Daily Home News
By BAGEHOTTHE EU referendum race is getting too close for comfort. In The Economist’s poll-of-polls, Leave is ahead by two points. A survey published by ORB on Friday gave it a ten-point lead, sending the pound to a two-month low against the dollar; one by TNS today puts its advantage at seven points. Betting odds
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By BAGEHOTBARELY more than a week has gone by since 37% of eligible British voters backed Brexit—52% of those who participated—but already the political landscape is transformed. With Boris Johnson out of the Conservative leadership contest, the choice of the next prime minister is one between various shades of isolationist Euroscepticism.As Michael Gove made clear
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By BAGEHOTTHE title of this post is the question that—more than ever before—I find myself asking following the Liberal Democrats’ just-finished gathering in Brighton. It was my fourth Lib Dem conference. My first, also in Brighton, was in 2012. Back then, too, the talk was of the party’s identity crisis. Two years into its coalition
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“BREXIT-plus-plus-plus” was how Donald Trump—who also called himself “Mr Brexit”—termed his pitch to voters during his successful presidential campaign. Sure enough, many Americans will soon be waking up soon to a feeling similar to the one Remainers in Britain experienced on the morning of June 24th: bafflement at the failure of so many polls to
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By BAGEHOTTHE urgency with which Britain’s Brexiteer elite has scrambled to cosy up to Donald Trump in the weeks building up to today’s inauguration has been something to behold. Leading the way was Nigel Farage, the former UKIP leader, flashing a mile-wide grin as he posed for souvenir snaps with the president-elect. Last week Michael
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By BagehotIT IS a measure of Labour’s sorry state these days that losing just one of two seats that it has held for decades is treated as grounds for relief in the party. In the by-elections held yesterday, both triggered by the resignation from politics of centrist MPs known to despair of the party’s direction
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By BAGEHOTI HEREBY predict that one of the great themes of British politics in the next few years will be “one-nation conservatism”. The Conservatives are currently running a presidential-style election campaign built around Theresa May and designed to hammer home the message that voters are not just voting for their local MPs on June 8th
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By BagehotABOUT half-way through “Jaws”, Steven Spielberg’s 1975 blockbuster, Sheriff Brody (Roy Schneider) finally catches sight of the giant shark that has been wreaking havoc in the high seas off the New England coast. Horrified and awe-struck, but still holding onto his cigarette, he rushes into his boat’s cabin and tells his ship mate (Robert
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By BAGEHOTAT THE last prime minister’s questions of the year, on December 20th, Damian Green loyally sat on Theresa May’s right and bellowed his support at all the right moments. Later that day Mrs May forced him to resign from his job as first minister of state, which in effect had made him Britain’s deputy
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By BAGEHOTTHIS was a bad night for Jeremy Corbyn, Labour’s hard-left leader. It would be too much to say that the wheels have come off the Jeremy bus or that the Jeremy Express has hit the buffers. But the shine has definitely come off Mr Corbyn’s halo.The Conservative Party has been in power either in
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