Labour’s plan to unite the left
It is easy to criticise the Budget. The process was a chaotic mess. For many on the right, Rachel Reeves’s…
Nick Thomas-Symonds: ‘The Brexit architects essentially ran away’
With his owlish expression and affable manner, Nick Thomas-Symonds looks more like the academic that he was, rather than the…
Rachel Reeves’s road to ruin
Rachel Reeves is lucky that the name ‘omnishambles Budget’ has already been taken. When the entire document was published long…
Rachel Reeves’s Budget was based on fiction
I think we will look back on this week as one of the most pivotal of this government. It was…
Exclusive: Military chiefs go to war with Labour
While Westminster is consumed by the fallout from the Budget, I can reveal there is another major headache on the…
It’s time to dispose of the Budget
Denis Healey’s ‘caretaker Budget’ on 3 April 1979 is an odd focus for Labour nostalgia. It came a week after…
Inside the Wes Streeting plot
Keir Starmer is stuck in a catch-22. If he is to avoid the threat of continual leadership challenges, the Prime…
Keir Starmer’s omnishambles government
What a week. Seven days ago, we were wondering what Rachel Reeves was up to with her pre-Budget messaging. At…
What the heck is Rachel Reeves up to?
Welcome to my first Evening Blend. Unless there are earth-shattering events each Friday, my intention is to try to cut…
Gilded age: the lessons from Trump’s second term
Washington, D.C. When John Swinney, the SNP leader, and Peter Mandelson visited Donald Trump in the Oval Office a few…
The gym, the hairdresser, the campaign trail: the inside story of Kemi’s first year
On the day of the local elections in May, when the Tories suffered a historic setback, Kemi Badenoch went to…
Reeves’s fiscal play-off
In a week where political attention was on espionage and anti-Semitism, the cri de coeur from one Treasury official was…
Why Caerphilly may be good news for Starmer
On the face of it, the Caerphilly by-election result is a disaster, a drubbing and a humiliation for Keir Starmer’s…
Here be dragons: the truth about Chinese espionage
On 3 July a Chinese man, Xu Zewei, was arrested in Milan to face extradition on nine charges relating to…
US politicians: Dropping China spy case undermines Five Eyes
As I revealed in the Spectator cover story this week, the US House of Representatives select committee on the Chinese…
The real war is to come for the Tories
British politics often resembles a golden-age murder mystery, with multiple parties sitting anxiously on the sofas/green benches waiting for the…
Kemi Badenoch: how I plan to save the Tories
Kemi Badenoch is in ebullient form. She promises the Conservative party conference, which begins this weekend in Manchester, will be…
Keir Starmer gave the speech of his life at Labour conference
The consensus before Keir Starmer’s speech to the Labour party conference was that he needed to make ‘the speech of…
Who does Shabana Mahmood have in her sights?
After a fortnight in which Keir Starmer lost both Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson but also reshaped his cabinet and…
Starmer’s battle against the King of the North
After Keir Starmer’s calamitous fortnight, the No. 10 official was reflective: ‘Some people say: “Your worst day in government is…
What the Tories should learn from Trump
Robert Jenrick has warned that he is ‘absolutely terrified’ Britain is heading for a debt crisis ‘unless Rachel Reeves changes…
Winston, Windsor and ‘private time’: inside Trump’s state visit
The first time Donald Trump was on an official visit to the UK, in July 2018, he was deep in…
Kemi Badenoch has a sliver of hope
I can’t remember when I last wrote anything as reckless, but the last week has been a good one for…
‘He’s like a passive-aggressive Gordon Brown’: inside Keir Starmer’s No.10 reshuffle
Isaac Levido, the Tory election strategist who helped secure Boris Johnson’s landslide victory in 2019 and saved the Tories from…
Robert Jenrick: ‘Asylum seekers should be detained in camps’
On a table in Robert Jenrick’s parliamentary office lies the first part of Ronald Hutton’s biography of Oliver Cromwell, a…
