiar beast. It would be unprecedented for any party to have all members voting.”
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The police must tackle accusations of two-tier policing head on
Festus Akinbusoye
“Based on first-hand experience in uniform and later as an elected Police and Crime Commissioner, I can say that 21st-century policing is extremely challenging and unlike what was the case ten or twenty years ago.”
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Gove’s legacy as Housing Secretary? Fewer homes and more red tape.
Zachary Spiro
“His final pre-election address to officials noted that “there is more that we need to do” to build homes, calling on them to “show the greatest level of ambition”. The same day as his speech, official statistics were released showing a decline in new homes every single year he was in office.”
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Fourteen years of Conservative political economy. Where did it all go wrong?
Dr Tom Hoctor
“The problem with the competence argument, though, is that it sidesteps the real issue. Cameron and Osborne were pretty competent – but they were competent at doing something that ultimately trapped the Conservative Party…”
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It’s time for the Conservatives to get real about NHS failures
Emily Barley
“Conservatives must resist the urge to defend their record on the NHS, and instead plant themselves firmly on the side of patients and therefore of reform.”
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