Andrew Willshire is founder of the strategic analytics consultancy Diametrical Ltd
From our UK edition
For the last 20 years, Scotland has been labouring under a lie. A lie that is so offensive that seemingly no-one dare mention it. A lie that has condemned it to perpetual one-party rule, even while that one party is bereft of either ambition or basic competence. For years, I have waited in vain for
From our UK edition
The Conservatives were nearly wiped out at last July’s general election, and the party is currently trailing Nigel Farage’s Reform in the polls. You might think then that the handful of remaining ‘big beasts’ on the Tory benches would decide to try and work together. Instead, a split appears to be emerging in the party
From our UK edition
Boris Johnson’s resignation has fired the starting gun on yet another Conservative leadership election. The race to succeed Boris is the fifth to have been fought under the rules introduced by William Hague in 1998. But there’s a problem with the way the contest is run: it forces MPs to second-guess the Tory membership –
From our UK edition
There are many reasons to oppose Boris Johnson’s government’s policy of removing migrants to Rwanda. There’s certainly a moral case against this asylum policy, one which the Church of England’s bishops have presented with some force; and there could be a legal case which the Supreme Court will consider in July. But given the lack of achievements
From our UK edition
As you may have gathered despite the understated media coverage, Boris Johnson became the first serving Prime Minister to be found to have broken the law when he was issued a fixed penalty notice (FPN) by the Metropolitan Police for breaching Covid-related laws on gathering for non-work purposes. There has been much written about this
From our UK edition
Dorian Lynskey recently wrote a piece celebrating Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday entitled ‘Bob Dylan doesn’t like you‘. The article highlighted the disdain Dylan has for fans, critics, journalists, and even the Nobel Prize Committee. Feted as the voice of a generation, and often acting like it, he still has nothing but scorn for those who acclaim him
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Dominic Cummings’s main concern as he appears in front of MPs is to identify the failures of government and ensure everyone knows they weren’t his failures, but those of the fools who refused to listen to him. It’s rather a tragic final act, for the truth is that Cummings did fail (and, to be fair, he
From our UK edition
As the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow approaches, it is only to be expected that charities, lobbyists, special interest groups and an alphabet soup of international bodies will attempt to steer the conversation in their direction. The IEA (International Energy Agency, not to be confused with the Institute for Economic Affairs think tank) has published
From our UK edition
The re-election of a pro-independence majority to the Scottish Parliament shows that the next five years will be dominated by the quest for a second independence referendum. Conventional wisdom is that the Scottish Parliament will pass a Bill legislating for that referendum, daring Westminster to strike it down, making the separatist position more powerful, like
From our UK edition
A sure sign of paying too much attention to politics is when the arguments of your own side begin to grate as much as those of the opposition. Currently number one in my personal sources of ennui is the frequent damning of the SNP by comparing them to Brexiteers, with their claims of self-determination, demonisation
From our UK edition
In the great debate around Scottish independence, one word is never far away: identity. ‘Who am I?’ is elevated from mere navel-gazing to expressive political allegiance. On one side are those who feel that one can be both Scottish and British without fear of contradiction, while on the other are those who feel that one
From our UK edition
It’s not hard to see why politicians like Joe Biden and Boris Johnson want to talk about climate change. First of all, it looks good to the electorate. Caring about the planet (or at least being seen to care about the planet) is one of the things that marks you out as ‘a good person’.
From our UK edition
Political parties like to think of themselves as being a ‘broad church’ when tackled about conflicting views among members. It makes it all the more ironic then that it was a visit to a church which exposed a challenging split in the Labour party. Keir Starmer’s trip to Jesus House last week resulted in him apologising
From our UK edition
Boris Johnson announced his new ten-point plan for Britain’s transition to a net-zero carbon emissions economy this week. It is expected that other countries will follow. The EU has a stated aim of achieving a net-zero economy by 2050, with a 60 per cent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by 2030. This presents an
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The news over the last few days has been a tale of three trade negotiations. First came the threatened collapse of the trade talks with the EU over plans to override the Withdrawal Agreement. This was followed by a statement from Nancy Pelosi (the Speaker of the House of Representatives) that there could be no UK-USA
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In recent years, governments have increasingly opted to legislate to ensure they do the things they say they are going to do. In the UK, for example, the commitment to allocate 0.7 per cent of GDP to the international aid budget is legally binding, and in 2019 the UK became the first major economy to
From our UK edition
Hope Not Hate is an organisation with a fine campaigning record which has done a lot of good in tackling extremism. But this week, they tweeted that ‘the far-right and the climate crisis are linked. They spread disinformation, fear-monger about climate-driven immigration and engage in denialism to spark culture wars.’ I’m not entirely convinced by
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Following the Prime Minister’s address last night, Twitter was ablaze with mockery of the equation the government will use to determine our route out of lockdown. In particular, people were keen to show their mastery of primary school-level maths, by observing that ‘if the number of infections is 183,000 and R is 0.7, our threat
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Researchers at the university of Leeds have published a study claiming that rich people use more energy than poor people; or as the BBC have it, “Climate change: The rich are to blame”. That article contains the rather obvious point that: ‘The researchers found that the richer people became, the more energy they typically use.
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The Brexit culture wars are back. On Saturday, the Guardian published an article entitled: ‘Brexit means coronavirus vaccine will be slower to reach the UK.’ As usual with such pieces, the words ‘if’ and ‘could’ do more heavy lifting than Atlas. The gist of the article’s argument is that leaving the European Medicines Agency (EMA)
