Fraser Nelson is a Times columnist and a former editor of The Spectator.
Should it be Boris? He was twice elected mayor of a Labour city and if the Tory mission is to stop Jeremy Corybn, surely you need someone charismatic to see off a populist. Then again, David Davis is a dependable caretaker, a bruiser who can hold the line on Brexit. Or why not skip a
After a year of prevarication, it has emerged that the Prime Minister has agreed to offer permanent residency to all EU nationals who were living in Britain. Under current rules, anyone who has been here for five years can apply for permanent residency status: not quite the same as citizenship, but it confers the same rights
You can see why Theresa May locked her Chancellor up in a cupboard during the general election campaign. Not only was his credibility shot in his bungled Budget, where he seemed not to realise that his plan to raise National Insurance violated the manifesto upon which he was elected, but he’s now still seeking to
“Burn neoliberalism, not people” said Clive Lewis in a tweet showing the skeleton of Grenfell Tower. Odd words from a Labour MP. When asked just what he meant, he explained that his ‘agenda’ is to ‘end not just the current government but Thatcherite economic dogma’. In this way the grief and anger after the Grenfell
Had the Grenfell Tower tragedy befallen one of the millionaire high-rises built along the Thames recently, it would still be a catastrophe that shocked the country and the world. But what makes this disaster so numbing and sickening is to see, in the faces of the dead, some of the most vulnerable people in our
British government may not be strong and stable but the economy is still the most formidable job creating machine in Europe. And while it’s certainly true that much of the rise in employment is down to immigration, British unemployment is also down – figures today show the lowest level since 1975. My old friend Simon
After a fairly disastrous general election campaign, Tim Farron has quit as leader of the Liberal Democrats. You can see why: he wanted to pose as the champion of Remain yet for for the first few weeks he seemed unable to move the conversation beyond his views on gay sex and marijuana. His attempt to rekindle the Brexit
Well, this is going well. As the Tories pretend that all will be well under a reprogrammed Maybot, the expectations outside SW1 are rather different. Let’s say someone moves against her, the other candidates start to move too – and before you can say Boris the party has formed another circular firing squad. What happens? What
The reshuffle might be over, but the government is still changing shape. It has emerged that George Bridges has quit as a Brexit minister. He was highly rated by David Davis, his erstwhile boss, and had established himself as one of the most able ministers in the government – precisely the sort of person they
Was the general election a vote against austerity? I was on the Today programme this morning to discuss this point, and in the course of the interview said that the lowest-paid did best under the Cameron years. This raised some degree of incredulity from Twitter, reported by Huffington Post. What planet am I on? I
Only one Cabinet member – Chris Grayling – had a good word to say about Theresa May and even he waited hours to say it. The silence of the others underlines the scale of trouble that the Prime Minister is in with her own party after blowing its majority in pursuit of a personal mandate.
Extraordinary results for the Conservatives in Scotland, where the party – under Ruth Davidson’s leadership rather than Theresa May’s – is doing extraordinary well taking 13 seats. Alex Salmond, former Scottish First Minister, has just lost to to a Conservative in Gordon. So has Angus Robertson who is the SNP leader in Westminster. Overall, the expectations
The pound has plunged sharply on the exit poll, as markets start to come to terms with the idea that Theresa May might have blown it. It’s 1.7 per cent down against the dollar, 1.8 per cent against the Euro – expect those gains to deepen if tonight’s results confirm the results of the exit
After the 9/11 attacks, Tony Blair traced the jihadi menace to the problem of ungoverned spaces, like Afghanistan. In her speech after the London Bridge attacks today, Theresa May used similar language to describe cyberspace. “We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed,” she said. “Yet that is precisely what the
When the Conservatives were rebranded “Theresa May’s team” and the party’s name purged from its literature, there were two explanations. One, that the UK system of Cabinet government doesn’t suit the Prime Minister, so wants an election where she’d campaign by diktat in order to govern by diktat. She’d go fetch a three-figure majority, then her Cabinet
We’ve just had our pre-election meeting at The Spectator, and agreed the usual drill for the big night. Election day itself is dead: we relax and steel ourselves for the evening. There’ll be the normal 8.30pm curry as we wait for the exit poll and we’ll lay on some wine (and desk space) for contributors who’ll
In such gorgeous weather the best part of Scotland to visit is not (as so many seem to think) the West Highlands but my native north-east. Moray, a region of whisky and white beaches, has long been the country’s best-kept secret, but it has become rather spoiled of late by its new status as a
I’ve been on the campaign trail in Scotland, and was struck by how often education was raised by voters – underlining a trend of the SNP’s domestic record catching up with Nicola Sturgeon. She had come prepared for her interview with Andrew Neil on this point, but how reliable were her answers? Ms Sturgeon’s tactic is to
We learn this morning that MI5 has launched an internal inquiry into how they didn’t catch Salman Abedi, the Manchester bomber. He was reported to them five times, apparently, even by his imam – the spooks looked into him, but after a while discontinued their investigation. Perhaps we will learn that there has been an
The most memorable poster of the 2015 general election campaign was an image of Alex Salmond with Ed Miliband snug in his top pocket. As Adam Boulton points out today, the Tories haven’t tried to revisit that image, but Nicola Sturgeon might have helped them along. She expects Theresa May to win a majority, she
