The long shadow of Dominic Cummings might just start an invention boom January 30, 2023 ARIA, the government sponsored independent body is designed to fund new scientific and innovation projects. It might the last hangover of Dominic Cummings in Downing Street, writes Eliot Wilson
The deja vu of Nicola Sturgeon shaking her fists at Westminster in the courts January 23, 2023 Holyrood and Westminster have been locked in a gender reforms fight. But if Sturgeon thinks she has good chances to win this battle in the courts, she should think twice, writes Eliot Wilson
Ukraine is a real life learning curve of the price of modern war and defence January 16, 2023 The war in Ukraine is a distinctive representation of conflict in today's world. We have to look closely at our role in supporting Kyiv to understand the price and lessons of modern war, writes Eliot Wilson
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. [...]
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.