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I had a relative call me recently and ask, “What the **** is a Snap Election?” Now, this may seem a simple question, and possibly even laughable, but it does seem to sum up many of the concerns I have about the rush towards what will be yet another contentious and polarising...

It’s really not been a good few weeks for the Education Department. It is already facing pressure after the controversial announcement that they intended to transform all existing schools into academies. This would have the effect of removing all these schools and their...

In the run up to the election you could have been forgiven for thinking that there wasn’t really much choice between the main parties. The sideshow appeal of UKIP attracted a lot of attention, but that sometimes seemed to be a horrified form of disbelief in some quarters....

Sir John Major’s speech to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation was an interesting step by the Conservatives last night. On the one hand, you have the man who famously gave us the concept 22 years ago of a new vision of Europe with “Britain, France and Germany all clearly in the...

You might be forgiven for thinking that the ‘No’ vote has been rather complacent, given the sudden flurry of activity this week. The minute the Sunday Times published the results of a YouGov poll, we had a flow of opinions and politicians trying to recapture the...

With the eyes of the world riveted on Wales and the NATO summit currently underway there, you could be forgiven for thinking that there was nothing more important than deciding who is next in line to get shot at. The conflicts in Ukraine and across the Middle East are bloody and...

There’s a depressing familiarity about the tensions between Russia and the West at the moment. While it’s not yet up there with the very real fears that I had growing up in the seventies and eighties that bombs could start falling at any moment, I must admit to a...

The House of Commons Defence Committee released a report yesterday underlining disquiet within Nato about its ability to respond to Russian aggression should it move against a member state. The report seems to back the statements made by General Sir Richard Shirreff in July to...

The word ‘outrage’ has often felt diluted in recent years. There has been a laziness in its use in tabloid headlines to describe boorish behaviour by celebrities or mildly inconvenient politically driven decisions, but the loss of Malaysian Airways Flight MH17 in the...

If the Chancellor has his way, at least another £25 billion pounds will be cut from the UK budget in his quest to overcome the UK’s deficit and bring it back to a surplus. This isn’t the first time the figure has been bandied around – it has been forecast by a number of other...