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Twiddling his thumbs in a new era
It’s over. Oliver Dowden has gone home and put the kettle on. So, a little time has passed, a dynastic shift has occurred. Liz Truss, apparently unpopular with her MPs and unexpectedly not quite as popular with the party membership as she was hoping, is our new Prime Minister. The composition of Truss’s cabinet is…
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Oliver and Rishi, down by the pool
In a fancy garden near here, the strange drama of the Conservative leadership contest approaches its climax Last week, Rishi Sunak, currently trailing Liz Truss by 26 points in the contest that will produce a new leader of the Conservative Party (and, because of a mediaeval malfunction in the Parliamentary machinery, a Prime Minister too)…
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Green belt red alert
In the Tory leadership race, Team Rishi has deployed the ultimate THW (Tory Heartland Weapon) – the green belt – and Oliver Dowden is ready September 2022 update: turns out the green belt is still growing. The annual government numbers show that, after a break of about eight years, the green belt grew by 1.5%…
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Keeping busy
You have to wonder what a former party Co-Chairman gets up to during a turbulent time like this He’s ready for Rishi. You already knew this. Oliver Dowden’s social media is saturated with Sunak endorsements. If there’s no Ministerial role for our MP in September it’ll be because the other weirdo won. Sunak may be…
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Whither Dowden?
Our MP was way out in front with his resignation from the Johnson government and may have been plotting against the PM for a while It seems like a long time ago but it’s actually only a month since Oliver Dowden, MP for Hertsmere, resigned as Conservative Party Co-Chairman. And you’d be forgiven for forgetting…
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Minister for junk mail
Careful, your MP wants your email address Oliver Dowden, MP for Hertsmere, Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party and unlikely attack dog in the Culture Wars, has a new, slightly demeaning job. He’s been tasked with adding names to the Conservative Party’s email marketing list. He’s doing this by attacking some Labour politicians for supporting the…
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Culture wars update
One of the things we’ve done on this blog – with, let’s face it, limited consistency – is keep an eye on the public statements and Ministerial actions of our MP Oliver Dowden who, these days, is Co-Chairman of the Conservative Party and Minister without Portfolio (we started, in fact, under his predecessor, James Clappison,…
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The culture war will be fought in the streets
The news that Oliver Dowden wants to make it a bit harder for people to change street names got us thinking about how streets get their names and why they’re changed. Street names are interesting aren’t they? A mix of impenetrable, often very ancient, labels for paths and byways that even precede the Roman names…
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Here’s how Oliver Dowden voted in the free vote on access to home abortions
An important change to the law during lockdown made it possible for women to get abortion pills (early medical abortion) prescribed over the phone (the legislation calls this ‘telemedicine’) and then to have the pills, which are taken in two doses, 48 hours apart, sent to a home address (this is for abortions earlier than…