Politics

James Frayne is Director of Public First and author of Meet the People, a guide to moving public opinion. The public row over the Government’s intention to suspend its 0.7 foreign aid commitment will likely become an intra-party row in the coming weeks. It seems assured that at least some Conservative MPs will rebel against…

Eight years ago, the TaxPayers’ Alliance reported that “in the last year, five times more Labour people were appointed to public bodies than Tories”. It currently reports that almost half of avowedly political appointees last year owed their allegiance to Labour Party, compared to less than a third for the Conservatives. Despite the selection of…

Ryan Bourne is the author of Economics In One Virus, a forthcoming book available for pre-order on Amazon UK. As Boris Johnson’s February 22 “roadmap out of lockdown” day draws closer, the Prime Minister faces sharply conflicting advice. The backbench Covid recovery group (CRG) demands that schools return on March 8, and that all lockdown…

Cllr David Fothergill is the Leader of Somerset County Council and the Health and Social Care spokesman for the County Councils Network. We’ve heard the phrase “health and social care are two sides of the same coin” plenty of times over the last few years. The Department of Health became the Department of Health and…

Chris Goddard and Philip Mitchell are both members of Lewes Conservative Political Forum. 2020 provided a reality check in relation to China: no longer was it enough to promise, as the Cameron and May administrations had done, that Britain was “open for business” and that unpleasant features of Chinese nationalism could be overlooked because of…

Stephen McPartland is MP for Stevenage. Royston Smith is MP for Southampton Itchen. More than three and a half years on from Grenfell, the fallout of the cladding crisis is still being felt by millions of leaseholders today. Since then, the cladding crisis has only increased in magnitude. It has grown from the slow uncovering…

Richard Holden is MP for North West Durham. Co-Op, Tow Law, Co. Durham North West Durham is currently quilted by its second blanket of snow in the last month. This week’s constituency surgery visits involved cautious transit along ungritted roads to my hardy constituents. Even the sheep, usually scattered across fells, or grazing their own…

Mattie Heaven is a policy and advocacy advisor to the International Organisation to Preserve Human Rights. She was Parliamentary Candidate for Coventry South in the 2019 general election. Having lived in the UK most of my life, I’ve been faced with the challenge of explaining why human rights violations in Iran should greatly concern our…

“We ought to build that wall higher”@MarkDrakeford says the UK government’s travel quarantine red list isn’t sufficient to protect against new variants abroad, adding the government have done “the least they can get away with rather than the most that is needed”#Ridge pic.twitter.com/OFRoOFcFXg — Sophy Ridge on Sunday (@RidgeOnSunday) February 14, 2021 Originally found on…