The House of Lords is in some ways similar to the Cresta Run, the toboggan track that has since 1885 thrilled wealthy visitors to the Swiss ski resort of St Moritz. Both were established to give the aristocracy something to do, and in both arenas, it seems all that is needed is to be the right sort of person to get in; gravity will do the rest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they can attract some of the same people, such as Clifton Hugh Lancelot de Verdon Wrottesley – a big name, both literally and figuratively, in the worlds of tobogganing (he has won the sport’s Grand National 17 times) and inherited political power. Baron Wrottesley is one of 92 hereditary peers whose role in ...

There is no shortage of parties blamed in the final report of the Grenfell inquiry: “dishonest” companies, the “indifference” of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and every government from 1991 to 2017. But no administration is subject to fiercer criticism than that of David Cameron. The inquiry, chaired by the former court of appeal judge Martin Moore-Bick, states that by 2016 the Department for Communities and Local Government was “well aware” of the risks posed by flammable cladding but “failed to act on what it knew”. Instead, “the government’s deregulatory agenda, enthusiastically supported by some junior ministers and the Secretary of State, dominated the department’s thinking to such an extent that even matters affecting the safety of life were ignored, ...

Priti Patel is out of the race to be the next Tory leader. In the stuffy (but decidedly not crowded) Committee Room 14, where the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs hosts its meetings, the results of the first round of MP voting were announced with very little fanfare as follows: Robert Jenrick: 28Kemi Badenoch: 22James Cleverly: 21Tom Tugendhat: 17Mel Stride: 16Priti Patel: 14 With all the usual caveats that it is impossible to predict much at this stage due to the arcane nature of the process (as I wrote earlier today), there are some interesting takeaways from this initial insight into how Conservative MPs are feeling. The most immediate is that the right of the party has clearly coalesced around its preferred ...

When he was a teenager, Winston Churchill is thought to have told James Humes, a future Presidential speechwriter, to “study history” for in it “lies all the secrets of statecraft”. Unlike most of the quotations the internet attributes to the great man, this one seems to be genuine. Even if it isn’t, it has long been a boon for any history department desperate to attract a few ambitious students. Unfortunately for Britain, our politicians today seem all too often to have failed to have taken Churchill’s advice. Anthony Seldon, the self-styled chronicler of modern British history, whose latest volume on the Truss era is out this week, claims to have “never known more ignorance of history than among today’s politicians”. The ...

It takes a surprising amount of energy to walk up to a restaurant in a foreign city and ask for a table for one. Would the staff question my aloneness, I’d wonder? Would they feel I was taking up space? As I wandered the streets of Lisbon, I’d find myself mentally logging the location of any restaurant that looked like a good candidate: nice, but not too nice; busy, but not so busy the staff might resent me. Often – too often – I’d make the wrong choice; find myself somewhere disappointing, in sight of better options, or suspecting the waiter was under orders to get my table back as soon as physically possible. “I do have friends,” I’d want to ...

Kamala Harris’s first interview as a presidential candidate was exceedingly short. She appeared on CNN on Thursday night for a mere 25 minutes. And for big chunks of that, her running mate Tim Walz was answering the questions. She spoke for such a small amount of time that CNN had to pad out their 45-minute programme with four ad breaks and footage of Harris and Walz buying brisket on the campaign trail. Such a format does not ooze confidence. Indeed, her campaign so far has been tightly stage-managed, cautious and hidden from the media’s direct questions. Her advisers are obviously nervous about Harris facing questions. Before last night, her only interviews had been with social media influencers. Calling them “interviews” is ...

The Republican and Democratic parties both have some notable fresh recruits. Last week Robert F Kennedy Jr suspended his independent campaign for president and endorsed Donald Trump. The former president said that the Kennedy Democrats – the family members and followers of the late John F Kennedy – now belonged in the Maga movement. Then, on Monday 26 August, Tulsi Gabbard, a former congresswoman who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, joined Kennedy on the Trump train, offering her official endorsement at a Republican campaign event. Kennedy and Gabbard’s conversions are, perhaps, not that surprising. The son of Bobby Kennedy has long bought into beliefs prevalent on the Maga right. He rails against mass censorship, the corporate capture of ...

Increase borrowing or raise taxes. These were the choices facing Rachel Reeves as shadow chancellor when asked how Labour would fund better public services. Neither of these options, nor cuts to already stretched public services, were likely to go down well with the party’s “hero voters”, who want improved public services but without higher taxes – and are historically sceptical of Labour’s ability to manage the economy.  Reeves needed a solution to untie Labour’s perennial “Gordian knot”. This is how   economic growth became, in the words of Keir Starmer, “Labour’s defining mission”. The “growth fairy” would, like Alexander the Great’s sword, solve all of Reeves’ problems at once. Money for public services – without higher borrowing or taxation. Labour’s embrace of ...