Conferences, for some (not me, obv), are an opportunity to escape the constraints of marital responsibility for the excitement of a few days of drunken flirting and the possibility of an unsuitable tryst with someone you met in the hotel bar at 3am the night before. And, after going through what might optimistically be referred [...]

Journalists must surely miss Gordon Brown. As Labour leader-in-waiting they could always rely on him to be manoeuvring interestingly in the background and briefing against colleagues. And political editors must have been most grateful for his column-inch-filling presence during party conferences. Gordon’s set piece conference speech would never fail to be so transparent an alternative leader’s [...]

It has been a month of anti-climax. While April managed to be the wettest since records began, May could only lay claim to being the coldest for 100 years. Or the dampest since 1983. It was quite a poor effort. The month’s political events seemed affected by the same malaise.  The race to be Mayor [...]

The problem with being gifted an open goal is that people tend to remember when you miss, rather than when you score. For that reason Ed Miliband may regret allowing David Cameron off the hook at PMQs today. He spent too little time attacking the Government’s economic record before he moved on to the relationship [...]

Consultation on the Code of Practice on Noise from Ice-Cream Van Chimes Etc Announced with much fanfare last April, the Red Tape Challenge is the Coalition’s big push to reduce bureaucracy and get rid of unnecessary regulations. As the Prime Minister said at the time, “our government will be a much smarter one, shunning the [...]