Articles tagged David Davis:
If I Had to Vote (or Speak) For...
- 9 Nov 2019
Politics has always been a tribal sport. Political allegiances are often handed down through the generations. Some people find it unthinkable that they would vote any way other than their parents and grandparents did. Other people change their votes as often as they change the...
Here are the Three Timetables for a Tory Party Leadership Contest
- 18 May 2019
This week Theresa May agreed with the 1922 Committee Executive that she would address the leadership question with Sir Graham Brady immediately after the Withdrawal Agreement vote. Everyone has interpreted this as her signalling she would then step down, given the likely resul...
Telegraph Column: Who Will Back Who in the Tory Leadership Race?
- 31 Mar 2019
This article first appeared in the Sunday Telegraph. The task for any leadership candidate is to knock their competitors out one by one. They each need to emerge as the leader of their ‘tribe’. Let’s start with the tribe of ‘hard Brexiteers’. Boris Johnson has been a...
Conservative Leadership Poll Result: Boris Wins!
- 9 Dec 2018
Last night at around 8pm I launched a 13 question Conservative leadership poll. Since then more than 4,000 people have voted. I don't pretend that this is anything other than a bit of fun. It's certainly not scientific. Polls like this cannot be taken hugely seriously because ...
Poll: Who Would Win a Conservative Party Leadership Contest?
- 8 Dec 2018
It is not beyond the realms of possibility that by this time next week, a Conservative Party leadership contest could be underway. I know, I know, we've been here before, but if the Brexit vote goes ahead on Tuesday, and the government loses by a substantial three figure major...
Tory MPs Go To War Over John Hayes 'Utter Cock' Knighthood
- 24 Nov 2018
It’s no secret that the parliamentary Conservative Party is riven with splits over Europe, but when Tory MPs start laughing uncontrollably about government decisions and taking little notice of government whips, you know it is a government in trouble. Yesterday Downing Stre...
Six Weeks in the Autumn - My Very Personal Diary From 2002
- 21 Sep 2018
I was trying to find a database file on my laptop earlier, and stumbled across a Word file called ‘Diary’ from November 2002. I opened it out of curiosity and found 7,000 words from a diary I clearly kept over six weeks from the autumn of that year. Suffice to say, it brought ...
ConHome Diary: Quite a Week...
- 13 Jul 2018
I am still trying to work out why the Prime Minister appointed Dominic Raab to succeed David Davis as Brexit Secretary. He’s a protégé of DD and succeeded me as his chief of staff back in 2006. If anything, he’s more hardline than David on Brexit matters – some call him an int...
Evening Standard Column: The Fall-out From the David Davis Resignation
- 9 Jul 2018
We’ve been here before. When I heard, late last night, that David Davis had resigned, my mind didn’t go back to 2008 when he suddenly resigned as shadow Home Secretary, it went back nearly 30 years to the resignation of the then chancellor of the exchequer, Nigel Lawson from M...
Telegraph Column: What David Davis's Resignation Means
- 9 Jul 2018
Whenever a minister resigns from the government on a point of principle he or she knows that the full might of the government spin machine will be deployed to depict them as either mad, bad or sad. David Davis knows that better than most. Although he wasn’t in governme...