Dr Oliver Hartwich: The conservative void at the heart of British politics

The 2024 UK general election will go down in history as a seismic shift in British politics. But not for the reasons many commentators suggest.

While headlines trumpet Labour’s landslide victory, the real story is the spectacular implosion of the Conservative Party and the lessons it holds for centre-right parties worldwide.

Matthew Birchall: Out of office

Another week, another British Prime Minister.

Just 44 days into the job, Liz Truss was forced into a humiliating resignation. After the markets balked at her not-so-mini budget, the Economist quipped that her authority had enjoyed “roughly the shelf-life of a lettuce.”

The good people at the Daily Star took the jibe a step further by launching a competition to see if she could survive longer than a 60p iceberg lettuce from Tesco. A webcam streamed the action to all and sundry. The lettuce won.

Melanie Phillips: Is Jacob Rees-Mogg being Trumped?

Is Jacob Rees-Mogg being turned into the Donald Trump of the Conservative party?

Clearly, there could hardly be a greater contrast between the two men in terms of personality, character and demeanour. Rees-Mogg is almost beyond caricature as the very essence of old-fashioned gentlemanly behaviour, self-restraint and thoughtful intellect; Donald Trump is… well, Donald Trump.

Matt Ridley from the UK: British environmental policy after Brexit

Andrea Leadsom, the agriculture and environment secretary, is to set out her plans for the British countryside in two green papers: one on the environment this week and one on farming later. She should be ambitious and positive: the future, post-Brexit, could be bright and green.

What is the countryside for? For most of human history, its job was to provide food, fuel, fibre and building material. Today, we get most of those things from factories supplied by comparatively tiny quarries or wells. Only food still needs a vast acreage, but even that is a lot less vast than it was. The area of land required to produce a given quantity of food is now just a third of what it was in 1960, thanks to technology.

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Syria chemical weapons attacks – we still don’t know who is responsible

Thank goodness for the House of Commons, and especially those Conservative members who broke ranks with the government over a military strike on Syria. The US could still go it alone. It would be a punitive strike, which is in breach of international law, but the US has never cared much for international law. They have said that a strike would be ‘specific’ and that its function would be to deter Damascus from using chemical weapons again – clearly an attempt to don the ‘R2P’ (responsibility to protect) mantle. 

What utter bunkum – all it will achieve if it goes ahead is to weaken the regime’s ability to deal with the insurrection. Perhaps al-Qaida will send a thank-you postcard to the White House afterwards.