Never mind what the government should do: what will it do? Ravi Ashwin might not be the first name you think of as being of particular relevance to the Brexit denouement this October. However, his dismissal of Josh Buttler in the IPL this March is an excellent example of one side playing to the rules while the other played to the conventions of the game – and who went on to lose. Too much of the commentary around what’s likely…
Ideology with no concern for consequences or convention is the business of revolutionaries I have today resigned my membership of the Conservative Party after 24 years. While that’s a moment of some sadness for me, it’s of trivial importance on any wider scale. What isn’t trivially important is the set of changes which the Party’s undergone in the last few years and especially the last few weeks because these will have an immense impact on the country, one way or…
Could his mighty Islington fortress be built a little bit on sand? We’ve heard a lot about how Boris Johnson is at risk of losing his Westminster seat come the next election. His 5,034 majority over Labour in Uxbridge & South Ruislip is not at all commanding – Labour need just a 5.4% swing to take the seat – and what with Johnson leading the charge towards a No Deal Brexit, with the economic and other disruption that would cause,…
The current restrictions help neither the public nor MPs Parliament is – and is meant to be – a tough arena. MPs and ministers take critically-important decisions and need to be accountable for them. Ideas and arguments need to tested and pitted against one another. Failures (and perceived failures) will be pounced on, often ruthlessly. Unfortunate ministers and shadow ministers who make the wrong mistake at the wrong time find themselves at the centre of a political storm often out…
Parliament won’t be able to repeat Cooper I: only nuclear options remain Rarely can there have been such a disparity between the apparent dullness of the procedural minutiae of an amendment to a technical Bill about Northern Ireland, and the breathless attention paid it by the political commentariat as there was this week. Wrongly. They might as well not have bothered. In trying to find processes to avoid the government proroguing parliament in late October (processes which might not work…
His verbal grandiosity is a mask for a lack of self-confidence Boris Johnson has always had a facility for a briefly memorable turn of phrase. Whether referring to table tennis as, archaically, ‘whiff-whaff’ or describing Brexit talks extending into further rounds beyond October 31 as the ‘hamster wheel of doom’, Johnson’s words have the capacity to amuse and distract. For a politician, that’s a useful skill up to a point. The problem is that the phrases, like Johnson himself, tend…
Losing in 2020 might just be the start of the game Obscure corners of the US constitution were made for delving into, particularly when they interact with a scenario which is not wholly implausible: in this case, a post-presidency impeachment. “Hang on”, you might say; “doesn’t impeachment, if successfully carried, involve the loss of office? In which case it would be pointless for someone who’s already gone?”. Yes, it does – but that’s not all it does, which is what…
Wikipedia A clear lead or struggling to be neck-and-neck? Three parties have dominated the coverage of opinion polling and major elections over the last three months. On one side, the Tories have clearly suffered a catastrophic loss, shedding more than half the support they had at the start of the year, losing more than 1300 councillors and then nearly all their MEPs in May. Against which, the Brexit Party has exploded out of nowhere to win the EP elections and…