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Author: David Herdson

On the wrong track: the government needs to be seen to be getting a grip of the rail fiasco

On the wrong track: the government needs to be seen to be getting a grip of the rail fiasco

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For once, the minister at the centre is worth backing as Next Out In the most recent Mori Issues Index (published on 4 May but with fieldwork going back well into April), not a single person out of the 1001 questioned said that transport was the most important issue facing the country. This compares against two people who responded with ‘pandemics’, another two who said AIDS, four who put forward ‘animal welfare’, six whose chief concern was nuclear weapons, and…

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On another planet

On another planet

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Rebel Tory MPs have lost a sense of reality if they think an election will improve their position Politics is supposed to be the art of the possible. In one sense that’s just a truism: that which happens is, by definition, within the bounds of the possible. However, this week’s shown up again that Bismarck’s aphorism is only true to a degree. There are plenty of politicians who are not interested in the possible but only in their own priorities….

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The Conservatives must again make the case for private enterprise, profit, choice and competition

The Conservatives must again make the case for private enterprise, profit, choice and competition

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1929 Conservative poster The risk is an unwitting drift into a new left-of-centre consensus Some revolutions are begun by small steps; others are revealed by them. Of itself, Chris Grayling’s announcement this week that the government was bringing the East Coast Mainline back into public ownership, was nothing unusual. It is, after all, the third time in the 20 years of the privatised era that the East Coast franchise has failed. Furthermore, for the government, the return to state-run operations…

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Be wary of YouGov’s finding that Britain’s voting intentions is classless

Be wary of YouGov’s finding that Britain’s voting intentions is classless

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Queues like I've never seen out the polling station in hackney pic.twitter.com/oDUBM7wBVj — Tom Clark (@prospect_clark) June 23, 2016 It isn’t new, and it isn’t really backed up by other pollsters or elections Class is supposed to define British politics. Perhaps that explains the flurry of surprise yesterday when YouGov’s latest poll gave the Conservatives a 3% lead among the C2DE group (43-40-7 among the main parties), and showed Labour doing worse with them than with the ABC1s (43-37-11). We…

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Has Labour lost its momentum?

Has Labour lost its momentum?

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Are we past Peak Corbyn or was LE2018 just a bump in the road? You can tell a lot about how well a party has done by where a leader goes to celebrate their election victories. Theresa May (no doubt unwittingly) re-emphasised her caution-first nature by travelling all the way to Wandsworth: a council the Tories have held since 1978. She could have gone to Nuneaton, where the Tories stripped Labour of a sizable majority (unlike Wandsworth, where it was…

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Amber warning: Rudd is safe – for now

Amber warning: Rudd is safe – for now

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Labour’s front-bench inexperience has been shown up as much as Rudd’s errors Politics is not just showbiz for ugly people; it’s also sport for the energetic, enthusiastic, passionate but physically average. Although virtually all politicians go into it because they believe strongly in at least some aspects of what their party stands for and because they want to see the reforms they champion implemented, most also simply enjoy practising politics – the camaraderie of (and rivalry within) the teams, the…

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The Palace is laying the groundwork for a Regency

The Palace is laying the groundwork for a Regency

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The Queen won’t abdicate but she might still retire The beauty of the Commonwealth lies in its pointlessness. Far from being a hindrance, the fact that it doesn’t have a purpose is a feature, not a bug. No-one is being swept along by ‘the Project’ and rarely does anyone expect anything from the two-yearly get-togethers – and that lack of clear agenda, combined with an informal atmosphere with leaders parted from advisors and officials, is what can create the space…

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MPs were right to oppose action in Syria in 2013 and may well be right now

MPs were right to oppose action in Syria in 2013 and may well be right now

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May must come to parliament and make her case Ed Miliband’s legacy to the world cannot just be measured by his inadvertently handing the Labour leadership to Jeremy Corbyn*. He also played a decisive role in preventing the UK joining proposed action against the Assad regime after Syria used chemical weapons in 2013. The effect of Britain withdrawing from planned operations – and doing so because of opposition in the legislature – was to cause Obama from drawing back from…

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