Sea Change

There are certainly countries in the world even more divided than the UK. But there is no country more dazed and confused. To move in the past 15 years from the certainty and solidity of the Blair premiership to the sorry state of affairs that passes for government today is an almost unimaginable decline. This is a country particularly badly hit by the financial crisis, demoralised by years of austerity and seemingly unable to prevent every administration we elect being significantly worse than the one that preceded it. We’ve witnessed a growth of nationalism which culminated in the murder of a British MP shortly before the tragic decision to leave the EU. We endured the years of torment and torpor that followed, when Brexit was the only endless topic of conversation. We saw the major opposition party taken over by a leftist sect, while the governing Tories drifted ever further to the right. And now, as a corollary of all the above – or perhaps as a punishment for it – we hav

As a young teenager in the early 1980s, I remember chatting to someone involved  with the Labour Party hard left. He was of the firm view that the Metropolitan Police should be wound up. While I don’t recall this position being particularly mainstream, the policy of the hard-left administration on the Greater London Council at the time was certainly that police officers should become local authority employees. Yes, they were planning to defund the police nearly 40 years ago. The Brixton riots of 1981 had been sparked by aggressive policing of young black men and officious use of stop and search. In an era of recession, high unemployment and social tension, we saw a huge ideological rift between the Thatcher government (which stood for authoritarian law and order policies) and leftists of various persuasions who flew the red flag over town halls from Sheffield and Liverpool to Brent, Haringey and Lambeth. The London politics of the era were shaped by figures such as John McD

We all love the NHS. We all rely on it. We all have amazing and positive stories to tell. But we all know its flaws. We tend not to talk about them too much because we’re grateful for the amazing concept that lies behind the service. The whole system is a phenomenal slice of socialism. It says we can turn up at a doctor’s surgery or hospital and get treated for free, regardless of who we are or how much money we have. Although there are other ways of organising universal healthcare provision – we can see some of them in parts of continental Europe, for instance – there is something incredibly comforting and efficient about the British state service. But it is time to get real. If the NHS is prepared for the forthcoming coronavirus epidemic, I’m a trapeze artist at Billy Smart’s Circus. The government will tell you that we are battle ready, but surveys of people who actually work in the service will tell you categorically we are not. It’s not just a

The public is saying what no one in the Labour Party dares to admit. Just take a look at the commentary that has come out of Lord Ashcroft’s detailed research. The Conservative pollster has a sample of 10,000 voters and no fewer than 18 focus groups in which people’s concerns are laid bare. My God, it makes grim reading for Corbynistas and all the facilitators of their disastrous regime over the past few years. Labour is seen as ‘mostly for students, the unemployed and middle-class radicals’. It seems to ‘disdain…mainstream views’ and ‘disapprove of success’. The manifesto published at the end of last year? Pie in the sky. The party can’t be trusted on finance. It’s too left-wing. No priorities. No understanding of aspiration or prosperity. The report is particularly heartbreaking for those of us who warned consistently of the folly of pursuing a hard-left agenda with veteran losers like Corbyn and McDonnell. You’d think that after the catastrophic defeat on 12 th