Michael Mosbacher
Calm before the storm
“As the Conservative Party’s fortunes have waned, Johnson’s standing has waxed. After all, if the party is heading for electoral disaster, taking a punt on Boris becomes much less of a risk.”
The Boris conundrum
“Our next Prime Minister will now almost certainly be Boris Johnson. He himself now seems the only man who can stop this from happening”
Telling difficult truths
“Standpoint will never proselytise or push a party line—but at the same time there should be no no-go areas for a magazine such as ours. Too many other titles seem unwilling to stray out of their comfort zone.”
More money, more problems
‘It is odd that wealth and position should play a part in Tory leadership considerations —but again they surely will’
How Blair brought Brexit and created Farage
‘Tony Blair’s decision to introduce PR for the 1999 European elections was the springboard for the rise of UKIP, and ultimately for the referendum’
The age of Twitter defenestration
The removal from public office of Britain’s best-known philosopher and perhaps the English-speaking world’s leading conservative thinker was particularly disquieting
May’s blunders that led to Brexit chaos
“If May had not called her wholly unnecessary 2017 general election and thrown away the Conservative majority, the Brexit process would not now be in the dire state it is.”
Why dog meat matters
The sickness of virtue-signalling is not confined to the woke Left, but has taken hold of our body politic as a whole
Independence day
‘Will the Independent Group break the mould of British politics? The odds must be against it, but perhaps they are not as poor as they first look’
The importance of ideas
“What the years since the Brexit referendum have shown is what happens when political leaders are forced to implement a decision which they do not believe in and do not understand: they make a hash of it”
Tolerating the intolerant
“For those who thought that a global pandemic would sound the death knell for identity politics, think again”
How to prevent the next pandemic
‘I have been reporting as a science journalist for years that the world is at increasing risk of pandemics like this; that this was predicted; that we know what we need to do to prepare and we simply haven’t done it; and that more and worse pandemics are coming so we need to do that, now’
D’où parles-tu? The post-truth world
Power, illusion and the open society: how postmodernism undermines our foundational concepts