The Ideas Universe
The whip is a fox-hunting job
No. 5
The whip was never official
The run so far
No. 8The loan and the cuts were the same announcement
No. 7The Overton window: who moves it, and how
No. 6Nobody cuts the loaf. They cut the list.
No. 5The whip is a fox-hunting job
No. 4Both parties were named by their enemies
No. 3Two parties isn't tradition. It's arithmetic.
No. 2Chesterton's fence: the quote always stops one line too early
No. 1"Lord" means the man who guards the bread
More on Statecraft
- Once and For All, AgainA new Prime Minister has made social care his mission, and the talks are cross-party. Britain has answered this question four times since 1999. The answer was never the missing piece. The cheque was.
- A mandate is a real thingBritain has its fifth prime minister in four years, and for the third time in that run the job changed hands without a general election. The constitution says that is fine. The constitution is answering a question nobody asked.
- Nobody's FaultReviews are announced, lessons are learned, inquiries report - and no one is ever answerable. That is not complexity's accident. It is the architecture, and it is working as designed.