Ann Widdecombe was not the person people too often made her out to be
Giles Dilnot
It was, no doubt of it, a surprise to many given the stern, strident headmistress-like persona she had in public life, that she was, privately, immensely kind and gentle.
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Kemi begins her purge of the wets
Oliver Dean
Every functioning party has red lines. Positions which are so central to its identity that abandoning them means abandoning what the party is for. For Kemi Badenoch and the Conservatives, net zero and the ECHR are exactly that kind of question. They are not technical policy disputes to be settled by internal debate.
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Badenoch has taken a brave and important step, let’s hope the law doesn’t meddle
Sam Collins
Kemi is dragging the Parliamentary Party onto serious intellectual and ideological foundations. But she and her team must ensure that the unelected judiciary does not have an opportunity to stymie it. And maybe the Conservatives should widen our reappraisal of the Equality Act.
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Politics has lost a principled person of real conviction – mercifully she is not the last
John Redwood
This generation can find some good politicians with sound principles and understandings to take over from this dire government. Great leaders have good principles, but also need good judgement when the people are not persuaded. Abandoning good principles leads to failure.
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Nigel Farage’s big gamble with ‘the people versus parliament’ could work
Austen Morgan
Some observers think that Farage is trying to create a tactical advantage. His return, with a decent turnout and a good share of the vote, might signify that there will not be ten per cent of the voters of Clacton willing to petition subsequently for his recall as a member of parliament.
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The Conservatives need to find their authenticity
John Oxley
To win, we need to pick up seats across different places with different demographics. Policy will do some of the work on this, but we also need to find people who can cultivate that sort of support. Candidates who understand not just what their constituency looks like, but what the Conservative Party is actually standing for within it.
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Arthur Reynolds
So much behaviour around a reshuffle is performative. A flurry of notes is passed between departments to relay how a minister likes their coffee, their go-to lunch order, the font they like for speeches, whether their submissions should be single or double-spaced. Or you could just ask them.
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Why I am standing to be the Mayor of Greater Manchester
Phil Eckersley
This campaign is personal to me. I live here. My family is here. I run a business here. I know what it means to manage money, employ people, take responsibility and make decisions that cannot just be hidden in a press release when things get difficult.
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The Burnham coronation has two problems nobody in Westminster wants to discuss
Anna Ridgway
The country is about to make a man Prime Minister when his own people cannot say what he believes. That is not the profile of a leader. It is the profile of a brand. Oasis, pints and the Bee Network are not a political philosophy or a plan for government. They are a vibe. You cannot run a country on vibes and brand image.
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Can Burnham really convince the Bond markets?
Mike Newton
Burnham may not realize that this is 2026, and both the underlying problems and the PLP are very different from his Wilsonian and Blairite analogues. Stephen Pollard’s observation that ‘his political body clock stopped when he was last in office’ may prove to be on the money.
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