Here’s a selection of my favourite pieces.

• Pandæmonium

  “The task that stands before us is tough.” We were in a basement room of a central London hotel. Outside it was a grey November morning, but we had gathered for the greatest show on earth: the…

• BoJo’s Life of Johnson

  From not sending the SAS to snatch Covid vaccines from the Dutch to not persuading Prince Harry to stay in Britain, Boris Johnson has got the nation gripped with his new memoir Unchecked…

• Podcasting while Britain burns

  Look Kay, what should be at the front of all our minds are the poor victims of this terrible tragedy. They should be our only concern. But as I was writing on my Substack – there’s a free trial this…

• This isn’t about me

  Thanks for having me on, Laura. You know, our party, our great party, has been through a traumatic defeat. And there are a lot of reasons for that which we need to consider. We’re going to need to…

• Going on a Truss hunt

  We’re going on a Truss hunt! We’re going to catch a PM! What a beautiful day. We’re not scared! Oh no! Labour! Keir Starmer’s Labour! We can’t go over them. We can’t go under them. We’ll have to go…

• The rise and fall of Rishi

  How is Rishi Sunak so bad at this? Having posed the question some months ago, it’s time to have a crack at answering it. The election campaign has left little dispute about his lack of political nous…

• The Conservatives deserve to be taught a lesson

  It would, Grant Shapps says, be bad news for British democracy if Labour won too large a majority next month. For a moment I wondered whether his words reflected a realisation that his own party had…

• Desperate policies for desperate people

  There have been suggestions that the Conservative election campaign is being run by someone who has a Brewster’s Millions-style bet that he can get the party below 50 seats. Cynics have pointed to the…

• Please look after this bear

  Oh, the humiliation! Soaked to the skin, inaudible over music from protestors, Rishi Sunak plumped for the one electoral strategy he had left: the appeal for a pity vote. Even the weather hates me…

• In the name of God, lead

  In retrospect the best clue to what Rishi Sunak would be like as prime minister can be found in the letter that ended his time as chancellor of the exchequer. Given that it precipitated the fall of…

• Keeping the beaches open

  Was Boris Johnson’s Cabinet made up of “useless fuckpigs”? You may have views on the matter. Or you may be offended by the very question, in which case this sketch, which deals with Dominic Cummings’…

• Rishiversary

  It’s a year since Rishi Sunak swept into Downing Street, promising to be less of an obvious disaster than Liz Truss. In this essential Critic Deep Dive, our political team takes you inside Downing…

• A circular firing squad

  “We all believe the same thing,” Danny Kruger told Tory activists in an upstairs room in Manchester. From anyone else, speaking at the most fractious Conservative conference in decades…

• A bonfire of the straw men

  There was an air of desperation in Rishi Sunak’s voice as he began to address the nation on Wednesday. Earlier in the week, the idea had been that he would deliver this speech on Friday…

• How Liz was (tin)foiled

  Publicly shamed, denounced in the press, defended only by cranks on Twitter and fringe TV channels, it was time to get on stage and put the case for the defence. Everything you’d heard in the…

• Acting his age

  This article is taken from the August-September 2023 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. “It’s not the years…

• The stroppy appeal

  We now go over to The Critic’s Summer Charity Appeal, from The Society for The Relief of Distressed Toryfolk. Hello. I’d like to talk to you about a woman I met recently. Let’s call her “Nadine”.

• To inanity, and beyond!

  We were, the announcer said, about to hear from “a renowned former member of the Cabinet”. For a moment, I was confused, because the programme said the next speaker was David Frost. There’s a stage of…

• Why I am resigning, despite doing nothing wrong

  Today I resigned from The Critic following an inquiry that concluded I had abused my power as a sketchwriter by dangling a sub-editor from the window by his ankles and yelling…

• The plaid panther strikes again

  You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say may be used in evidence against you. As with the cops, so it is with the press. You never have to comment, especially if you’re First Minister…