As research by the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Policy Exchange has shown, Conservatives are still heavily under-represented when it comes to appointments to public bodies. ConservativeHome has regularly highlighted some of the appointments to these bodies, and encouraged subscribers to apply, and we will continue to do so. As well as checking out the appointments that we highlight, we would also encourage all those subscribers with an interest in offering their expertise to public bodies to sign up to the free Cabinet Office email alert service. Here is the link for the se ..read more

Spoiler alert: the Rwanda policy will not stop the boats. I know this. You know this. One hopes Rishi Sunak knows this. He is not an idiot. If he does know that his signature policy on illegal crossings will not work as an effective deterrent, he is being disingenuous. If he does not, then he is being delusional. The truth is that even if flights take off, the crossings will continue, and get worse under Labour, whether they cancel the scheme or not. The timetable has already fallen back from the spring to within the next three months. Bearing in mind that the first flight was supposed to take ..read more

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere was a Conservative MEP from 1999 to 2020, and is now President of the Institute for Free Trade. In the end, it felt oddly flat. Tired peers shuffled into the chamber at 11.45pm on Monday night to witness the final passage of the Rwanda Bill. Proceedings were briefly delayed by a tirade from the Green Party’s Baroness Bennett. Then it was over. Politically, it should have been an unequivocal victory for the Conservatives. Here, after all, was real-time proof of what they believe, namely that they are battling against a legal and political establishment that has no inte ..read more

Matt Buttery is CEO of Triple P UK & Ireland and Honorary Associate Professor at the University of Warwick. A recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has revealed that children from low-income families who grew up near a Sure Start centre performed up to three grades better than their peers in GCSE’s. It has prompted calls from former Labour education secretaries for Sir Keir Starmer to put a new version of Sure Start in his election manifesto. The good news for Rishi Sunak, and in fact for Starmer too, is that there is no need to start from scratch with a new version of Su ..read more

Lord Palmerston was the only one of our Prime Ministers who would have been played by Roger Moore in a biopic. Beloved by the public, fond of the ladies, and known for declaring war on the Chinese in defence of Britain’s right to ply them with opium, he proved, 160-odd years before Boris Johnson, that a cad could reach the top, and be enjoy themselves whilst there. That canny old Whig has crossed my mind because it is St George’s Day. A Frenchman once sought to charm dear old Pam by telling him that if he were not a Frenchman, he would wish to be an Englishman. I imagine Palmerston looking at ..read more

Andy Street is Mayor of the West Midlands, and is a former Managing Director of John Lewis. In just over a week the people of the West Midlands will go to the polls to choose the person who will lead the region for the next four years as its mayor. Since I had the privilege of first taking that role in 2017, the West Midlands has been on a tangible course of renewal, with billions brought in in investment, hundreds of thousands of jobs created, a transport network being visibly transformed and a workforce benefitting from a revolution in skills provision. Next week’s vote will be crucial in de ..read more

Rwanda Bill gets through Parliament “Emergency legislation to get flights off to Rwanda finally passed through Parliament – after MPs defeated Lords efforts to ground the planes. Small boat migrants destined for the Central African state under the controversial scheme could be detained as soon as this week ahead of the first flights in July. After “ping pong” between the Commons and Lords, the bill is finally on the way to the King for Royal Assent on Tuesday morning. The PM had warned the Commons would sit as long as it takes to overturn peers’ efforts to water down the bill – with ..read more

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