Giles Dilnot

1 week ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

I don’t hate the Labour Party. I disagree with them. I don’t always agree with my own party – but that’s politics. I do however advocate talking to opponents, even being friends. This is not virtue signalling, it’s good strategy. I want to understand why they dislike Conservatism, why they believe their plan (so far as I can discern one) is better than ours (so far as I can, at the moment, get hold of one). I want to understand my opponents and learn from their mistakes.

2 weeks ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

“What the hell has been going on here since we’ve been away?”These are the words I uttered having arrived back in the UK in October 2022 from a series of foreign trips including the United Nations General Assembly – the diplomatic equivalent of two days of speed dating – and Japan. It was three weeks into the Liz Truss Premiership that had opened with the death of Her Majesty the Queen. To a newbie to Government it was the grandest baptism of fire I could imagine.

2 weeks ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

The Health Secretary Wes Streeting was right when he made this diagnosis of the NHS last year. However, whilst Streeting might be the first in Labour to say it, he’s behind a host of Conservatives who’ve made the same prognosis. Why am I thinking about this topic? I was going to write about the difficulty, in these febrile political times, of spotting an April Fool’s prank. But no, it’s the NHS. Consider this a despatch from the frontlines.

3 weeks ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

“Breaking news: Labour have managed to stop all illegal small boat crossings coming to the UK.”Anyone who believes this is remotely true should probably check the calendar and see what day it is. The Prime Minister’s illegal migration summit yesterday drew together all sorts of players to discuss ways they could collaborate to do things that most have them have already been doing. It was like an April Fools stunt a day early. My verdict is not tribalism, its realistic.

3 weeks ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

It’s a Hollywood cliché shot. A protagonist sliding seemingly inexorably to the precipice that will signal their doom and just before it happens, they dig in and somehow halt their death slide. They lie there breathless and shaken in the moment, and slowly, very slowly start the difficult climb back up out of harm’s way.