Henry Hill

If you only understand one thing about the current debate on Labour's plan to ‘renationalise' the railways, the thing to understand is that the whole debate is basically fake.

There was some excitement yesterday: Kemi Badenoch's campaign was reported to be “slightly concerned” because this survey was “rumoured to be positive for Jenrick.”

Around the time of Party Conference, there was a brief debate about shortening the leadership contest so that the new Conservative leader could respond to the Budget.

The Speaker Lindsay Hoyle has rebuked the Chancellor for drip-feeding information about tomorrow’s Budget

The OBR has rubbished Labour's claims about a fiscal black hole There is a dangerous gap between public expectations of the state and the state’s means of financing itself

Sticking to broad platitudes and waiting for your opponent to fail is the wrong approach for a new-look Tory party, says ConservativeHome’s Henry Hill

It must, if you’re Labour, feel cosmically unjust. For years, you endured the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats successfully trashing your record to justify the Coalition’s austerity programme — a double injustice if you think Gordon Brown was a good prime minister. Then, at last, the boot was on the other foot. In a mere 50 [...]Read More...

This weekend, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) read the last rites to Labour’s policy of hitting Net Zero by 2030. Alright, that’s not quite how they put it. The report, commissioned by Ed Miliband, concludes that the objective is “a huge challenge but is achievable”. You need to parse these things, however. It is [...]Read More...

So again: if you want taxes to come down, spending has to come down, and that means services and entitlements need to be cut. Accepting this is the difference between paying lip-service to the principle of lower taxation and actually holding it. In government, we chose the former; if we do the same in opposition, these will be five wasted years.

Kemi Badenoch ran for Conservative leader promising to be a unifier, and her first Shadow Cabinet certainly seems to have been constructed in that spirit. Vanquished rivals Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and Mel Stride all received frontbench roles (James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat both indicated they wouldn’t take one). She has also made appointments from […]