Labour Party
Starmer’s first big test
During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I…
Save our grey belt!
While working as a callow speechwriter for the Labour party in the mid-1980s, I suggested to a member of the…
Who’ll be blamed for Rachel Reeves’s tax hikes?
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt entered Downing Street with one mission: to clean up the public finances after Liz Truss’s…
Things can always get worse for the Tories
Before migrating to Wiltshire where I will be for August, I had a friendly dinner with a clutch of Conservative…
The intersectional feminist rewriting the national curriculum
The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of…
Labour won’t spend outside fiscal rules, says Reeves
Chancellor Reeves adamant she will ‘make sure the sums add up’ Rachel Reeves gave an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this…
Will Reeves boost public sector pay?
As the dust around the election settles, a question Tory MPs and supporters still grapple with is why Rishi Sunak…
How to drown your sorrows
Age. At the Spectator party last week, the editor asked me how long I had been attending the festivity. I…
Can Starmer control his party?
Labour MPs ought to have been jubilant when they gathered for their weekly all-party parliamentary meeting on Monday. Most were…
Portrait of the Week: Starmer’s first steps, Biden’s wobble and Australia’s egg shortage
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, appointed several ministers who are not MPs, but will be created life peers.…
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…
What’s the worst that can happen for the Tories?
When Rishi Sunak stunned his cabinet colleagues by calling a snap election, they feared the worst. Fast forward a month…
What’s the real reason Jim Ratcliffe is backing Starmer?
On the face of it, there could hardly be a better example of a turkey voting for Christmas than the…
Portrait of the Week: Farage returns, Abbott reselected and Trump guilty
Home Nigel Farage took over leadership of the Reform party from Richard Tice and is standing for parliament in Clacton.…
Home insulation is the latest net zero farce
Zoe Godrich of Swansea might best be described as collateral damage in Britain’s glorious march towards net zero. Three years…
Starmer’s safety-first campaign is backfiring
The problem with spending an election campaign saying as little new as possible is that it does leave a big…
Starmer purges the Corbynites
One of the first thing Keir Starmer and his team decided to focus on after winning the Labour leadership was…
Could Jeremy Corbyn become a left-wing Nigel Farage?
Why can’t Jeremy Corbyn be a left-wing Farage? Why can’t he threaten Labour as Ukip and its successor parties threatened…
Why Rishi Sunak wants to introduce national service
The first big new policy announcement of the election campaign is in from the Tories, and it’s likely to be…
The smoking ban won’t go away
Has Rishi Sunak’s surprise summer election spared Britain some nanny state interventions? At first glance it seemed so, as it…
Keir Starmer is ashamed of his party
Questions from backbenchers dominated PMQs. Sir Edward Leigh is keen to end unfettered immigration and he announced a way to…
Wes Streeting should be ashamed of his white supremacist Tory jibe
Over the past few years Wes Streeting has established himself as one of the more open-minded and reasonable members of…
Why a Labour super-majority is unlikely
In economic, there is a phenomenon known as ‘automatic stabilisers’, which kick in at the onset of a recession. Without…
Dowden: UK position on arms sales to Israel ‘has not changed’
Dowden: UK position on arms sales to Israel ‘has not changed’ Israel and Hamas are expected to hold a new…
Could Sadiq Khan lose London?
With Labour 20 points ahead in the national polls, a lot of Tories have already written off next month’s mayoral…
