Lewis Baston

Thinking about trying to write something about nostalgia - both the kind that wells up organically, particularly at my mid 50s stage of life, and of the toxic kind. Would people be interested?

By this, I’m not suggesting for a moment that the Tories are looking forward to a massive election win in 2027.

I’m wondering about a comparison with Labour postwar: in 1995 (near when I started out) there had only been one big Labour win in 50 years. One can win the ideological battle and yet fail on an electoral level.

His defence counsel says he has egrets.

The Marshal in the Doctor Who story The Armageddon Factor. Not a story that gets a lot of love, then or now, but I’ve always thought Woodvine was good. A convincing blend of creepy and stubborn.

I’d be tempted to say ‘Naked Lunch’ even though it’s not. This is one of many reasons why I will not be Prime Minister.

I wonder. In some senses Lilley in particular is a successful graduate of the programme. He would make deplorable speeches at conference but had a sound grasp of social security and was sensible about budget cutting (which ideologically he supported). But on Europe he probably got more extreme.

Now the Conservative Party is a pipeline in the other direction - taking reasonable, reality-based centre-right figures like Stride and making them into hard-right sloganeers. I wonder when it changed. The obvious answer is 2019 but I wonder whether that’s the whole story.

… take for instance Gerald Howarth, Michael Fallon, Michael Forsyth. The rehab programme wasn’t always successful (Neil Hamilton) and it wasn’t suitable for the stupid, but it provided a pipeline from the edges to the centre, or at least from slogans to practicality.

At some point, an important function of the Conservative Party as it used to be has gone into reverse. What used to happen is that hard-right but bright MPs were given responsibilities as junior ministers and taught that slogans were all very well but governing involved the real world…

Once, when I was editing the FT polo supplement, I emailed her to ask if she'd write a jokey column about the new season. I was junior and knew nothing about polo so took a scattergun, slightly panicky approach to commissioning. Seconds after I hit send, the phone rang. 1/2

Blissfully unaware.

As a sign of just how bad things are for the Tories and younger voters, this was billed as one of the most positive slides of the polling presentation.

In my optimistic moments I think a disgusting policy like this would trigger the British instinct for ‘fair play’ and people would react against it; but then again I don’t have many optimistic moments.

Very well-put.

Sub-category of forgettable political memoirs:
Steve Norris ‘Changing Trains’ (he was a junior minister in Transport dealing with rail privatisation; I didn’t see the Isherwood reference for ages).

Six.

Thread on one of the worst and weirdest people ever to have become an MP. And, yes, there is a certain amount of competition for the title.

Sébastien Lecornu 🇫🇷 has resigned after serving 0.55 Liz Trusses in office

Arthur Guinness, after a lifetime of trying to raise a weary smile to people saying ‘why not a full pint?’, passes the baton to a new generation.

Borderlines by Lewis Baston | Waterstones Buy Borderlines by Lewis Baston from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

Good idea. I see they’re ’created with care’ which is more than you can say for a lot of national borders www.waterstones.com/book/borderl...

Unzoomed Identify cities using satellite images in this daily puzzle game, where each guess zooms out for enhanced clues.

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unzoomed.com instant recognition of this one.

Me and @jonnelledge.bsky.social thinking innocently, ‘Borders are interesting and quirky. I bet we could get people interested in them… NOT LIKE THAT! ARE YOU MAD?’

I’ve not been to the conferences for a few years but I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s like a great whale, beached and dying.

Unzoomed Identify cities using satellite images in this daily puzzle game, where each guess zooms out for enhanced clues.

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unzoomed.com slow on the uptake

Dear God. I’d do it for half the price and be a lot less weird, honestly.

A man (me) standing in front of a beach. The sky is blue and the water is blue.

Yeah, I’m somewhere nice now (Mèze in the south of France) and I shouldn’t be worrying about this stuff right now.

Being a brake on Reform U.K., a real-world check on outlandish policies, is an undignified but functional ambition in its way. But the Tories aren’t even doing that. They’re competing in a spiral of radicalisation. I’m quite afraid of the future.

Fly-tipping really annoys voters. I’ve been writing articles on local by-elections in London for years and nearly every local campaign involves (usually opposition) candidates complaining about it. It’s taken as an indicator of decline in a local neighbourhood as well as local state failure.

I think I use it about just that - nationalisms imposing their maps on disputed territory - in Borderlines. Had no idea it was such a recent coinage.