Reeves had a good day, but she’s hardly in the clear
Rachel Reeves’ Treasury team and the No. 10 communications staff should enjoy a drink tonight. The Spring Statement is a…
Why Keir Starmer must cut disability benefits
Keir Starmer’s imminent attempt to curb Britain’s spending on welfare is a more serious and important bid to curb the…
Labour needs lots more special advisers
Labour ministers’ frustration at what they see as a sclerotic civil service is finally boiling over. Most people familiar with…
Southport and the problem with judge-led inquiries
Sir Keir Starmer has promised an inquiry into the events around the Southport murders committed by Axel Rudakubana, saying there…
Why Westminster is wrong about gilt yields
It’s gilts season at Westminster. This is one of those unpredictable events, like the passing of a comet, that sees…
Starmer’s grooming gang stance might not last the weekend
From the start of Elon Musk’s onslaught, Sir Keir Starmer’s position in refusing a new national inquiry into the grooming…
Why won’t the jokes about Rachel Reeves’s CV go away?
Why do jokes about Rachel Reeves’s CV persist? One explanation is simple: it’s funny. The Chancellor’s public persona is strait-laced and…
There was more to John Prescott than his working class roots
John Prescott has died, leading to a flood of tributes and comments about the working class hero of the New…
The humiliating emptiness of David Cameron’s legacy
The humiliating post-premiership of David Cameron is the gift that keeps on giving. He might have been gone from No.…
Should GPs make a profit?
The Budget has started a fight between the government and GPs. As is often the case with doctors, that fight…
Jeremy Hunt’s fantasy Budget
As Rachel Reeves prepares what is potentially the most difficult Budget in a generation, a question occurs: what if the…
The state pension system is unfair. Reeves is right to change it
Rachel Reeves is cutting £1.4 billion of pensioner welfare payments with her winter fuel payment means-test. It sounds like a…
Is this Westminster’s coolest MP?
Parliamentary oath-taking rarely causes excitement. MPs swearing the oath of allegiance to the Crown after an election is an archaic…
David Cameron has quit. Is anyone surprised?
The Conservative party is in disarray. What the party does next matters for the whole of Britain and maybe even for…
Starmer’s ruthless efficiency has risks
A couple of years ago, an anecdote about Keir Starmer did the rounds at Westminster. The story was that when…
J.K. Rowling’s glorious refusal to be kind
‘Spread happiness, peace and calm.’ That’s the slogan on a T-shirt you can buy at M&S. It’s pink, has frilly…
A Danish lesson for Labour in how to revive Britain’s economy
The coincidence of the 2024 general election and the Euro 2024 football tournament is a great lesson in the myopia…
Labour MPs need to grow up
Westminster is full of clever people who spend a lot of time stupidly making simple things complicated. The story of…
What Rishi Sunak can learn from Gordon Brown’s golden mistake
Gordon Brown is a historian by education, so he might just appreciate the fickleness of posterity. Over a decade at…
Why are police officers slow to respond to domestic abuse call-outs?
Popping out to buy milk the other night, I saw how women die. My nearest local shop in south-west London, the…
How to defuse the pension timebomb
Another day, another smart report arguing for higher payments into our pensions. Standard Life and WPI Economics have published a…
A pension crisis is brewing
Ten years ago, George Osborne blew up the British private pension system. Because pensions are boring and complicated and move…
Britain is too sick
Britain is running out of workers. The UK population may be growing, but the share of that population that is…
Does Labour want an anti-CV revolution?
Alison McGovern, Labour’s shadow employment minister is one of those politicians who are always worth watching. She combines the ability…
The pension bomb facing Generation X
Happy birthday to me. Today I turn 48. I’m celebrating in an age-appropriate way: a trip to the physio for…
