Richard D North welcomes you to his new blog. (It links to my old site, now archived.) I am a right-winger, in love with the free market and arguing against the soft-left, liberal, green, PC consensus. Oh, and I'm a conflicted softie. A bit hippy and arty round the edges too. More »
Posted by RDN under Uncategorized on 20 June 2010. One comment.
It’s not often a good ploy to whinge, and this isn’t exactly a moan. Well, only a bit of one. I want to stand up for my Life On a Modern Planet (1995) and Rich Is Beautiful (2005) as works of “rational optimism”. More »
Posted by RDN under Climate change / Politics and campaigns on 15 June 2010. No comments.
It’s been a spectacularly bad few days for BP. Things looks set to get a bit worse. But they may yet turn out less than apocalyptic. Without shouting the odds, here’re some thoughts. More »
Posted by RDN under Politics and campaigns on 4 June 2010. No comments.
We are at the beginning of the end of the phoney war on the BP oil spill. We seem to be in sight of beginning the real shooting. Here’s why… More »
Posted by RDN under Politics and campaigns on 17 May 2010. No comments.
Obviously we all need to cross our fingers for BP. The oil giant needs the same luck as the seashores its oil may yet severely damage. This may, after all, be the worst such accident we have yet seen, as I said on the BBC’s Today programme. I hope I wasn’t premature in a later FT letter in suggesting that the oil giant, and its industry, will flourish however awful the outcome of this accident, and deserves to. More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Mr C's Makeover Politics / Politics and campaigns on 16 May 2010. No comments.
Just before I get too sunny, here are three areas where the country’s politicians, and the Tories not least, face real problems. They all centre on the country’s habit of self-deception. More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Politics and campaigns on 16 May 2010. No comments.
I was often depressed and irritated by Gordon Brown, but he made a good departure (that matters in political life). Better still, substantial people are fighting for his reputation. Irwin Stelzer (the Spectator), Anthony Seldon (the Guardian) and Martin Wolf (the Financial Times) have all mounted defences of his record. This is luck on a large scale.
Posted by RDN under Mr C's Makeover Politics / Politics and campaigns on 16 May 2010. No comments.
This is a golden period for Conservatives. Their party is a natural vehicle for the politics and government of the early 21st Century. Who’d a thunk it? More »
Posted by RDN under Mr C's Makeover Politics / Politics and campaigns on 9 May 2010. One comment.
One ought to take some risks at such a time. Mine is to say that this is the best political period for decades. More »
Posted by RDN under Mr C's Makeover Politics / Politics and campaigns / Rightist manifestos on 9 May 2010. No comments.
This is still a country which is socially conservative, sexually permissive, economically entrepreneurial and obstinately attached to a statist welfare system. But we are less inclined to disenfranchise the fence-sitting Lib-Dem voters. What now for the Tories? More »
Posted by RDN under Economic crisis / Mr C's Makeover Politics / Politics and campaigns on 7 May 2010. No comments.
In previous posts I have remarked what a great political and constitutional opportunity the UK now has. But it depends far more on individual MPs than on their leaders, constitutional historians, greybeard commentators or anyone else. More »
