Henry Hill is a British Conservative and Unionist activist, and author of the blog Dilettante. Follow Henry on Twitter. He is also editor of the non-party website Open Unionism, which can be followed on Twitter here. Escape and evasion Despite standing tirelessly against European fascism during the war, a decade... Continue reading

Stephan Shakespeare is a founder and global CEO of YouGov. Follow Stephan on Twitter. People are not good at predicting their own behaviour, so pollsters are wary of drawing conclusions from questions that ask 'what would you do if...?' Continue reading

Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. Last week, I spoke at the Future of Regional Banking conference in Gateshead. Organised by Hexham MP Guy Opperman, it was a superb event – and I was delighted to be part of... Continue reading

Max Chambers is Head of Crime and Justice at Policy Exchange. “Britain’s on the right track, don’t turn back”. When George Osborne invoked Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 campaign slogan last year, it was the clearest message about what is set to be the Conservatives’ overarching campaign message at the next general... Continue reading

The politics of corporate America can be politely described as bracing. Certainly, there’s a clear aversion to activist government – not to the extent of turning down subsidies and bail-outs, needless to say – but they’re definitely not so keen on the whole tax and regulation bit. But, according to... Continue reading

By Mark Wallace Follow Mark on Twitter. It's fair to say that the Left harbours plenty of odd beliefs - from the idea that parents should be forbidden to leave their money to their kids, through to the claim that only more borrowing will allow us to overcome our debt problem. But few can match the, ah, unusual ideas of Simon Parkes, a Labour councillor in Whitby, who has confessed to fathering a child with a mysterious extra-terrestrial known only as "The Cat Queen". It definitely isn't April Fool's Day, so I can only assume Cllr Parkes was deadly serious... Continue reading

Writing for Salon, Michael Lind has a tricky question – tricky, that is, if you’re a libertarian: “Why are there no libertarian countries? If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world... Continue reading

Max Wind-Cowie is Head of the Progressive Conservatism Project at Demos. Follow Max on Twitter. In his excellent piece on the challenges faced by the Conservative Party, Sunder Katwala yesterday singled out the shifting ethnic character of Britain. He observed, rightly, that "the Conservatives received a wake-up call about the... Continue reading

Garvan Walshe was National and International Security Policy Adviser for the Conservative Party until 2008. Follow Garvan on Twitter. Intervene in Syria? Arm the rebels? Is Iraq collapsing again? Just what is Qatar up to. How secure is the Egyptian government? Will Jordan’s monarchy survive? Why does Russia care so... Continue reading

By Mark Wallace Follow Mark on Twitter. Fresh from revealing their chaotic position on the EU, Labour are hard at it again today demonstrating why they have been so reluctant to publish any of their policies. This time the recipient of an unwanted makeover is education - and the cack-handed beautician is Stephen Twigg. Among the confusing measures he seeks to slap onto the face of the school system are: 1) Free schools bad... Under Labour, there would be no more free schools, because they are apparently "divisive" and cause "chaos". But those already in place and those in the... Continue reading

Marina Kim is a journalist working in London. Her website is www.marinakim.co.uk and she is on Twitter as @MarinaKim_ A lot of what we study at school bears little relevance to real life. Heads are overloaded and overheated with facts, numbers, words… The surreal vision of Michael Gove with a... Continue reading

Sunder Katwala is the Director of British Future. Follow Sunder on Twitter. The challenge of change Talk to backbench MPs across the party divide and a common theme emerges: a pessimism shared across the red and blue tribes that their party will secure a majority government at the next General... Continue reading

Austerity or stimulus? With the IMF leaning towards the latter, the neo-Keynesian pro-stimulus crowd think they have the upper-hand. As far as Britain’s concerned, the IMF does see some scope for bringing forward infrastructure investment, but that’s hardly an endorsement of Labour’s policy of opposing just about every cut the... Continue reading

By Tim Montgomerie Follow Tim on Twitter Q. Which stimulus-supporting economist predicted that unemployment might reach four or even five million under the Conservatives? A. David Blanchflower, the Twittering economist who can't see a Keynesian expansionary deficit without wishing it was even larger. Professor Blanchflower made his wildly inaccurate prediction nearly four years ago. My emphasis: "If large numbers of public sector workers, perhaps as many as a million, are made redundant," Blanchflower said, "and there are substantial cuts in public spending in 2010, as proposed by some in the Conservative Party, five million unemployed or more is not inconceivable."... Continue reading

By Harry Phibbs Follow Harry on Twitter Yesterday the Daily Mirror reported that the Labour Party had dropped its opposition to free schools. One would think that faithfully regurgitating the Labour Party line would be one area where the newspaper is reliable. Toby Young welcomed the news at a conference at the West London Free School, held to offer advice to others starting new schools. However, a Party spokesman said the Mirror's report was: Misleading, speculative and ill-informed. This morning the Shadow Education Secretary, Stephen Twigg, was back on the attack telling The Observer that a Labour Government would sack... Continue reading

By Peter Hoskin Follow Peter on Twitter Here at ConHome, we’ve tended to mention the areas of political overlap between Labour and the Lib Dems. Indeed, Paul Goodman highlighted two such areas – pensioner benefits and the mansion tax – only last week. But there are now so many examples, with new ones by the day, that a brief list in in order. Here goes: 1. The public finances in general. This is the Big One. As the excellent Lib Dem blogger Stephen Tall noted last week, Ed Balls’ recent speech on the economy did much to move Labour closer... Continue reading

The ‘Mods’ and ‘Rockers’ of the Conservative Party are now the ‘Roons’ and ‘Loons’ – that is to say, the ‘Cameroons’ of the modernising Tory left and the ‘Swivel-eyed Loons’ of the traditionalist Tory right. It’s not as simple as that, of course, but as a pared-down description of the... Continue reading

Follow Iain on Twitter. Iain also blogs at www.iaindale.com. Iain Dale presents LBC 97.3 Drivetime programme 4-8pm every weekday. When I wrote about Tim Yeo last week, I had no idea what the Sunday Times was about to unveil. The least Mr Yeo could do was stand down from his... Continue reading

By Mark Wallace Follow Mark on Twitter. Ed Miliband feels very strongly about an in/out EU referendum - he doesn't think we should have one. According to his latest instructions to Labour MPs, obtained by Guido Fawkes, giving the people a say: ...would create four years of uncertainty, putting at risk the national interest by damaging both jobs and the economy. Given the electorate's overwhelming support for a referendum, this puts Labour in a sticky situation. There is considerable discontent among their MPs, who find themselves put on the spot by voters wondering why they won't support the people's right... Continue reading

Now here’s a curious story, concerning an artwork by ‘Banksy’ – the anonymous, but highly successful, street artist. It concerns a piece entitled Slave Labour, which was sprayed on to the side of Poundland shop last year. To much consternation, the mural was subsequently removed by the owners of the... Continue reading

By Peter Hoskin. Follow Peter on Twitter. During my time at The Spectator, where I edited the Coffee House blog, there were few things I enjoyed more than a trip to the basement. There, spread across two rooms and collected in doorstop leather books, was every single back issue of... Continue reading

By Andrew Gimson Follow Andrew on Twitter Samantha Cameron is at first sight a difficult woman to profile. She has achieved what Andy Coulson, her husband’s former director of communications, calls the “near impossible” task of living in Number Ten for nearly three years while maintaining “a benign and broadly... Continue reading

Greg Clark is Financial Secretary to the Treasury and MP for Tunbridge Wells. Follow Greg on Twitter. While they’re still in office, it is the fate of most governments to get the least credit for their biggest achievements. That’s because, with few exceptions, the most important reforms that a government... Continue reading

Henry Hill is a British Conservative and Unionist activist, and author of the blog Dilettante. Follow Henry on Twitter. He is also editor of the non-party website Open Unionism, which can be followed on Twitter here. NI21 “looking for fresh voices rather than defectors”. Ouch. John McCallister and Basil McCrea... Continue reading

Phillip Blond is the Director Of ResPublica. Adam Wildman is a research manager at ResPublica and one of the authors of Risk Waiver. Follow Philip and Respublica on Twitter. It is no secret that personal and corporate lending has stagnated over the last five years. The credit that our businesses and households need is simply not as available as it was. We desperately need a strategy from Government that combats one of the main causes of this contemporary restriction in lending: unprotected and unaddressed credit risk. ResPublica’s latest report, Risk Waiver: closing the protection gap and opening the credit flow,... Continue reading