Great mistakes in politics (No16) Michael Howard’s interview with Jeremy Paxman
Everybody in Britain remembers this one as it was repeated on every satirical news programme for years afterwards. One of the biggest complaints I often hear about politicians is that they don’t answer...
View ArticleGreat mistakes in politics (No18) – John Major goes ‘Back to basics’
Sometimes governments go through rough patches when more things seem to go wrong than right. Their policies don’t produce results, they are beset by scandals and the press start attacking them for...
View ArticleWhat are the big questions in the phone hacking scandal?
News International’s announcement that there was widespread phone hacking at the News of the World shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. More and more celebrities had started legal proceedings...
View ArticleGreat mistakes in politics (No20) – Margaret Thatcher and the Poll Tax
In retrospect Margaret Thatcher should probably have come unstuck sooner. By the end of the 1980s she’d been in power for a decade and somehow managed to become the most polarizing figure in Britain....
View ArticleGreat mistakes in politics (No21) – Nick Clegg and the AV Referendum
Last Thursday the British public rejected the referendum on the Alternative Vote, leaving Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats with egg all over their faces. In retrospect their decision to accept the...
View ArticleThe political impact of the phone hacking scandal
I know we live in a world where moral outrage is cheap and hyperbole has become the norm, but the latest revelations in the News of the World phone hacking scandal are genuinely horrific. The idea that...
View ArticleGreat mistakes in politics (No26) Enoch Powell and the Rivers of Blood speech
As mistakes go this was a huge one. Britain in the late 1960s was still coming to terms with the influx of immigrants in the aftermath of World War Two. There seemed to be a general split in the...
View ArticlePolitical predictions they got wrong (No26) The British election of 1945
For many commentators a Conservative victory in the 1945 election seemed inevitable. After all, Churchill was a hugely popular leader who had helped guide Britain to win World War Two. Also virtually...
View ArticleThe folly of cutting police funding
I’ve seen a lot of knee jerk responses to the civil unrest that has swept Britain in recent days. These have come from both the public and the media; people are scared and angry so this is...
View ArticleGreat mistakes in politics (No31) John Redwood attempts to sing the Welsh...
There seems to be an unwritten rule of British politics that if a MP knows a lot about a particular subject then they’ll never be allowed to put it to use. On Yes Minister they always used to joke that...
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