An almost forgotten character walked back onto the stage of British politics this weekend. After decades in the wilderness, the “stalking horse” — previously a star of Tory leadership dramas — was revived by Labour MP Catherine West when she announced that if the cabinet did not challenge Keir Starmer’s leadership by Monday, then she would. The idea of a stalking horse is about as far removed as you can get from today’s Labour Party. Its original use was to describe hunters w

Just under a century ago, Aneurin Bevan was elected for the first time as the Labour MP for Ebbw Vale. Voters awarded him over 60 per cent of the vote – which, remarkably, was the lowest vote share of his parliamentary career. A century on, the area he represented (now part of the Blaenau Gwent Caerffili Rhymni constituency) has elected six new members of the Welsh Parliament. None of them are Labour. Plaid Cymru took the most votes and three of the seats in an area represent

In leisure centres and town halls across the country, the cheers of the victors can be heard alongside the half-hearted claps of the vanquished. Democracy at its most local – and for the people involved, most personal – is being played out in over 130 English councils, including every borough in London. Few beyond the immediate area will long recall what happens in individual councils. But what will linger is the big picture painted by the results – as well as the consequence

Despite the visceral hostility between them, Robert Jenrick and Liz Truss have much in common: like the majority of Conservative MPs ten years ago, for instance, they both voted to Remain in the EU. As much as they, and others, have tried to talk it down since, much of the mainstream British Right were Remainers. And I was one of them. As the journeys of Jenrick and Truss show, though, British politics has changed almost beyond recognition since then . But there are some, esp

Well, they’ve done it: Reform UK have, by the defection of the former Tory MP Danny Kruger, grown their Parliamentary party to five – exactly as it was after last year’s general election. Each rise and fall of Nigel Farage’s gang of MPs speaks to Reform’s weaknesses and strengths. The loss of James McMurdock and Rupert Lowe, both of whom were elected as Reform but now sit as independents, reflects the party’s issues with candidate selection and inability to contain anybody wh

It’s fifty years since Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservatives. Over the decade and a half in which she led the party, Thatcher would remake conservatism, the state and the economy in her own image. Yet she may never have become leader, and the word ‘Thatcherism’ may never have crossed anybody’s lips, had it not been for the singular arrogance of one man: her predecessor, Edward Heath. Heath was a consequential leader of the Tory tribe. He was the first grammar

Conservative Party leadership elections have rarely been out of the headlines in recent years. Since David Cameron resigned in 2016 there have been five contests to decide who will lead the United Kingdom’s oldest and most successful political party. Yet for all the familiarity of Tory leadership battles, they are a surprisingly recent phenomenon. Until the mid-1960s there was no mechanism for the party to choose its leaders. They were expected to ‘emerge’ via unknown and unk

What was Liz Truss’ biggest mistake as Prime Minister? Attention has, not unreasonably, tended to focus on the mini-Budget which fractured the Conservative parliamentary party, spooked the markets, forced out the Chancellor and ultimately precipitated her resignation. But the mini-Budget was arguably the product of an earlier poor decision: forming a Cabinet which excluded dissenters. Of Truss’ Cabinet of 23, 18 had backed her in the summer 2022 leadership election. The other

After fourteen years in government, in which five different prime ministers imposed their own vision of politics onto the Conservative Party, the Tories’ values have become unclear. As Kemi Badenoch, one of the frontrunners to lead the party in opposition, recently put it: ‘ the past decade saw us twist and turn in the wind, unsure of who we were, what we were for and how we could build a new country. ’ Fixing this problem won’t be easy. Conservatism, more than any other poli

In the eight years since David Cameron resigned as prime minister, the Conservatives have had four different leaders. Soon it will be five. Between Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, recent stints at the top of the party have averaged just two years. Being the leader of the Conservative Party – a role for which six candidates are currently vying – has become an almost impossible job. Intractable policy challenges, especially Britain’s relationship with the

When the six MPs vying to be Conservative leader were recently asked some quick-fire questions by party HQ, their interrogation was mostly limited to the light-hearted: “What’s the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning?” But one question stood out, inadvertently revealing more than any other about how they would likely lead the party: “Who is your number one political hero?” The most striking thing about the answers is how American they were, with half of the can

With nominations closing earlier this week, the good news for the six candidates vying to be the next Conservative leader is that, throughout its long history, the party has usually bounced back from substantial defeats. On the first three occasions in the last century when the Conservatives suffered a pasting at the polls — 1906, 1945 and 1966 — they went on to gain an average of 94 seats at the next election. Every time, the party stared into the abyss before coming roaring

A ppointments to the House of Lords have long been a sore on the British body politic. In 1922 David Lloyd George was exposed for egregiously selling peerages in exchange for donations to the Liberal Party. The Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act followed in 1925, but the banning of such overtly corrupt practices didn’t restore complete confidence in appointments. A century later, Boris Johnson’s resignation honours list and the peers it created (or, in several cases, did not