A former chief civil servant at the Home Office has warned that the department is in the grip of a number of “tropical storms” amid reports of clashes between Priti Patel and her chief mandarin. Sir David Normington, a former permanent secretary who served under five ministers at the Home Office, also warned that the … Read more
Monday Dominic Cummings’s programme to recruit more “weirdos” and “misfits” into No 10 got off to a cracking start with the appointment of “Mystic” Andrew Sabisky, the self-styled superforecaster. Just weeks after Sabisky started work, several newspapers did a cursory trawl of his social media posts and discovered that he had a tendresse for racial … Read more
Boris Johnson’s “smash the system” approach to public policy is about to reach every street, town, village and field in the country. The government is preparing to dynamite development controls and unleash market forces on our physical world, moving power from councils to developers and inflicting great harm on the built and natural environments. While … Read more
As British high streets and farm fields lie under water this week, Boris Johnson has repeatedly been urged to put on his wellies, go out and listen to flood victims. So far though, his response has been more about tin ears than rubber boots: during Storm Dennis the prime minister was reportedly holed up in … Read more
In the age of David Cameron and George Osborne, the left’s arguments seemed straightforward. Here was a slash-and-burn assault on the public realm, and an ideologically driven one at that. Despite initial claims that an attempt to drive government spending back to 1930s levels was simply an unavoidable necessity to save Britain from the fate … Read more