The centre ground in Britain maintains two fictions about itself. First, that it is above the emotional pinball of politics, and is instead grounded in reason; the centre never makes culture war. Second, that the centre is the standard bearer of public civility, positioned in stark contrast to the brutishness of both the left and the right.  Both of these beliefs are, of course, false. In fact, as much as British centrists reject the disposition of the conspiratorial zealot, they share many of their pathologies. The likes of Russell Brand and Alex Jones and Nigel Farage horrify the sensibilities of the centre: they lack moderation, they are corrupted by extreme ideologies, and they have no reverence for expertise. But a little self-interrogation ...

The Tories, to the surprise of almost nobody, have begun to row back on the modest pledges they made in 2019 to tackle the climate crisis. They have done so not because the facts have changed but out of pure desperation. The climate deniers on the Tory benches are feeling emboldened by the party’s victory in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip by-election and the backlash there over the Ultra Low Emission Zone (Ulez). A party set for electoral annihilation is grasping for a wedge issue. We would be foolish, however, to simply blame the Tories for allowing what is an epochal issue to become the latest culture war. The climate debate features the same liberal voices who believed everyone in the country ...

Would Rishi Sunak really be bold enough to get rid of Jeremy Hunt as Chancellor when parliament returns in September? That’s the rumour swirling around a deserted Westminster, as politics grinds to a halt for the summer recess and news-starved politicos scramble to find something to gossip about. A reshuffle of some kind is inevitable, after Ben Wallace announced last month that he would be standing down as Defence Secretary as soon as a successor was chosen, and would not fight the next election. Indeed, many expected Sunak to act before parliament went into recess, rather than expose his government to weeks of conjecture. Today, that conjecture takes the form of a report from the Daily Mail’s Jason Groves, who goes ...

At the tender age of 22, Grace Campbell told the Guardian in September 2016 that she was developing a sitcom called Politicians’ Kids. An obvious topic choice, perhaps, given she is the daughter of Alastair Campbell, but also curious, given her qualms over the fact that “People used to say all I’d ever be is Alastair Campbell’s daughter”. In the years since then, Campbell has done remarkably well. Not yet 30, she is a published author, has written for every major British newspaper (except the Daily Mail, which she thinks needs a lobotomy), has starred in, and then produced, shows for Channel 4 and is about to return to the Edinburgh Fringe with an updated version of her stand-up routine from ...

Children who play and learn near busy roads, as around three million in England do, lose 5 per cent of their lung capacity to cars. In later life this means a higher risk of long-term health problems also caused by air pollution, including lung cancer, heart disease, dementia and stroke. However, the Prime Minister is clear that while we should probably protect children’s right to develop normal-sized lungs, we shouldn’t be too hasty: what if we impinge on the freedom of some adults to drive their old car? It was just such freedoms that Rishi Sunak sought to defend when he announced, from the front seat of “Margaret Thatcher’s old Rover”, his plan to protect the British motorist against policies such as ...

Tony Blair’s recent conference on the “Future of Britain” marked his public embrace of Keir Starmer. Now considered a prime minister in waiting, Starmer is unlikely to tarnish the New Labour legacy. Blair inducted him in a short conversation in which, with due humility, he posed questions like a master to his apprentice. Starmer performed. Such encounters, though, are always more revealing than intended. In his subsequent speech, Blair spoke with assured poise. He began with the “bad news” – “the British situation is perilous”. Aided by accompanying charts, the former prime minister referenced two defining challenges: making the state sustainable, and raising Britain’s growth and productivity. His message was clear and memorable. In contrast, Starmer’s speech was a word salad of ...

As a leading green campaigner recently put it, the world faces an “insidious danger... It is the prospect of irretrievable damage to the atmosphere, to the oceans, to Earth itself... What we are now doing to the world, by degrading the land surfaces, by polluting the waters and by adding greenhouse gases to the air at an unprecedented rate – all this is new in the experience of the Earth. It is mankind and his activities that are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways.” By “recently”, I mean 1989, and by “leading green campaigner”, I of course mean Margaret Thatcher, who was one of the first global leaders to warn of the risks of climate change. Over ...

This summer could be the most inconsequential for five years. In 2019 Boris Johnson entered No 10; the pandemic raged in 2020; 12 months later came the chaotic British and American withdrawal from Afghanistan. The following year, Tory MPs got rid of Johnson then took part in a giddy, tax-cutting arms race between Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss. Each event jolted Fleet Street out of writing about the scorching heat; each redefined politics. This summer promises less. As Anoosh and I discussed on the podcast last week, both parties seem content to “rethink” their environmental policy after almost 1,000 people in Uxbridge and South Ruislip voted for the Greens and not Labour. But the big moment for the Conservatives will come ...