Tali Fraser
The Tory Party leader’s clarity cuts through – but cannot yet redeem the Conservative name. What will it take to recover in the polls?
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Honestly, what’s it all for? Do we really understand what local government is about?
Giles Dilnot
Few people outside politics know who their councillor is and yet up and down the country there are people who stand to serve, to deliver, what are really important but dull day to day operations, and they do so for little reward. When choosing them we should at least think what it is they do.
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Don’t wince – we need to be talking about Europe again
John Redwood
More than half our imports come from the EU. To get economic growth we would achieve more if we concentrated on import reduction from Europe including the EU by making and growing more at home. Let’s start with oil, gas and electricity, and move onto backing our farms and market gardens to grow more of what we need to cut the food miles.
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Boris Johnson is very clever and very wrong
Miriam Cates
As a classicist Boris Johnson must be familiar with the fall of the Roman Empire, which was brought about in part by collapsing fertility rates. Yet he fails to recognise a parallel impending catastrophe of our own times. In fact, Johnson says that falling populations are a “blessing” and a “ray of hope”, because of the “crippling burden” human beings place on nature. But are people not part of the natural world?
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How can we escape the suffocating similarity between the Conservative Party and Reform UK?
Peter Franklin
Fortune favours the brave. My hope is that the party that reaches out beyond its comfort zone — and the sterile zero-sum game with its Right-of-centre rival — will be rewarded for it.
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Neil Graham
I focused on facts and tangible results reminding local residents how far we had come, I kept the tone of the messages positive and uplifting.
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Where Reform wins, their own voters lose the most
Joey Gwinn
Having broken nearly all his promises, Farage has given many supporters the polar opposite of what they voted for.
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Why Labour has a Keir problem and Kemi has a Tory problem
Lord Ashcroft
Neither can expect a pleasant local election night though Starmer may feel it harder. However both have a similar yet different problem to address: People like Badenoch but are still unconvinced by the Tories. Labour has watched its leader alienate most of his electoral coalition.
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Spite dressed up as policy – why Reform’s detention centre plan is wrong on so many levels
Rick Moore
Reform UK has unveiled a proposal that it calls democratic consent. What it actually amounts to is collective punishment by postcode — and every serious Conservative should say so, even if as I do they support getting rid of illegal migrants quickly.
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Seven struggles for the Premiership – who won and why
Nigel Jones
Given the old adage that your opponents are in other parties but your real enemies are in your own, such brutal intra party warfare is the norm rather than the exception in modern British political history.