If Britain wants to restore a culture of responsibility, it must stand with those who step forward. Because a country that fails to back its heroes will soon find it has none.
The Tory Party leader’s clarity cuts through – but cannot yet redeem the Conservative name. What will it take to recover in the polls?
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.
On the local elections a clear majority thought a bad night for Labour would be a reflection on the Labour government generally or Keir Starmer in particular. A majority of 2024 Labour voters also said it would be down to Starmer or Labour in general, and were evenly divided between the two.
Few people understand – or are even aware of – the implications of local government reorganisation.
People aren’t being asked to return to the old, failed Conservative party, but a newer, more disciplined and more coherent Conservative team: one with new leadership, a renewed commitment to core Conservative values, a coherent policy suite, and visible behavioural changes.
After the cavalcade rolls on, life in English councils, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd will go on, with the minutiae of bins, roads, street lighting, looked after children, schools and care for the elderly. Who they get to run all that, very little connection to any of that.
The council you elect will run your bin collections, look after the elderly and those with special needs, repair your roads and set your council tax. These are not small things, and the difference between good and bad councils is huge. Good Conservative councils have shown that difference.
ConservativeHome’s round-up of ten of our best articles from the preceding week.
Having broken nearly all his promises, Farage has given many supporters the polar opposite of what they voted for.
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.
Britain’s current malaise makes Singapore’s problem – the career opportunities are too good to launch a start-up – look like a nice one to have. But there is a deeper link here between political and entrepreneurial cultures.
I almost want to say thank you to the Green Party, for being the thing that finally pulls my head out from the sand, peels my eyelids open, and forces me to confront what a state British Jews find ourselves in. It is such a deeply sad one that I have desperately not wanted to acknowledge it, and I feel ashamed about that – it doesn’t seem to be an option anymore, and I hope for politicians who could do something about this, they feel similarly.
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.