Birmingham and Tory conference just go together in my mind somehow. I feel like it should be here every year. It’s not the south and it’s not the north, greatly advantageous. The ICC is business like, efficient, reflecting the party itself. Or at least the Conservative Party as some within see it. Increasingly, the party […]

I’m on my way to Birmingham for Conservative Party conference at present. Looking forward to finding out what the mood is when I get there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not a million miles away from what I found in Manchester last week: slight feeling of doom, that things haven’t panned out as […]

I used to live in Manchester, a very long time ago. It was a very different city then, in the late 90’s, post-IRA bombing, pre-Commonwealth Games/EU funding makeover. Piccadilly Rail Station used to be possibly the worst place in all of Britain; now, you’d happily spend an hour there waiting for your train while munching […]

A group of Orangemen joined a Scotland No rally in Glasgow over the weekend. It was a reminder of a topic that has been little discussed during the Independence campaign: sectarianism in Scotland and what the implications of a Yes vote might be in starting a whole new chapter in this unfortunate side to Scotland’s […]

Yesterday I wrote about the Nick Robinson BBC thing, pointing out that I thought it was weird for a bunch of nationalists who will be voting to make their nation an independent one in a few days time to frame a complaint as if they were a bunch of stingy Brits, here to stay. I […]

At a press conference late last week, BBC political editor Nick Robinson asked Alex Salmond about what would happen to the tax revenues of an independent Scotland should RBS relocate. Salmond gave an answer, Robinson pressed him further, Salmond made a diversionary joke. So far, so what – this is a set-up that happens in […]

There are two recent events that in most respects have little in common, having arisen in different countries and been spurred on by immediate events that bear little relation to each other. I refer to the Douglas Carswell defection to UKIP and the release of a poll in France that demonstrates if a presidential election […]

An article in the Telegraph reports that the Conservative Party may call for a vote of no confidence in David Cameron’s leadership should Scotland vote Yes on the 18th. This is yet another chapter of a story, played out during this parliament, in which the Tories do everything they can to lose the next election, desperate to turn […]

Last Friday, at Portcullis House, Gordon Brown gave his first Westminster speech in some time. It was on the topic of why the Union should stick together, why Scotland should stay. Throughout this speech, which I’ll say now I thought was excellent, we saw exactly what the Scotland No campaign has been lacking all the […]