By: Eliot Wilson

Eliot Wilson is a writer, commentator and contributing editor at Defence On The Brink. He was formerly a clerk in the House of Commons and writes regularly on politics, defence and international security, and Parliament and the constitution, including for The Spectator, The Hill, The i Paper and CapX

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Sunak is right in taking on the unions, but anti-strike laws are no silver bullet

January 9, 2023

Strike action doesn’t have to be very extensive to send British society into fits of frightening folk memories of the 1970s. People murmur knowingly about a winter of discontent coming back to haunt us from the past. Real connoisseurs will recall the Army being brought in, ageing Green Goddess fire engines wheeled out to cover [...]
What’s in a year? Hopefully one without a new prime minister or an election

January 3, 2023

Without making myself a hostage to fortune, I predict 2023 will be a year without as much political turmoil even as inflation causes havoc.
The Labour Party has yet to find a compelling answer to the winter of strikes

December 19, 2022

What we’re witnessing now reads like something from the political history section of an A-level history book. Welcome the widespread strikes, including in the public sector, a government struggling to manage a difficult economy, a charismatic union boss and a prime minister conscious of approaching elections but still hoping for an upswing in his fortunes. [...]
Our secret services need to learn how to come out into the open to succeed

December 12, 2022

We know very little about our intelligence agencies. Secrecy has long been the British way: Harold Macmillan summed the attitude up when, in 1963, he was asked in the House of Commons about Kim Philby’s defection to Moscow. The old actor-manager replied wearily, “It is dangerous and bad for our general national interest to discuss [...]
Just Stop Oil protests should not justify carte blanche powers to the police

December 5, 2022

You would need the patience of a saint, or a dyed-in-the-wool eco-warrior, not to have been even slightly irritated by the recent activities of Just Stop Oil protestors. Whether it’s young people throwing soup over some of the world’s most valuable paintings or twenty-eight-year-old Indigo Rumbelow reduced to yelling at a television interviewer, these are [...]
Farage wants to reawaken the Brexit mob with a ragbag of populist policies

November 28, 2022

The veteran political journalist Michael Crick recently described Nigel Farage as “the most significant politician of the century so far”. This might seem like a blatant piece of liberal-baiting clickbait, given that Farage has stood for election to the House of Commons no fewer than seven times without success, but Crick is neither a fool [...]
Ten years on, the Sunak government is still beholden to the austerity narrative

November 21, 2022

Jeremy Hunt couched his fiscal plans very deliberately as part of a Tory continuum.
A call to arms: where will we find tomorrow’s bright Whitehall leaders?

November 14, 2022

It is one of the most common, and pointed, criticisms of government in this country now that we are not finding leaders properly equipped to take the United Kingdom into the middle of the 21st century. For all his sociopathic behaviour and sheer oddness, it was the mission of Dominic Cummings to solve that problem, [...]
The ship of the state is the only vessel that leaks right from the very top

November 7, 2022

In 1947, the Labour chancellor, Hugh Dalton, let slip some details of the Budget to a reporter as he walked into the chamber to deliver his speech and he was forced to resign.
Is Elon Musk a free speech champion or a bombastic fool? Perhaps, he’s both

October 31, 2022

Finally, it has happened. In a story with more drama and grandstanding than Wagner’s Ring Cycle, Elon Musk has bought Twitter for $44bn. The man himself announced the success of his deal in a tweet – of course. He has also dubbed himself “Chief Twit”, with which some may agree for the wrong reasons. There [...]

Former City traders’ fraud convictions overturned

Saudi Arabia still open to sport investing, insists PIF, despite drastic cutbacks

The Kaare Klint building refashioned as Copenhagen’s coolest new hotel

By: Eliot Wilson

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