I am lucky enough to live right on the river Thames at Wapping. The view from my balcony is fascinating. Brown and brackish, the tides and the current compete endlessly. In a twice daily rhythm, the water surges and withdraws up to 7 metres in height, as if drawing deep…

I don’t think it is fully appreciated what a peculiar Prime Minister Liz Truss is going to be. Other politicians have climbed the greasy pole. Some have been described as having risen without trace. Liz Truss is the first to have floated to the top, uniquely weightless. For she was…

The continuing troubles of the Conservative party Things can only get better. That’s what the Conservatives hoped when they deposed Boris Johnson. His venality, arrogance, untruthfulness and lawlessness had taken him past the point of no return with the public. Surely a fresh face would improve matters? The last week…

“We all know what we have to do”, said Jean-Claude Juncker, “we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it.” Conservative leadership candidates must empathise with the former EU president. It’s hard to recall a less propitious time for anyone to take over as Prime Minister. The…

The future of the Conservatives The Conservative party has taken many twists and turns over its lifetime, particularly over the subject of free trade. If we date its start to Robert Peel in the 1830s, it had barely been created before it promptly split over the Corn Laws, coming out on the side of protectionism…

We haven’t reached the sunlit uplands yet. In just the last week or so, the OECD has warned that Britain is heading for zero growth and the worst economic performance in the G20 after Russia, it forecasts that Britain will have the highest inflation in the G20 (apart from Russia…

A possible vote of no confidence I value journalism. Really, I do. But sometimes I must point out its failings. Today is one such day. For over a period of many months, journalists have not distinguished themselves in interpreting what is going on in the Conservative party just now, though…

Unplanned consequences of legalising cannabis The war on drugs is not going well. 50 years after the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, when Britain moved from treating drug abuse as a medical problem to treating it as a criminal problem, the country has no shortage of supply of illegal drugs…

So far as I know, I have only been blocked by four people on Twitter. Two are political charlatans who did not take kindly to remarks I had made about them (I’ve never directly interacted with one of them, so he must monitor commentary about himself assiduously). One is a…