BY CHARLOTTE GILL New research from Plan International UK has painted a shocking picture of what it’s like to be a girl in Britain. A thousand aged 14 to 21 were surveyed and reported feeling unsafe in public, held back by sexism and that boys were given better treatment than Read more…
BY CLARE GOLBY It seems not a week goes by without someone or other trotting into town on their high horse named Woke. Telling us ordinary, and in their eyed clueless, folk how to live our lives, what subconscious bias we may or may not be subjected to, how things Read more…
BY SUSAN HALL Dear Labour Party As you’re in the midst of a leadership contest I thought it was the perfect time to put pen to paper (well, fingers to keyboard) to offer some advice on the steps you should be taking to transform your Party into a decent and Read more…
BY TIM DAWSON They simply cannot cope. Since Laurence Fox opened his mouth on last Thursday’s Question Time, Twitter has been in meltdown. “Racist!” they shout. “Racist! Sexist! Homophobe!” And, the coup de grâce: “Privileged white man!” It has been absolutely joyous to behold. Fox, meanwhile, has responded with trademark Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD Watching the Labour Party’s first leadership hustings on Saturday stirred a deep sense of déjà vu. I couldn’t help but watch, transfixed with morbid fascination as all five candidates on stage spoke about Jeremy Corbyn’s brilliant manifesto. The same manifesto that sunk the party to its worst Read more…
BY TOBY YOUNG As a Bafta member, I was impressed by this year’s list of nominees. I had dutifully worked my way through most of the DVD ‘screeners’ of 2019’s most prestigious films and I thought my fellow members had got it right. The five movies nominated for Best Picture Read more…
BY OWEN PATERSON Sir Roger Scruton was a pre-eminent philosopher, influential teacher and courageous opponent of Communism. His death comes as a sad loss to the conservative cause and to all those who value freedom of expression and intellectual valour. In over 50 books, he applied his mind to everything Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD Last week saw as many as three impossible things before breakfast. The Prime Minister stuck to his own timetable on the Iranian crisis with no dip in popularity. Agreement was found to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly. The Revised Withdrawal Agreement sailed through the House of Commons Read more…
BY ANDREW ROSINDELL MP They thought they owned the working class. Labour, the BBC, Universities, the Arts – they all thought the working class were their pets, to be patronised and bribed with fantastical nuggets in a left-wing manifesto. Well, they were wrong. Seriously, gobsmackingly wrong. Normal working people recognise Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD Meghan chose to swap the life of celebrity for the life of royalty when she married an heir to the throne. Now it looks like she either did not understand her role, or has come to regret it. In seeking a new half in half out role, Read more…
BY JIM BARRINGTON At one level, the legal battle over whether or not veganism is a philosophical belief, and therefore deserves protection in law, is slightly comical. Jordi Casamitjana, an animal rights activist was sacked by his former employer, the League Against Cruel Sports, an animal rights group. The reason Read more…
BY SUSAN HALL In less than 4 months Londoners will have the chance to kick out Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London and replace him with the fantastic Shaun Bailey. The 7th May will also see elections for 40 Police and Crime Commissioners, various Mayoral Elections – including in the Read more…
BY TOM HARWOOD The Labour Leadership race will officially kick off today, with the party’s NEC having set the rules for the contest. The half dozen or so serious contenders for the role are attempting to position themselves to varying degrees in contrast to the previous regime, and no Conservative Read more…
BY CLARE GOLBY I’m working class and a Conservative. Like the Labour Leadership contender Rebecca Long-Bailey, I was born in Salford in the mid 70s. I saw poverty and social depravation first-hand. Unlike her, I don’t have to make stories up because I lived it. With my background, I’ve been Read more…
BY CHARLOTTE GILL Yesterday, in a bid to be leader of the Labour Party, Rebecca Long-Bailey championed the concept of “progressive patriotism” in an article for The Guardian. This expression had clearly been carefully contrived, perhaps by a spin doctor thinking she or he was being extremely clever, to appeal Read more…
BY TOBY YOUNG I had dinner with Douglas Murray a couple of days before the General Election and he said that if Labour lost – which looked likely, even with the Conservatives’ poll lead shrinking in the final week – we had a moral duty to crow about it. “Because Read more…
BY REBECCA RYAN AND TIM DAWSON 2019 ended with the country in a far better place than when it began. This time last year: a beleaguered Prime Minister; a rogue Parliament buttressed by a rogue Speaker; Brexit – indeed, the very fabric of our democracy itself – in jeopardy. A Read more…
BY CHRIS ROSE A Labour leadership election is scheduled to begin on the 7th of January. A very fractured and divided Labour party will soon start the process of deciding who is best and most capable of repairing the colossal Corbynite damage which devastated them on election night. So far, Read more…
BY CHARLOTTE GILL On Friday night, like much of the nation, I tuned into Have I Got News for You to unwind for the evening. Generally I avoid comedy panel shows, finding them too full of self-congratulatory men, but found this episode interesting as a measure of how insulated most Read more…
BY DARREN GRIMES “We should not be surprised to find the left concentrated in institutions where ideas do not have to work in order to survive” – Thomas Sowell The world of academia and the views of BBC may seem remote from everyday politics. But it would be wrong to Read more…