James Price

My friends never let me forget the first time I came to London. They couldn’t understand why I was so desperate to cross the city to meet them at London Bridge when I was coming into Paddington. The reason was simple: I thought London Bridge was actually Tower Bridge. I wanted to see this icon of the city for the first time. London left me sorely disappointed – and not for the last time. London isn’t what it was: from the endless hate marches to the random violence; the sectarian clashes that flare up After trying and failing to see Tower Bridge on that first visit, I subsequently moved to London in 2013. The first few years were wonderful: the city held promise, adventure, and a chance to spread my wings.

There’s a reason why centrists keep failing: their formula of triangulating between two sides of a debate in order to appear balanced, or to hedge against being wrong, won’t win over voters. It suggests a lack of leadership that should have no place in politics, especially when Britain faces such clearly identifiable problems. The centrists are the real populists because they are chasing what they think the electorate wants to hear And yet, the centrists never learn. A new ‘movement’ – aimed at reclaiming the centre ground for the Tories – is being launched today by former Scottish Conservative leader Baroness Davidson and ex-West Midlands Conservative Mayor Sir Andy Street.

Nigel Farage’s speech at the Reform party conference may have been, for the most part, heavy on spectacle and light on detail. But one crucial policy was offered: a pledge to ban the Muslim Brotherhood in Britain. The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 with the goal of bringing about a universal caliphate under sharia law through political and non-violent means. Perhaps surprisingly, countries across the Middle East have already proscribed them, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan. So why has no action been taken to deal with the group in the UK? To answer this question I will employ a phrase I heard many times from the ‘blob’ during my tenure as an adviser: it’s complicated.

Today at Prime Minister’s Questions, the Labour MP Tahir Ali asked: ‘Will the Prime Minister commit to introducing measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions?’ Does Mr Ali think this is the most important issue currently facing the UK? Or, even more disturbingly, is this something that his constituents are calling for? The fact that we have an MP from the governing party calling for blasphemy laws to be reinstated is part of a terrifying development in politics. It comes alongside a rise in sectarian voting, which has seen minority groups pitted against each other and a splintering of modern society. Why, for example, did Mr Ali choose only to cite the Abrahamic religions?

On Tuesday, parliament voted for the first time on legislation to begin the phasing out of smoking (not just cigarettes, but cigars, shisha, you name it), and to create a two-tier legal system where some adults will be able to buy these products, and some won’t. Although the ban seems popular with the public, it has become a lightning rod for Tory MPs, who see it as a shibboleth for how conservative they and their colleagues are. Westminster-watchers are, inevitably, seeing it through the lens of a future leadership contest. The vote was free – that is, not one where members of Parliament were whipped to vote with the government. Ministers could follow their conscience. The highest profile ‘no’ was Trade Secretary Kemi Badenoch.

Brewdog, the Scotland-based brewery that has exploded into an international business in the last 15 years, is never far from the headlines. It held a competition to brew the world’s strongest beer and created another named Speedball after the drug cocktail of cocaine and heroin. The company has been happy to not so much court controversy as to seek it out.  Playing to the gallery is always a high-risk approach. Take, for example, Brewdog’s opposition to the World Cup being hosted in Qatar in late 2022. The beer company promised that various profits would go to human-rights charities but was criticised when it transpired that they were selling their produce in Doha. The latest fuss is overblown, however.