Madeline Grant

I’ve got Donald Trump to thank for my unusual middle name

12 July 2025 9:00 am

Never make a drunken bet. At about 3 a.m. one fateful morning, pre-pandemic and several bottles down, a friend and…

PMQs is truly cursed

10 July 2025 1:40 am

In the Fifth Circle of Dante’s Inferno, the damned are cursed to bob on the surface of the Styx, scrapping…

Emmanuel Macron would love to be King

9 July 2025 6:14 am

When Japan’s Crown Prince Naruhito visited Windsor Castle in the early years of the 21st century, the Queen Mother gave…

The ghost of Liz Truss haunts parliament

8 July 2025 4:54 am

Today’s Urgent Question in the House of Commons about the state of the economy was dominated by two people who…

Admit it: most wedding speeches are awful

5 July 2025 9:00 am

Perhaps the most traumatic part of attending an American wedding – much worse than the bridesmaids coming in the wrong…

At PMQs we saw Keir Starmer’s ugly side

3 July 2025 1:41 am

‘When a Knight won his spurs in the stories of old, he was gentle and brave, he was gallant and…

Welfare reform died in parliament last night

2 July 2025 5:37 am

That this government is bad at maths will not come as a surprise to many readers. Thus far, however, in…

Liz Kendall’s humiliating welfare climb-down

1 July 2025 5:07 am

‘This government believes in equality and social justice,’ began Liz Kendall. Which government she was describing is anyone’s guess. I…

Keir Starmer is seriously stupid

27 June 2025 2:23 am

Sir Keir has returned from his worldwide statesmanship tour. Barely the edge of a photograph went ungurned in, not a…

Rachel Reeves looks increasingly petrified

26 June 2025 2:16 am

Sir Keir Starmer was in the Hague. I know, I know, you’d have thought they would have done Blair first.…

David Lammy has nothing to say

24 June 2025 4:55 am

The day started badly for David Lammy. Well – we don’t know that for sure – it’s feasible that first…

‘Grim’ Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying triumph is a bleak day for parliament

21 June 2025 1:45 am

The portents this morning were grim. The Grim Leadreaper was doing her HR manager of Hades act, buzzing around with…

Rayner’s PMQs performance will trouble Starmer

19 June 2025 2:07 am

As you might have noticed from the crowds weeping in the streets and the appearance of sackcloth, ashes and rent,…

Starmer looked out of place in the mountains with Sky’s Beth Rigby

18 June 2025 6:14 am

Sir Keir Starmer was doing an interview with Beth Rigby in the lush mountain landscape of Canada. Hardly a man…

Kemi was at her best skewering Labour on grooming gangs

17 June 2025 3:40 am

Yvette Cooper had come to the House of Commons to shut, as loudly and with as much gusto as she…

Tim Farron, the last of the old-school liberals

14 June 2025 1:14 am

Today the Assisted Suicide Bill returned to the House of Commons. Amid its many flaws and complications, perhaps most important…

The spending review was 45 minutes I will never get back

12 June 2025 3:29 am

Rachel Reeves looked a little surprised at the cheers from the Labour benches that greeted her as she stood to…

Ed Miliband is an astonishing Commons performer

11 June 2025 2:08 am

I’m not totally sure where they keep Ed Miliband in between his Commons appearances. Perhaps some sort of deep freeze…

No more Mr Nice Nige

10 June 2025 3:22 am

Rachel Reeves was visiting a gardening club for the retired. ‘Do you come here every week?’ she simpered at some…

Leave our period dramas alone!

7 June 2025 9:00 am

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any article about Jane Austen must begin with a mangled, platitudinous variation on…

It didn’t take Starmer long to morph into Brezhnev

5 June 2025 1:40 am

It has taken Sir Keir Starmer just under 11 months to enter his Brezhnev era. Portly, autocratic and reliant on…

Make Bond great again

1 March 2025 9:00 am

One of the great recurring James Bond tropes is to make it look as though 007 has actually been killed…

How Covid has changed the dating game

25 July 2020 9:00 am

Covid has changed the dating game