Giles Dilnot

3 days ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

Fourteen. That’s the number currently guaranteed to furrow a Tory MP’s brow. Right now hat’s not hard to do. Ask them how things are going. Honestly, and at the risk of the glee it inspires in our opponents, the Parliamentary Conservative party is not in a good place, being both febrile and jittery. And numbers are a major reason for that. 14 per cent in a poll would signify near electoral wipe out.

6 days ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

I’ve decided I might go on a protest march. I want to rally a few hundred people – we’ll describe it as half a million to the media – to protest about protests. Because, as much as supporting the right to protest is brandished as proof of an open democratic society, that Governments are usually big enough to accept that some people get angry with them, and accepting, in my opinion, marching has never achieved anything very much – something has gone very rotten within the ‘protest’ movement.

1 week ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

It was Disraeli who said, “there’s no gambling like politics” and he knew a thing or two about redefining the Tory party. Whilst  Labour have taken a gamble on the economy, and Reform have gambled on going all the way alone – and they might – the Tories have a gamble in front of them that I really don’t know if they’ll make – but they should take it. Obviously, with any gamble you can win, or you can lose. The Prime Minister would have been well advised to note the same is true of selling “change”.

1 week ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

“I think in the end he just looked bad. He apologised but I think he knew he had to”Liz Saville Roberts, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster leader had been with me on the radio and talked about the Prime Minister’s ‘rudeness’ when in PMQs he had countered her question if he had any firm beliefs by saying“Yes one, that she talks rubbish” – cue whoops of laughter from the kids on the front bench.

2 weeks ago | conservativehome.com | Giles Dilnot

I have a secret to impart: this Spending Review is a farce. It’s a joke. The problem is it’s on all of us. No this is not a Tory attack line. Though Mel Stride makes that argument well today on Conservative Home. No I lump the past Conservative party in with every other party when I say this. Everyone, since 2008, possibly before, has been living in a political fantasy without – how shall I put it – the cajónes to tell the truth.