The shadows of Margaret Thatcher are legion, but beyond the scarring left by her policies it is now relevant to consider why she was popular with anyone at all. The answer is exactly the same reason she was unpopular: her conviction. This mysterious quality could again be the forebear of...

After watching Shergar win a 1981 Derby trial the racing journalist Richard Baerlein urged punters with the famous phrase "now is the time to bet like men". The same could now be said of Her Majesty's Opposition. Following one of the most discordant six months in recent political memory -...

It is hardly a revelation to find this or that politician is a dissembler or disingenuous. To quote the old staple Orwell: "Politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly... When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer." Nothing new under the sun and all that. But recently...

"Even the most ardent republicans respect the Queen". And with that statement so ends the debate. Ardent or otherwise, it is tough enough to get a discussion about ending the monarchy going, let alone begin a process that would actually bring about its demise. Conservatives, lower and upper-case c, appear...

Behind the fever of the current political crisis there is something depressing about the way revelations concerning self-serving MPs and corporate collusion have been reported as 'news'. The past few weeks have shown that power, corruption and lies (aka the blindingly obvious) need to be illuminated in neon lights before...