Conservative party

When John Curtice speaks, listen. That’s one thing we learned in the general election. This week we hosted John at the Social Market Foundation, where he explained just what actually happened on June 8. Among his many observations was that Jeremy Corbyn really had done something unprecedented: he changed the way voters saw him, for the better. In John’s view, no one has ever done this before. Public opinion of Corbyn was settled: he was useless. And voters, once they’ve decided you’re useless, don’t change their minds.  But they did. They still don’t think Corbyn is brilliant, but they don’t dismiss him the way they used to. The great Curtice brain holds no other example

Today’s exchanges between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons following the Queen’s Speech showed how much difference confidence makes to a leader’s performance. While Corbyn will never be a scintillating orator – speaking for far too long and ending with a sentence that seemed to be aimed more at entering the Guinness Book of Records than at making any sense – he made the most of the opportunity that such a threadbare speech presented him with. The election result may not have delivered him into government, but it has made him look like far more of a winner than the woman who called the poll. The Labour leader

I’m not sure I’ve ever been so pessimistic about this country’s future, and I’m not usually a barrel of laughs to start with. Aside from the terrorism, and the recent tragedy in North Kensington, there are real black clouds in the distance. Investors are being put off Britain, a problem that pre-dates Brexit but is surely aggravated by it. There seems little hope that the Tories will follow Philip Hammond in pursuing a more moderate line in Europe. (Would the catchphrase ‘Stop, Hammondtime’, galvanise the public, I wonder? Kids still like MC Hammer right?). Meanwhile the opposition – even moderate members – are now calling for people’s private property to

Every discussion with a Tory Minister or MP now ends up with a go through of the runners and riders for the leadership. But just as important as the personality is the policies. One of the major problems for the Tories at the last election was that they had almost no positive offer; what did they offer a thirty something on fifty thousand a year who didn’t stand to inherit anything? Tories can’t expect young people to be capitalists, when they have no capital. This makes the need for new ideas on the centre-right a matter of some urgency. Without them, Jeremy Corbyn—or someone very like him—will be Prime Minister

Who would want to be a political leader in the wake of a disaster such as that of Grenfell Tower? If you show up and hug the victims you run the risk of being accused of opportunism and obstructing the emergency services in their work; if you stay away from the site you will be accused of callousness – even if you are spending your time working on the practical issues relating to the event. But there is a very strong emerging narrative: that Jeremy Corbyn got it right by turning up and sharing the grief of the victims, and that Theresa May got it horribly wrong by restricting her