Andy Burnham
Can Burnham resist the siren call of the left?
Power, when it is gained and lost, is transferred in stages: the actual, the visual and the constitutional. The latter…
How the right can fight Burnham
Andy Burnham has not yet entered No. 10, but the Conservatives and Reform are already preparing for the possibility of…
How does this week’s heatwave compare with 1976?
Prime numbers It looks as if Britain will just miss out on having seven prime ministers in the space of…
Portrait of the week: Burnham wins, Starmer resigns and a heatwave hits
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, stood outside 10 Downing Street and said that he would resign as leader…
Burnham’s worryingly vague vision for Britain
Once again the question occurs: ‘Why do they want it?’ Keir Starmer held a very important role in the legal…
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…
Can I save Britain from war with Russia?
I t won’t be much of a consolation to Keir Starmer but I too was overwhelmed by the responsibilities of…
The death of two-party politics has been greatly exaggerated
Every twist in the winding road of our politics brings a latest thing to say. These wisdoms usually survive a…
Revealed: Andy Burnham’s reassuringly bland Cambridge years
There appears to be a missing chapter in the story of Andy Burnham. Depending on the whims of voters in…
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…
Pity Andy Burnham
There is something infinitely melancholy in hearing what political ambition does to perfectly nice people. I awoke on Monday to…
A lot can happen in Makerfield this weekend
It’s been another bizarre week in Westminster, with Sir Keir Starmer going about business as if everything is completely normal…
‘Being a Labour mayor in Manchester is playing politics on easy mode’: Is Andy Burnham up to the job of PM?
When the Labour party football team played a group of journalists at Loftus Road two years ago the hacks won…
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…
Things can always get worse
I have spent the past week marvelling at the behaviour of our commentating class. They seem to have whipped themselves…
Keir Starmer has one card left to play
As calls for Sir Keir Starmer’s head grow ever louder among Labour MPs, the British Prime Minister is digging his…
18 ways to save your political career
Dear wannabe leaders of Britain. What a lot of you there are! I’ve been writing about leadership and the craft…
Letters: Yvette Cooper for PM!
Bet on Yvette Sir: Were Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham or Wes Streeting to succeed Sir Keir (‘After Starmer’,…
What is ‘Starmerism’?
If Keir Starmer didn’t already understand Harold Macmillan’s warning about ‘events, dear boy, events’, he got a lesson on Saturday.…
Portrait of the week: Burnham blocked, Braverman bails and Starmer clashes with Trump
Home Labour’s National Executive Committee refused permission for Andy Burnham, currently Mayor of Greater Manchester, to stand in a by-election…
Don’t surrender to soulless self-checkouts
A friend runs a small factory employing 60 skilled workers. He exports industrial components worldwide, competing with Europe for quality…
Why weren’t police forces investigating every theft?
Police must investigate every theft. This is the message from the Home Secretary as the government heralds an agreement from…
Andy Burnham is Labour’s king over the water
There are few things so perilous for an under-performing opposition leader as the emergence of a ‘king over the water’.…
Andy Burnham makes life more difficult for Starmer
As Keir Starmer spends the weekend working out how exactly to bounce back from disappointing results for his party in the…
Three hours to prepare for a local lockdown
My weekend plans have somewhat been ruined by Matt Hancock tonight. The government has announced new lockdown restrictions for over…
