The New Conservative

Stewart Slater

Keir Starmer in a burka

Burqas and British Values 

The impeachment of Warren Hastings, the Norway Debate, Sir Geoffrey Howe savaging Margaret Thatcher – great parliamentary moments all. No matter how long our country lasts, or how low our descendants’ standards stoop, we can be confident no session of the current PMQs will be counted in their number. Every week, the stoppable force of […]

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Money

Can Democracy Survive? 

Shoplifters and Liberal Democrats have more in common than either group might care to admit. When one walks out of a shop with a packet of butter down their trousers (for whatever later use…) or the other blocks a development to preserve the value of their property, both are seeking to maximise their own benefit.

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The Old Bailey

A Modest Proposal 

I am old enough to know that The Sweeney existed, but young enough (save for one episode stumbled upon on one of ITV’s cadet channels) to have never seen it. Even as Regan and Carter fade into history however, the memory of what they represented lingers – and not just among those of my advancing

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Lucy Powell

Looking the Other Way

“Well then, it should all just go away,” says the President in Tom Clancy’s Clear And Present Danger, the “it” in question being the secret and deeply illegal war he has launched against the Colombian drug cartels. For a writer of mass-market fiction, Clancy was an unusually acute observer of the political animal. “They want

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The fatal dance

The Fatal Dance 

The Parties did not, as someone once put it, send their best. Lower tier cabinet and shadow cabinet members turned up, along with the Lib Dem Deputy Leader. To the Greens and Reform, the event did not even merit an MP. But if the audience at Channel 4’s Local Election Debate (more of a Q&A

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The Vatican

My Will Be Done 

“You have no idea how much money it costs to keep the Mahatma in poverty.” It was not long after Pope Francis’ death had been announced that this saying from one of Gandhi’s followers came to my mind, the cumulative effect of countless mentions of his humble lifestyle combining to give his simplicity an almost

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Library

April Reflections

Modelled on Jay Nordlinger’s “Impromptus” in National Review, I’ve written another ‘Reflections’ piece which is a series of paragraphs on various ideas: Early in my career, my boss gave me some of his funds to run. Not, to be clear, out of laziness but because, as he pointed out, no-one knew whether I would be

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Rachel Reeves

The Terrible Trilemma 

Giddy is not a word one would naturally associate with Rachel Reeves. She gives every impression of having been the sort of girl who dedicated many happy hours to re-arranging her pencil case. But giddy she appeared last week, announcing the opening of a new theme park in the international tourist hotspot of Bedford. Gone

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Justice

A Question of Justice

It has been about 15 years since I last saw my children. A prolonged separation (undertaken for what I perceived to be the greater good) led the court to conclude that too much water had flowed under the bridge and later, by the time they were re-located after a move overseas, age meant the legal

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