Here’s a selection of my favourite pieces.

• 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…

• Dr Johnson and Mr Boris

  “I did not intentionally or recklessly mislead the House,” Boris Johnson writes at the start of his evidence to Parliament’s Privileges Committee. “I would never have dreamed of doing so.

• Your part in my downfall

  One year ago this week, I went to Tesco in my capacity as Critic sketchwriter to stock up on Pringles. Had anyone told me then that, twelve months later, I would be living out of my car following a…

• We deep dive at dawn

  The prime minister assembled his Cabinet at Chequers this week to discuss the government’s future — but what really happened? Find out in our deeply reported in depth deep dive long read.

• They’ll have what she’s having

  “What a conference it’s been!” Jake Berry, the Conservative Party chairman declared. This was, I am ashamed to admit, greeted with a loud burst of involuntary laughter from the press benches.

• Trussception

  What on earth is going on at Tory conference? One minute Liz Truss is changing course, the next we see her on the TV insisting that she won’t. Brexit hardman Steve Baker turned into a bearded…

• Donkeys led by donkeys

  To even consider sketching this year’s Conservative conference is to find oneself overwhelmed by the task. You feel as Lady Elizabeth Butler must have as she set up her easel on the edge of the…

• Expulsion from Borisland

  And so, for the last time (OR IS IT?) to Borisland, the sunlit country where ambulances are so plentiful that paramedics go door to door just checking everyone’s feeling tip-top…

• This time the mission is the man

  June 6. D-Day. We woke to news that overnight, Tory MPs of the Allied Expulsionary Force had gone into action, by letter, by email and by WhatsApp, to force a confidence vote in the prime minister.

• The right to a wrong-time to party

  You want answers? You think you’re entitled? You want the truth? We would get it, eventually, and slightly by accident, but it would take several hours. We didn’t get it from Sue Gray.

• Boris brings up the rear

  Standing behind the Speaker’s chair, Boris Johnson got ready to take his place. He was surrounded by a small entourage, attempting to tidy him up. Joy Morrissey, one of his parliamentary aides…