This article was published in July during the previous leadership election It beggars belief that Penny Mordaunt, the Queen of Woke, is odds-on favourite to win the Conservative leadership contest and become the next prime minister. The country needs her like a shot in the head. Apart from an impressively bouffant hairdo in the best Thatcherite tradition, a photogenic smile, … [Read on]

During the Tory party conference, Liz Truss was described as ‘a dead woman walking’ by one of her colleagues. One wonders what she could be described as now – an ‘anti-prime minister’? Throwing her chancellor under the bus, as if she were not his closest confidant, as if she did not approve wholeheartedly of his reckless budget, and then claiming … [Read on]

For over a millennium, the investiture of our monarchs has been attended by a cadre of nobles who, without their wives, currently number 808. The temptation to swap out the congregation for an audience of celebrities, global elites and ‘cultural ambassadors’ must be enormous. This will be the first test of a continuity which the King will swear to protect. … [Read on]

I am sick of buying other peoples’ houses for them. For years I have been earning 0.05 interest on my savings so that the banks can then lend it to house buyers for 1.5%. Buyers is too kind a word. Thieves perhaps? So talk of base rates reaching 6% is music to my ears.  The consequent 10% mortgage rate will … [Read on]

It looks like Kwasi Kwarteng will be the shortest-lived chancellor in history. Liz Truss’s admission this morning that she had not discussed her top-rate tax cut with her cabinet is merely alarming. That the cut was ‘a decision the chancellor made’, as if she, the prime minister, had no part in it, can only mean one thing: the unfunded cut … [Read on]

Getting out and about does you a power of good – and these days there is that exciting extra frisson of uncertainty; about everything. I was going to see Richard III at the RSC in Stratford, a place which   could easily have become an international cultural hub, but didn’t, as it lacks good transport connections. It’s not even possible to … [Read on]

There are three candidates for blowing up the Baltic gas pipes, yet both the BBC and ITV have singled out Russia as the culprit. It is hardly a considered view and demonstrates the incompetence of both channels when it comes to independent reporting. There is an equal case against three suspects: Russia, the US (along with Britain) and Ukraine (with … [Read on]