Leading article
Lawlessness is not inevitable
John Major’s time in government was fraught but, between the Maastricht wrangles, ‘Back to Basics’ and the cones hotline, one…
Was this a pre-election Budget?
So damaging was Rachel Reeves’s tenure that a Budget from her successor aimed at doing as little as possible seems…
Sally Rooney and the comfortable violence of the left
Kate Evans is a dedicated and widely respected sergeant in Avon and Somerset Police. But her ability to do the…
Donald Trump is no friend to conservatives
Perhaps P.J. O’Rourke put it best. When explaining, in 2016, why a self-declared ‘Republican Party Reptile’ was voting for Hillary…
Kemi Badenoch knows the right way forward
Last year’s Conservative party conference was a difficult one. Reform UK was leading the polls; the local election results had…
Andy Burnham begins the long march left
When the Social Democratic Party was launched in 1981, its prospectus was dismissed witheringly by the liberal thinker Ralf Dahrendorf…
Andy Burnham should call an election now
So far, Andy Burnham’s premiership has been characterised by compromise and obfuscation. When choosing his Chancellor, instead of picking Shabana…
Britain needs to get a grip on AI
We remember the empty hysteria induced by warnings over the millennium bug. We have borne the burden of exaggerated predictions…
Ed Miliband has chosen to make British Jews less safe
On Tuesday, the Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, noted that the government is devoting an extra £250 million this year to…
Mark Carney is the true King of the North
Mark Carney never much liked Brexit. As the Bank of England’s governor during the 2016 referendum, Carney was limited in…
Now we need to see your economic plans, Prime Minister
Keir Starmer once promised to ‘tread more lightly’ on voters’ lives. Yet he presided over a government that raised taxes…
Jason Arday’s tragic death is no reason to silence the press
Physicians and the Samaritans warn against attributing suicide to a single cause. Doing so simplifies a complex tragedy. Those who…
Farage needs to decide if he wants to govern – or just campaign
Nigel Farage’s likely victory in the Clacton by-election will be a hollow one. The major parties boycotted the contest: of…
Cambridge has fallen
‘What distinguishes Cambridge from Oxford,’ A.A. Milne said in 1939, ‘is that nobody who has been to Cambridge feels impelled…
Burnham is boldly going nowhere
‘Space: the final frontier.’ Six decades since Captain James T. Kirk first uttered those words, American enthusiasm for star-trekking is…
Burnham is already drifting towards defeat
Nothing so became Keir Starmer’s premiership as his leaving of it. Farewell remarks outside Downing Street, unpunctuated by the odious…
Let Shabana Mahmood finish the job at the Home Office
We currently know more about what Count Binface would do in power than Andy Burnham. The joke candidate in the…
Beware Andy Burnham’s ‘devolution revolution’
Andy Burnham is a lucky politician. And Nigel Farage has just given him another piece of surprising good fortune. The…
Burnham’s unwillingness to face the media should worry us all
There are so many hopes invested in Andy Burnham’s premiership that disappointment is inevitable. In some cases, it is also…
How Burnham can avoid Starmer’s fate
Welcome to the cabaret, Andy Burnham. Last year, the editor of this magazine wrote about ‘Weimar Britain’: the fear that…
Trump has been outplayed by Iran
The Founding Fathers may have modelled America on Ancient Rome, but they would have found the ersatz gladiatorial spectacle Donald…
Securing Britain’s defence should be Starmer’s legacy
Few critiques of British mythmaking have been more astute than that of Correlli Barnett. He argued that 18th-century statesmen were…
We need to demand more from our politicians
The first mention of Westminster came in a charter of 785, attributed to King Offa, granting land in ‘that terrible…
Labour must be honest with voters about the coming crisis
So far, Labour has staged a contested leadership election in government only once – 50 years ago, in 1976. The…
The EU can’t save Labour
Amid the rubble of this government lies a tattered standard – the regimental colours of the current Labour party. The…
