An example of leadership to follow

Electricity  bills set to soar to £500  a month in October, in my own area West London the electricity grid has hit capacity  and a ban on building new homes is in prospect  to 2035, rail  strikes with no end in sight, with nurses and teachers to follow and the possibility of a general strike to come…  Health and social care services in England face “the greatest workforce crisis in their history” and the government has no credible strategy to make the situation …

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Government moves to damp down No Deal panic created by leadership bidding war

The bidding war between Johnson and Hunt grows more depressing by the day. The ideal differentiation would have been Hunt the rationalist pointing out the huge risks of Johnson’s “ hell or high water” date with the 31 October deadline. But this is no seminar. It’s a struggle to woo a tiny electorate supposedly in a frenzy to Leave  before the victor confronts two very different electorates in turn, first the Commons and then if he gets that far, the …

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Johnson and Hunt may pose as champions of the Union but if elected the winner is not automatically Prime Minister

Photo. Getty images   Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt continue to vie with each other  in a bidding war which includes who is the greater  verbal champion of the Union above all else. Both of them claim to be able to square the circle of Union First and No Deal  but No Deal if necessary. On the Marr Show Hunt said he would do both,  but then I lost track of his reasoning. As nobody bothered to  report what exactly he …

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“Nixon goes to China” is the right example to follow for Brexit. The Tories may know it already

Nixon goes to China Talking of the wisdom of US presidents… rivalling Trump’s lunatic assumption that our border problem is like his Mexican wall, the conservative right persists in believing that the future of the UK lies in a free trade agreement under WTO rules reached by the end of October. Steve Baker, the deputy chair of the ERG  has produced a plan called A Clean Managed Brexit which relies on negotiating a free trade agreement  “but with practical contingency …

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Amazing occurrences: Sun rises in East and Boris backs Brexit

In the most surprising news since the revelation that the sun came up in the east this morning, Boris Johnson has announced that he will support Brexit. The fact that Teresa May has stayed with Cameron means that none of the serious leadership contenders would have supported Brexit had Johnson stayed with Remain. This move will no doubt make him the grass roots darling for the meantime.

No national gold for Boris Johnson please

Everybody seems to be writing about Boris Johnson the mayor of London these days. Well, not quite everybody but the political anoraks with not a lot else to write about during the  Olympics   truce,  naturally enough I suppose, with Boris the herald of the Games  going zoink a lot and getting himself stuck in midair on a pulley.  None of the hacks is committing himself  actually to backing Boris for Tory leader and PM but they’re muttering “you never know “ and stroking …

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