Articles tagged politics:
Chapter on the 1900 General Election by Mark Fox
- 23 Jan 2024
Written a chapter on the 1900 General Election
The Coronation offers a rare opportunity to re-set the national narrative
- 27 Mar 2023
“There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today,” said Vice Admiral David Beatty as his ships exploded around him at the height of the Battle of Jutland in May 1916. We are not yet at the stage where banks are going down like dominoes but there is enough spume f...
It’s going to be a long week at Westminster
- 20 Mar 2023
The Budget came and went last week almost quietly. This is what the Prime Minister and the Chancellor wanted, indeed needed. It has come to something when a Conservative government’s chief ambition for a budget is not to cause a stock-market crash, but that is what it has come...
The future of Conservatism is going to require a change in thinking as well as policy
- 6 Mar 2023
In the space of a week predictions about the number of seats the Conservative Party will win at the next General Election have moved from 84 to 69. Such projections at this stage have to be taken with a very considerable degree of caution, but nevertheless should serve to focu...
Rishi’s great gamble
- 27 Feb 2023
British politics over the last 13 years has been a rollercoaster of change to accepted wisdom and settled opinion. A coalition government, five successive Conservative prime ministers, Brexit, the collapse of market confidence forcing a change in prime minister and chancellor,...
Royal soap opera is bad news for Sunak and Starmer
- 11 Jan 2023
Over Christmas and the New Year I was writing a chapter on King Edward III for the broadcaster and publisher Iain Dale’s upcoming book on the Kings and Queens of England. Edward had to seize control of the throne from the grasp of his mother and her lover who had led the succe...
Former Prime Ministers should be seen but not heard
- 13 Dec 2022
Britain now has seven living former prime ministers. Two of them still Members of Parliament. Since Mrs Thatcher took the traditional peerage, none of her successors have become members of the House of Lords. Winston Churchill famously remained in the Commons turning down the ...
We all have a part to play if we want better politics
- 5 Dec 2022
Donald Trump attacking the validity of the United States constitution is as grisly as it is inevitable. Trump has never accepted he was voted out of the Presidency and facing the fact that he is unlikely to be re-elected is now resorting to trying to destroy the fundamentals o...
Mrs Thatcher can teach us how to govern effectively
- 23 Nov 2022
It is said that when President Kennedy met Chairman Khrushchev for the first time he found it a very gruelling ordeal. The young President was inexperienced, physically weak and had had a pampered progress to the Presidency. Khrushchev on the other hand was tough, experienced,...
A reflection on the end of the party conference season
- 6 Oct 2022
So there we are. Finally the end of the 2022 conference season. I have been attending party conferences for over thirty years and in that time they have changed dramatically. From annual gatherings of friends and fellow activists, debating the big issues, listening to the grea...