Tories and Labour

Cyclists in Bournemouth and Poole will not be banned from cycling on the Dorset town’s promenade after the leader of the local council said she would not implement a threat made last week to stop people riding their bikes there. Last week, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council leader Vikki Slade…

Is this the start of a big left turn? The British death rate has been appalling. The politics of easing the lockdown – higher taxes, blurred rules – are already looking much harder than the politics of imposing it. The state has swollen hugely. You might assume, therefore, that the…

The national Covid strategy managed by the government is now in disarray. The mood in Tory HQ is migrating away from its beloved Brexit leader. The mainstream media are now causing confusion, the country is heading towards chaos. What is the general public supposed to believe when one mainstream newspaper…

With so much happening – not least growing concerns about the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic – other matters pale in significance. Yet, there have been some startling recent revelations about just how truly awful the Conservative Party’s hostile environment has become. Over the last few months, parliamentary questions…

Conservative Party leader Michael Howard (L) and Scottish Conservative candidate for the Cathcart | Danny Lawson/PA Archive/PA Images The man behind the Democratic Unionist Party’s mysterious £435,000 Brexit donation has found himself caught up in a scandal involving a bankrupted British businessman, a convicted American fraudster, Texan oil wells, Scottish…

For a moment, imagine you live in a country where Labour won the last General Election and is now masterminding a national response to the coronavirus pandemic.That scenario is certainly in the minds of opponents of Boris Johnson, who have spent the past two months complaining relentlessly about the Government's…

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Britain's equalities watchdog has ruled out holding an investigation 'at this stage' into alleged Islamophobia in the Conservative Party. The Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said 'it would not be proportionate' to carry out its own inquiry after the Tories published details of an internal probe into discrimination and prejudice. The…

In the government’s handling of coronavirus, the UK has effectively set a model for every other foreign country to avoid. Boris Johnson’s speech on Sunday made things ever confusing. Despite trying desperately to show some semblance of a plan for the pandemic, it ended up confirming nothing but widespread fears.…

William Pitt the Younger. Getty ImagesA guide to reading in lockdownHere are ten political biographies, with a leavening of the classics, for those with time to kill in the present house arrest. The danger with such lists is that what has recently entered the memory becomes most prominent; so this…