After the PM’s defeat we must now maximise the strength of our negotiating position: here’s how Now that the Prime Minister’s deal has been voted down in the House of Commons, as widely predicted, the previous statements from Downing Street that there is no alternative will be tested. After losing the vote by a huge […]

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As published in The Telegraph: By preparing for no deal properly, we will get the good Brexit democracy demands of us We are told that another decisive moment looms, in the form of the forthcoming Commons vote on the proposed Withdrawal Agreement. Of course, we have been here before. We have seen many supposedly decisive […]

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Britain’s university system is broken and in need of radical reform The Office for National Statistics has put the Treasury in a difficult position. Earlier this week, it recommended that a large portion of unpaid student debt should be recorded on the Government’s books as current spending. Over the past couple of decades, we have persuaded whole […]

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As published in The Daily Telegraph. The Prime Minister’s latest ploy of looking for more fudge with which to buy off the House of Commons will not work. Believe me, the standard Brussels playbook means that they will now play tough for at least the next month. So, this plan is ill-conceived and doomed to […]

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I first met Margaret Thatcher when I was in my early 20s. She was Secretary of State for Education, and I was a Conservative student leader. They were very different times. The country was in a parlous state. At home industrial unrest was rife, and strikes were common. Economic growth was weak and inflation was […]

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As published in The House Magazine: David Davis is smarting about missing his 6.30am “row”. Problems with the underground forced him to walk the three-mile journey to his home after the Spectator’s parliamentarian of the year awards. He arrived at gone two in the morning. His daily workout routine paid the price. The former Brexit […]

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