Labour Party

Things can only get worse for Keir Starmer

25 August 2024 8:05 pm

When Rishi Sunak announced a July election during a torrential downpour, one leftist wag played ‘Things Can Only Get Better’…

Now Sue Gray’s son is in the firing line

18 August 2024 10:26 pm

It seems that bad headlines run in Sue Gray’s family. After a week of newspaper reports suggesting that Keir Starmer’s…

Keir Starmer’s mission impossible

17 August 2024 9:00 am

Labour backbenchers have spent years dreaming of the day they are in power and get ‘the call’ from the Prime…

Starmer’s first big test

10 August 2024 9:00 am

During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I…

Save our grey belt!

3 August 2024 9:00 am

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?

3 August 2024 9:00 am

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

3 August 2024 9:00 am

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

27 July 2024 9:00 am

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

21 July 2024 11:12 pm

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?

21 July 2024 9:02 pm

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

20 July 2024 9:00 am

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?

20 July 2024 9:00 am

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

13 July 2024 9:00 am

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

5 July 2024 9:55 pm

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?

29 June 2024 9:00 am

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?

19 June 2024 4:49 am

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

8 June 2024 9:00 am

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

30 May 2024 11:49 pm

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

30 May 2024 9:16 pm

The problem with spending an election campaign saying as little new as possible is that it does leave a big…

Starmer purges the Corbynites

30 May 2024 7:16 pm

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?

26 May 2024 4:30 pm

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

26 May 2024 8:00 am

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

25 May 2024 5:21 pm

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

9 May 2024 2:58 am

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

3 May 2024 12:07 am

Over the past few years Wes Streeting has established himself as one of the more open-minded and reasonable members of…