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Articles by Simon Campion-Brown

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About Simon Campion-Brown

A former lecturer in politics at Keele University, Simon now lives in Oxfordshire. Married with two children, in 2007 he decided to monitor the Westminster village via newspaper and television and has never looked back. More Posts

Just another Thursday …

Surveying the ongoing wreckage piling up as the UK struggles on into its fourth week (is it?) of lockdown I’m very glad that my connection with the modern world of social media remains so slight and fleeting, partly because I don’t understand much of it and – even if I did – I wouldn’t [...]

April 24, 2020 // 0 Comments

You couldn’t make it up (again)

What is that old saying – “People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”? It occurred to me over the weekend that, unintentionally or otherwise, the home truths are beginning to come home in spades as we enter the third [or is it the fourth?] week of the lockdown with the Government having [...]

April 20, 2020 // 0 Comments

What goes around comes around

Returning from my own self-isolation purdah – from about May of 2019 I’ve been sparing in my Rust contributions largely because, the way the world was going, there seemed little point in continuing to air my unflinchingly cynical views upon political matters for fear of boring this organ’s [...]

March 28, 2020 // 0 Comments

Towards the sunny uplands?

My views upon Brexit are well-known to Rust stalwarts, so out of respect for them I shan’t rehearse them again here: furthermore I am sure that those with an interest in the subject amongst the average 23,481 new readers we gain per week [source: Bolton Research, January 2020] will work them out [...]

February 1, 2020 // 0 Comments

The folly of being divorced from reality

After all the excitements of Election night itself and the media analysis of the entrails yesterday which I (and no doubt many others) tuned to – given the general backdrop and recent prolonged paralysis at Westminster – with an inner sense that we were watching a far-reaching historical [...]

December 14, 2019 // 0 Comments

Into the home straight …

With effectively ‘four days and counting down’ to the vote, on the evidence of my early morning excursion around the news websites the General Election has now reached the ‘silly’ stage. One poll I saw had the Tories going out to an 11 point lead, another had then at 7 points ahead. Both [...]

December 8, 2019 // 0 Comments

Would the last person to leave please turn out the lights …

Last night the electorate was treated to one of the anticipated highlights of the General Election campaign, the BBC’s head-to-head hour-long debate between Boris and Jeremy, chaired by Nick Robinson on BBC1 at 8.30pm in front of a live audience. [It has just occurred to me that in using the [...]

December 7, 2019 // 0 Comments

Election-watch: 13 days to go

Let’s begin by just listing some of what happened yesterday. Perhaps the first news I registered after waking was that, with a fortnight to go to Polling Day and the latest poll showing that the Tories might be on course for a 68-seat majority, Labour strategists were now going to switch to [...]

November 29, 2019 // 0 Comments

Hey-ho …

Yesterday – since nobody is asking – I spent the best part of ten hours driving to a pub not far from Birmingham and then back again for a two-hour reunion lunch with some old friends. Yes, it’s wondrous what some of us will do sometimes to fill up a day! For accompaniment I spent the bulk of [...]

November 27, 2019 // 0 Comments

Oh dear, oh dear …

I regret this post is another dispatch from the General Election front line – albeit hopefully a brief one – following my dipping in and out of the special edition of Question Time (chaired by Fiona Bruce) that was broadcast last night on BBC1 at 9.00pm. The format was that the leaders of the [...]

November 23, 2019 // 0 Comments

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