The Police Federation have inadvertently performed a miracle. They have made the public feel sorry for a politician
- 17 Oct 2013
I really do have to hand it to the Police Federation. They have managed to do what so many spin doctors, strategists, greasers and chancers have been striving to achieve for so many years. The holy grail of spin. The unthinkable. The seemingly impossible. They have made the pu...
Chukka Umuna had better watch out for Tristram Hunt
- 13 Oct 2013
This has been a very strange week in British politics. We had the long awaited reshuffle which I found utterly incomprehensible. Please someone tell me what the point of it was, apart from warning our hopeless women Cabinet ministers (with the exception of Mother Theresa) tha...
Calm down dear it's only the Daily Mail
- 5 Oct 2013
Please may we try and gain a sense of perspective on the the great MAIL versus Miliband war? It has all began to spiral out of control with everyone wanting a piece of the action and both left and right using it for their own political ends. Both are milking as much political ...
This Deputy Speaker election is going to be fun
- 4 Oct 2013
Just as things were getting rather dull in politics, my old mate Simon Burns resigns a junior transport minister to throw his hat in the ring to replace poor old Nigel Evans as a Deputy Speaker. Nigel is one of the most decent people that I know and I really hope that he will ...
Why Boris will have to get off his leadership bike
- 1 Oct 2013
No doubt Louise Mensch was a perfectly adequate MP for Corby, but lecturing the Tory Party from the comfort of New York on how to win elections via a SUN column seems rather off world. The latest gem from planet Mensch is that the way Cameron gets an outright majority is to pu...
McBride of Dracula has posed some awkward questions for the Emissary from Planet Fuck
- 21 Sep 2013
An old friend, Michael Boulter, the professor of Palaeontology who discovered the lost continent of Atlantis, (honest!!!) asked me over lunch a couple of days ago what the point of Party Conferences was. I was stumped for an answer. He then suggested that in the Middle Ages pe...
Vince Cable is playing a very dangerous game
- 18 Sep 2013
Poor old Cleggy really doesn’t have much choice in offering his party as the coalition makers. He can hardly argue for a Commons majority with a straight face so he is wise not to try. But it is rather daft to pretend to cosy up to Labour after his comments that they “wrecked”...
The Ashcroft poll could be a gift to the Tories
- 15 Sep 2013
As is often the case Michael Ashcroft has done the Conservative Party a great service. His alarming opinion poll published in the Sunday Telegraph this morning that there is a UKIP surge in those marginal seats where the Tories have the smallest majorities has led to the usual...
This will be Miliband's Costa Concordia conference where the captain was too incompetent to land in the lifeboat.
- 13 Sep 2013
The next three weeks will be a terrible time for political journalists. Can you imagine having to endure the quirkiness of the Lib Dems, the despair that is Labour and the sphincter rattling horror of the swivel eyed Tory loons in full anti Cameroon rant? And there are the spi...
Parliament did not assert its authority last night it showed itself to be weak, afraid and self indulgent
- 30 Aug 2013
There were no winners in yesterday’s vote, only losers. The Coalition, the Opposition, Parliament and most tragic of all, those innocents who will be murdered by the Assad regime. I went into the Commons to watch the debate and read it all in Hansard this morning. On the terra...