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Author: David Herdson

The great vacillator: Starmer needs to find some backbone

The great vacillator: Starmer needs to find some backbone

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He appears far too scared of Tory criticism There has been a minor infectious outbreak in Westminster. Not Covid-19 in this instance, where recent case numbers remain much lower than in the Spring, despite Jacob Rees-Mogg’s efforts. No, in this case the infection is rebellion. On the Tory side, Chris Green – formerly PPS to the Leader of the Lords – quit over the government’s Covid-19 policy. Labour, by contrast, suffered a more substantial set of resignations, as two junior…

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Trump’s money troubles: cutting advertising spend in key states points to problems

Trump’s money troubles: cutting advertising spend in key states points to problems

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Biden is out-spending him and Trump can’t find a killer line Donald Trump is famously so poor that he only paid $750 in federal income tax in 2016. His campaigning in 2016 was similarly economical. In that election, Trump raised and spent only just over half the total of his opponent: Hillary winning the funding battle by $1191m to $647m. In the end, of course, that didn’t matter; Trump won the election. He did so partly because Hillary was just…

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LET’S TALK LANDSLIDES

LET’S TALK LANDSLIDES

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Everything points to Biden winning big. Believe it. Why do we not believe the evidence in front of us? Sometimes it’s because we don’t want to accept the bad news it reveals; sometimes it’s because we daren’t believe the good news for fear of jinxing it; it may be that we had our fingers burnt by believing something similar in the past which then turned out differently; or maybe the outcome is so far from our experiences that it feels…

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Why there won’t be a President Romney

Why there won’t be a President Romney

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Sometimes it’s worth asking a QTWTAIN even when you know the answer The ancient Greeks gave us many things. Democracy. Really long poems. The kebab*. Proof by contradiction. Let’s combine two of them now, in a manner of speaking, to look at where the US election might be going in the light of Donald Trump contracting Covid-19. Everyone should be wishing Donald Trump well right now. Those who want him to win, for obvious reasons; those who want him to…

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2022 for Johnson’s departure looks good value at up to 9/1

2022 for Johnson’s departure looks good value at up to 9/1

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Tory MPs often act, but rarely quickly Boris is gone. Not in body, obviously. The frequently dishevelled occupant of Number 10 remains in post and will in all likelihood be there for some time to come yet. No, it’s the spirit which has run dry: that bundle of energy and character which enabled him to become a first-name-only politician in the first place. If there was one iconic image of the man before he became PM, it was him dangling…

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Ruthless: RBG’s death has given Trump a Black Swan to exploit

Ruthless: RBG’s death has given Trump a Black Swan to exploit

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The whole nature of the 2020 campaign has just changed. For all her liberal views, one of the most significant legacies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg – via the happenstance of when she died – might be to embed a conservative majority on the US Supreme Court for a generation. Time is short. The Republicans have only six weeks to secure a replacement if they are to be able to go to their voters and claim the achievement of having delivered…

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Winter is coming: the reckoning

Winter is coming: the reckoning

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No Deal and a Covid resurgence will make a torrid winter for the government Time was when Conservative governments stood for law and order; they didn’t wantonly break law themselves. Time was when Conservative governments stood for the Union; they didn’t sign up to first sell out Ulster unionists and then U-turn and enrage nationalists (which is at least even-handed). Time was when Conservative governments valued a stable economy, sound money and a low deficit. Time was when Conservative governments…

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Ministers are only just waking up to the Covid hangover

Ministers are only just waking up to the Covid hangover

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The phantom recession is about to get real Panic might be too strong a word but the urgency with which ministers and business leaders have called this week for people to return to working in offices and city centres suggests that they’re seriously concerned, and rightly so. Economies are ecosystems and Covid-19 has trampled through Britain’s like a bulldozer through a meadow. A study for Sky News last week found that in early August, worker footfall in cities was just…

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