Patrick O’Flynn

Given the complexities of modern government, with all its pitfalls and unforeseeable reverses, pointing out when ministers have made a mess of things is certainly an important part of the repertoire of opposition – the equivalent of a boxer’s jab in our pugilistic political system. But the ‘it’s a shambles’ method of politics can only

The tragic drowning of more than two dozen people in the English Channel yesterday should remind us that closing down this irregular migration route has become a multi-purpose moral duty. Not only does the British state have a responsibility to do so to preserve its social contract with its citizens and the integrity of the

Perhaps the past seven chaotic weeks are best regarded as an experiment by the Tories. Boris Johnson’s intention appears to be to establish just how badly he can run the country while remaining on course for re-election. Despite calamity after calamity hitting Boris’s administration, things are still looking rosy for the party: Politico‘s poll of polls shows

The sheer number of useless interventions that have been touted as offering a solution to the cross-Channel migrants crisis is bewildering. Various rounds of talks with France about heightened cooperation to make the route non-viable; paying large sums of money to France to fund beach patrols; appointing a cross-Channel Clandestine Threat Commander; threatening to ‘call

Rishi Sunak thinks Boris Johnson goofed badly when he conspired to upend Commons standards procedures. And he agrees with his red wall colleagues that this appeared to place the government on the side of a privileged elite. That is certainly the standard interpretation of his comment this week that the government needed to do better –

‘You’re an accountant. You’re in a noble profession. The word “Count” is part of your title,’ the corrupt impresario Max Bialystock tells the neurotic bean-counter Leo Bloom in The Producers. Just a few weeks ago MPs from all parties had convinced themselves of something similar as they came together to pay tribute to David Amess.

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes, said Mark Twain. Right now the commentariat is looking for something that will rhyme with the famous Battle of Knutsford Heath of 8 April 1997. In that face-off, Neil Hamilton and his formidable wife Christine were ranged against the white-suited ‘anti-corruption’ independent candidate Martin Bell. Though the

They were queuing up to eclipse Keir Starmer this week. Rishi Sunak – already ahead of Starmer in the polls when it comes to who would make the better prime minister – came brimming with barbs designed to make the leader of the opposition look like a chump on Budget day. In the event, Starmer

Are you someone who is delighted by the government’s eye-wateringly expensive commitment to deliver ‘net zero’ by 2035, or are you a dissenter on the grounds that its plans do not go far, or fast, enough? According to the BBC and many other media organisations, you must surely belong to one of those two groups.

Boris Johnson is taking one heck of a risk by making labour shortages a deliberate part of his economic strategy. That, at least, is the conventional wisdom about the Prime Minister in the wake of party conference season.  If things go well, then businesses will raise productivity by investing heavily in new machinery and more training

It is hard not to feel sorry for Priti Patel. She would surely have been a Tory conference darling at the gathering that never happened back in autumn 2020 at the height of the pandemic. Back then she always came towards the top of cabinet ministers’ popularity in the monthly survey conducted by the Conservative Home

Keir Starmer’s incredible shrinking pamphlet was initially said to run to 14,000 words, then 13,000, then 12,500 and now 11,000 is even being mentioned. As someone who has read it from start to finish, let me assure you that whichever of those word counts is accurate, it’s still much too long. But those who are

In the dying days of Theresa May’s benighted premiership I spotted a long-serving Tory MP on the same weekend train as me, a few rows down. This old whips office hand had naturally bagged a table of four for himself and spread out documents and newspapers across it to deter all-comers. But he seemed most

It didn’t take long for the open-borders brigade to try and politicise the magnificent feat of British teenager Emma Raducanu in winning the US Open women’s singles. Rather than just revelling in the general outbreak of joy in the country, or praising the astonishing maturity of Emma’s performance, the usual blue-tick suspects piled onto Twitter

When Victoria Beckham noticed that her husband David had developed a winning way, not just with her but with almost everyone else too, she came up with a wry nickname for him: Goldenballs. What billionaire’s daughter Akshata Murthy calls her husband Rishi Sunak within the confines of their family homes is anybody’s guess but there is

The sun is beating down again, the waves are less choppy in the English Channel and the small boats full of irregular migrants are pouring across once more. At least 1,000 men, women and children were reportedly spotted landing on the south coast yesterday. If these numbers are correct, it would have shattered the previous daily

Which Boris Johnson should Labour fight? There is little doubt about the personality traits most left-wing activists think they have detected in the Prime Minister and which motivate them to campaign tirelessly for his removal from office. The Johnson they are fighting is a cruel and dastardly right-wing serial liar who wins elections by pulling

When Theresa May told a joke at her own expense at a reception of Tory MPs held to celebrate Boris Johnson’s landslide election victory in December 2019, the assembled audience breathed a sigh of relief. Many had expected the freshly re-elected May to be a thorn in the side of her successor during the ensuing

Sometimes things that don’t happen are as important as those that do. In the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, about the theft of a racehorse, the failure of a dog to bark is the central fact that allows the crime to be solved. Holmes mentions this ‘curious incident of the dog in the night-time’ to