Sitemap - 2023 - The Ideas Lab

New Year's Eve: time to reflect and look ahead

The Red Sea could be 2024's front line

Matt Hancock for PM? 19 MPs thought so

A Christmas miscellany: stocking-filler stories

Sadiq Khan's damaging flights of fancy

Toy soldiers: politicians in uniform

The two faces of foreign policy

Who decides what is "far right"?

Grant Shapps keeps the show on the road

Courtesy titles: an explainer

Auditors agree to run the numbers on Rwanda

No-one's at the wheel: when the cabinet secretary is absent

Home Office reshuffle: tidying up or rearranging deckchairs?

Don't tell me what I think or why I think it

Is Rwanda decision-time for the House of Lords?

Monroe at 200: Does Monroe Doctrine tell us anything about modern US foreign policy?

Reputation: the luck of Churchill and the lens of history

Did he just say "shithole"? Cleverly vs Cunningham

Electoral change in the Netherlands is a message

The Black Crow: why Anne Boleyn won't die

The Kennedy assassination: JFK 60 years on

Rishi's reshuffle: observations in the margins

Boxing Cleverly: the new home secretary

A PM's department? It almost happened in the 1980s

All I'm askin' for is a little respect

Kenya and the UK: grappling with the past

MPs work a lot harder than we think

GB News: free speech champions or media manipulators?

The Covid-19 Inquiry: a bibliography

Whitehall vs the pandemic: nobody wins

Saying something doesn't make it true: reality is waiting

Remaking the civil service while the clock ticks down

Failing the intelligence test: Israel off guard

Jonathan Powell's view of the world to come

U-turn if you want to: why politicians can't change their minds

You may now NOT smoke: are we heading for a ban?

Braverman courts the party faithful

Russell Brand is now in Parliament's sights

The delusion of Theresa May's Downing Street

Ellwood jumps rather than risk being pushed

Reconciliation or amnesia? NI Legacy Bill

Running a Whitehall department

Starmer makes changes for the big push

Ukraine: realism, optimism or politics?

Change at the court of King Rishi

Miscellany: cabinet changes and Prince Harry

Late to the Peaky Blinders party and bemused

Ukraine's day of independence matters to us all

"The Good Nazi", Speer and Nuremberg

Congress takes the policy initiative on China

The dangerous machismo of "difficult decisions"

"He was the future once": is youth good or bad?

We need to argue better so that we all know what we mean

Tirpitz syndrome: is defence procurement broken?

Is the House of Commons losing its charm?

End of term for the Commons: sigh of relief

Reflections on 20 years in Afghanistan

Changing the guard: who will replace Wallace?

Starmer wants to teach children how to speak

Your host tonight: the honourable Member

Cluster bombs to Ukraine: who's right?

Health 1: Labour looks to the private sector

Third World War: will Russia go nuclear?

The New Conservatives: an unwanted arrival

The reds really were under the bed

Who should get peerages?

"Laws are like sausages: it is better not to see them being made"

Ukraine: framing an end-game

Reinventing Liz Truss: is it possible?

Part 3: Home as prime minister 1963-64

Part 2: the Tory succession in 1963

Anecdotes on PMs and kissing hands: part 1

Do ministers need to be subject experts?

Parliament engaging with the public can't be an empty gesture

Sometimes communications come by force

Shame on you, Carol Vorderman

The public inquiry, our favourite panacea

"A Tory is a person who regards authority as immanent in institutions..."

Don't vote Labour: there's nothing there

The truth is everyone's responsibility

Dinenage to chair Culture, Media and Sport

Coronation reflections: what a weekend pt. 4

The blue pencil: self-editing is so painful

Coronation reflections: what a weekend Pt. 3

Coronation reflections: what a weekend Pt. 2

Coronation reflections: what a weekend Pt. 1

The power of the happy warrior

Anatomy of scandal: the bigger picture

A Gray area: the afterlife of civil servants

A coronation miscellany

Me and my shadow: Sunak's new deputy

Getting the business done: after the CBI

Humanism: it's not what you might think

I'm not a journalist, and let me tell you why

Golliwogs and an Essex pub: racism in the wild?

The Irish are coming! Biden visits Northern Ireland

From a cloudless sky: remembering 9/11

Obituary: Nigel Lawson (1932 - 2023)

Defeated rivals: inside the tent or out?

Let Boris go, for all our sakes

Boris at bay: fighting for his future

We CAN handle the truth: we need it

Getting older has made me realise I'm a real person

The political comeback: is anything fatal now?

Sunak won't see the Cash over Northern Ireland

AUKUS: Britain's foreign policy vibes

Wake up, sheeple! The lure of conspiracy theories

Lee Anderson: tribune of the people?

Stop the boats! What do harsh measures mean for our politics?

Tories: focus! You're not helping

Don't be fooled by cynics: love exists and it is everything

The merry wiles of Windsor

Rewriting the Integrated Review in the new era

The language of immigration: how we talk

Deal or no deal: back to the Northern Ireland Protocol

Defence of the realm: but at what cost?

The strange case of the death penalty

Will no-one think of the accountability?!

One Nation underdog: the mirage of the Tory left

The Rishi Rishuffle: post-match analysis

Moving the pieces around the Whitehall board

Is Sturgeon in the final straight?

When in Rome: in defence of classics

Wanted: one chairman of the Conservative Party

Thatcher, Thatcher, leadership snatcher

"We don't do God": religion appears in the House

Politics exists for ideas, debated instead of imposed

John Biffen and reflections on the House

The effects of writers on writers

The spying game: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

In a relationship: it's complicated