“... in his last few weeks as chancellor of the Exchequer, wrote to the candidates vying to succeed Theresa May as leader of the Conservative Party and asked them to pledge that, if elected, they would retain his target of bringing down national debt as a percentage of GDP. ‘If we do not commit to getting our debt down after a nine-year run of ...”

“... The paper reported that a new channel, GB News, to be led by Robbie Gibb, a former adviser to Theresa May, was granted a preliminary Ofcom licence in January, and hopes to launch next year. Gibb, who before working at Number Ten had held senior roles in BBC politics programming, has since become a dedicated critic of the corporation’s alleged ...”

“... sustainable competition’. But the Johnson government hasn’t yet indicated what compromises it may be willing to make, or what its new competition policy might look like. For many supporters of Brexit, taking power back from Brussels wasn’t supposed to be an end in itself, but a means to the end of rolling back the regulations imposed on the UK by ...”

“... parvenu-like braggart with power, and the vain self-reflection in the feeling of power’. Johnson may be in it for the posh banquets and Churchillian photos, but the consequences are far, far weightier. It is because he is so uninterested in consequences that he has delegated so much power to his chief strategist. Dominic Cummings has become an object of ...”

“... watch the Götterdämmerung of ineptocracy that is Brexit, they are baffled but entertained. There may be some well-deserved Schadenfreude as they watch what happens to a country that becomes addicted to fetishising its own nationhood and imbibes too many of the clichés it once produced for export: commonsensical, mild, tolerant people led by ...”

“... a lot of predictable wangles and fiddles, along with a very few cases of prima facie fraud, which may or may not stand the test of criminal prosecution. But it has used a brush so broad and coarse that, for every small iniquity it has uncovered, it has held up to public ridicule an MP who was evidently trying his or her ...”

“... is the compression of historical time. ‘Is it really fifty years since Sergeant Pepper?’ you may ask. But the time lapse feels immaterial. The internet turns up a perpetual series of anniversaries, disparate moments from disparate epochs, and presents them all as equivalent and accessible in the here and now. ‘In 1981,’ the late cultural theorist ...”

“... the machinations of the liberal elite, when all he means is that Polly Toynbee and Andrew Marr may have had dinner in the same North London restaurant as Jon Snow. He wishes to stir up populist disgust at the idea of a liberal, self-satisfied elite – nice, coming from the back of a chauffeur-driven car or from the gold-plated elevator at Trump Tower ...”

“... publishing house Unbound) in March 2017 and ends with a ‘post-conclusion’ written just after Theresa May called last June’s snap election. At that point, May’s victory seemed certain, ‘given the apparent unelectability of the opposition’. In hindsight, Barnett must be glad of that ‘apparent’, and of ...”

“... prime ministers have tried to show that the British public was right and Osborne was wrong. Theresa May, who loathed Osborne, dispatched him to the backbenches with the injunction to ‘get to know his party better’. Other senior Tories whom she also despised, including Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, were summoned back into the fold as cover for ...”

“... attended Sandhurst. A skeleton British military presence remained behind in the Gulf. In 2016, Theresa May pledged to increase Britain’s military commitments there, ‘with more British warships, aircraft and personnel deployed on operations than in any other part of the world’. In April last year, the Royal Navy reopened HMS Jufair in Bahrain ...”

“... on cigars’ and dishing out blame. Cameron blames Gove for opposing him, as well as Theresa May and Philip Hammond for their advice on the negotiations with Germany, Theresa Villiers and Priti Patel for not repaying the ‘leg up’ he gave them, Gove’s wife – everyone but himself. Having ...”

“... led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, lost its initial momentum. In the run-up to the European elections in May, opinion polls showed that the French would vote on the basis of national issues, which persuaded Macron to repeat the two gambles he had taken in 2017: that the only serious challenger would be Le Pen, and that by dramatising the choice between his own list ...”

“... much about it, our thoughts inevitably turn to the Conservatives, and to what they might do after May 2010. In a very general sense we know what they would like to do: cut public expenditure so as to restore ‘order’ to the state’s finances. But everyone else would do that too, with more or less enthusiasm. More difficult to predict is the detail of ...”

“... Maria Theresa​ Walburga Amalia Christine, as she was baptised in Vienna in 1717, did not expect to become queen – or ‘female king’ (rex femina) as she was known in several of her many lands. After observing the ravages of the War of the Spanish Succession, Charles VI issued the Pragmatic Sanction, an edict which aimed to ensure that his (as yet unborn) children – even his daughters – would stand in line to inherit his kingdoms ...”