Stephen Daisley

P.J. O’Rourke was the finest conservative satirist of his generation and therefore the finest of any political persuasion. Satire, an impertinent and mean-spirited attack on authority, is generally and perhaps even inherently a left-wing genre but O’Rourke came into his own in the wake of the 1960s, when the counterculture tried to overthrow authority but ended up replacing it instead. Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan may have swept the ballot boxes but where real power lay — in the newsrooms and the entertainment industry, on the campuses and in the publishing houses — the radicals won in a landslide.

Captain Tom Moore captured the nation’s hearts during the pandemic. The World War II officer completed 100 lengths of his garden at the age of 99 to raise money for NHS-related charities, attracting more than £30 million in donations and being knighted by the Queen. When he died last February, aged 100, the fond tributes and outpouring of sadness were universal. Well, almost.  Glaswegian Joseph Kelly marked Captain Tom’s passing by tweeting a photograph of the veteran and the words: ‘The only good brit soldier is a deed one, burn auld fella, buuuuurn’. Criminal patter should not land you a criminal record Undoubtedly these words were offensive: to British soldiers, the memory of Captain Tom, and the English language.

Tories who tried to convince Number 10 and Number 11 to delay the hike in National Insurance have had their hopes comprehensively dashed this morning. The Sunday Times carries a joint op-ed by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor which confirms the NI rise is going ahead as planned. Raising tax on workers is estimated to bring in an additional £12bn and will see those on £20,000 paying an extra £89, those on £30,000 stung for £214 and earners on £50,000 forced to hand over a further £464. Higher earners will see sharper increases: £839 on £80,000 and £1,089 on £100,000.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of Bobby Kennedy, is a conspiracy theorist and an anti-vaxxer. He's also an environmentalist lawyer, progressive talk-show host, and near-embodiment of horseshoe theory, having become something of a pin-up for Covid-era cranks. According to Scientific American, this scion of Camelot has, since 2005, "promoted anti-vaccine propaganda completely unconnected to reality." According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, his Children's Health Defense organization claims "unvaccinated children are healthier than vaccinated children" and condemns the parents of vaccinated children for "enrolling their kids in experimental Covid vaccine trials." On Sunday, Kennedy Jr.

It takes some doing to make a census interesting. So congratulations to the National Records of Scotland (NRS). NRS, which administers the decennial survey, is facing a judicial review over its guidance on the document. On the question of sex, it states that 'if you are transgender the answer you give can be different from what is on your birth certificate'. That is, something other than your legal sex. Feminist group Fair Play For Women will challenge this guidance at the Court of Session on 2 February. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar guidance for last year’s census in England and Wales was challenged at the High Court and found to be unlawful.

The stench of death clings to Boris Johnson. Bury South MP Christian Wakeford has crossed the floor to join Labour. David Davis has told him to resign ‘in the name of God’. Tory MPs reportedly continue to hand in letters of no confidence to the 1922 Committee. Once they reach 54, there will be a vote of confidence. Fresh polling on the Red Wall, conducted by JL Partners for Channel 4, puts Labour at 48 per cent and 37 per cent for the Tories, a near inversion of the 2019 election result. Sir Graham Brady — and Sir Keir — should expect some more knocks on their doors. The revelation that Downing Street held lockdown-breaking parties, while the rest of the country was banned from being next to dying loved ones, is anathema to Red Wall voters.

As an outsider looking in, it is curious to note just how loyal some remain to Boris Johnson. Not the payroll vote or even the backbenchers keeping their heads down, but the grassroots, the rank-and-file members and Tory voters both lifelong and more recent. Boris is a man who has never given loyalty and has no grounds to claim it from others. This is also a party storied for its ruthless despatching of even beloved leaders when they become electoral liabilities. So what gives? I have a couple of theories. One is that, closing in on 12 years in power, the party has grown tired and listless, no longer sure why it’s in government or to what end.

Douglas Ross is a ‘lightweight’. The head of the Scottish Tories is ‘not a big figure in the Conservative party’. These two assessments were issued on Wednesday evening in separate broadcast appearances by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House and the most biddable boot boy in Westminster. That Downing Street would be displeased by Ross’s call for the Prime Minister to resign is to be expected. That it licensed Rees-Mogg to trash the Scottish Conservative Party in retaliation says a great deal about the outfit currently running the show.

As he blasts his way through the remaining support beams of the UK constitution, Gordon Brown is doing more to deliver Scottish independence than the SNP. The former Prime Minister is reportedly poised to recommend that Labour adopt ‘devo max’ as a policy, which would see the SNP-run Scottish parliament handed yet another tranche of powers. Only defence and foreign policy would remain in the hands of Westminster: everything else would be at the whim of Nicola Sturgeon. The theory is that by increasing the powers of Holyrood, the Scots' appetite for independence will be sated. But is no evidence for this, and 23 years of evidence against it.

Arise Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, Knight Companion of the Most Noble Order of the Garter. Yes, that should give a fair few people a more punishing than usual New Year’s Day hangover. Britain’s most successful Labour leader, despised by all the worst aspects of the British character, honoured at last. Blair made three great mistakes as prime minister: he introduced devolution, he set a target for 50 per cent of young people to attend university, and he didn’t sack Gordon Brown. For some these will render him unworthy of his knighthood. For others it will be his decision to join the United States in overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who, it transpired, no longer had stockpiles of WMDs.

David Lammy says he regrets nominating Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader. We are meant, presumably, to be impressed by this admission. Given that it was delivered at Limmud, a Jewish festival of ideas, it sounds perilously close to an expression of contrition. Lammy has every reason to be contrite given the part he played in the Corbyn catastrophe. The guilty men of the Corbyn era typically belong to one of four categories. There were the True Believers — the pensionable Bennites and millenarian millennials with righteous faith in the leader and the (never properly defined) ideology he represented.

Steve Baker’s decision to boot Nadine Dorries out of a group chat of Conservative MPs has captured the attention of the Sunday papers, though it’s difficult to know where our sympathies are supposed to lie. Anyone who joins a group chat with either Baker or Dorries deserves all they get.  The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport got shown the door for defending the Prime Minister, a minority pursuit among Tory MPs these days. Her comments, which described Boris Johnson as a ‘hero’ who ‘won an 83 majority and delivered Brexit’, were spurred by an earlier post by Marcus Fysh, the MP for Yeovil and a staunch Brexiteer.

Lord Frost’s resignation is bad news for Boris Johnson, though that’s a side matter. Prime ministers come and go, what matters is policy. Lord Frost represented the most assertive face of the government on Northern Ireland and whether the UK or the EU ultimately decides that country’s fate. No one who replaces him is going to be as committed to his position on British sovereignty. No one who replaces him will be as prepared to have unpleasant meetings with Brussels (and Dublin). Be they major or minor, spectacular or subtle, concessions are coming.