The traffickers do not provoke the demand; they service it. The root cause of the influx is the desire of young men from poorer countries to reach Britain.
Whoever emerges as successful will face a serious problem. How do you sell free-market policies to an electorate that, recoils in alarm from the only possible cure, namely lower spending?
If you’re a Tory MP agonising about how to vote today, ask yourself one question. Which candidate will convince voters that the Conservatives are serious about growth?
The PM believes that, while Tories who take gifts are sleazy, Labour is intrinsically moral. He has convinced himself that politics is not about trade-offs or clashing priorities, but whether the country is run by goodies or baddies.
If they don’t succeed in that role, who cares whether they would reverse VAT on school fees or pull out of the ECHR. Above all, the next leader needs to sort out a decrepit and declining party structure.
It was reasoning backwards from its prejudices, namely that Eurosceptics are dishonest people, and that there must be some technicality on which they can be tripped up.
Without general, equal, and certain laws, Southport can become Sarajevo. Critics of ‘two-tier policing’ must be consistent.
It should be a basic Tory principle that benefits are a last resort, a safety net for people who cannot rely on income, savings, or family support.
The biggest problem is that you can win the post with the support of 30 per cent of the parliamentary party, but can’t hold it without the support of at least 50 per cent. That is an unstable position for any party leader.
Until we restore power to the act of casting a ballot, we will keep ending up where we are now.
We limp, not blindly, but hardly enthusiastically either, towards the inevitability of a Starmer landslide, already aware that we will regret it. It doesn’t get much more British.
He has spotted that no one much cares about detail. Trump did not, in any meaningful sense, build his wall – but he is still the guy to vote for if your issue is immigration.
The 20th-century conservative movement was always an alloy of historically separate parts. But the conditions that united it – opposition to socialism – have not disappeared.
One of the few perks of the position is that you can ignore the inevitable compromises of office: the difficult civil servants, the blocking backbench minorities, the hostile opinion polls.
If the Rwanda scheme succeeds, it will be a personal vindication for Sunak. But it will also show that Parliament works. If not, however unfairly, it will be the Government voters blame for the failure.