Labour Party
National insecurity
The government’s floundering over China is a gift to Labour
Labour vs the unions
The Labour party is preparing for power and the unions are deciding what role they might play. Friend or foe?…
Team work
Jonathan Ashworth on Labour’s plans to cut unemployment
Can Labour win back Scotland?
When the political cabinet met on Tuesday, by-elections were on the agenda. The Prime Minister is facing four of them.…
Is Labour bluffing on Lords reform?
Is Labour really going to reform the House of Lords? The party has ended up in a bit of a…
Red Rishi
The Tories are trying on Labour’s clothes
The Ely agenda
‘There’s a lot of societal issues in Ely,’ said an anonymous caller to BBC Radio Wales the morning after the…
A Lib-Lab coalition would be hilarious
Talk of a new Labour-Lib Dem coalition is in the air. This is piquantly nostalgic to those of us whose…
After 50 years: where next for VAT?
What is the appropriate act to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Value Added Tax in the UK? Are we celebrating?…
Is it time to ban second jobs for MPs?
There are some genres of newspaper story that never die. Among them are sightings of Lord Lucan, public moralists discovered…
Things can always get worse
As I was saying, way back in July, it is hard to love the Conservative party. Every time it tries…
Diary
In Singapore last week, I was asked: do ministers just come in, reach for the dumbest available policy and go…
Politics and prejudice
The Labour party’s contribution to the national debate this week has included the idea that someone can be ‘superficially’ black.…
Portrait of the week
Home Kwasi Kwarteng, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, presented a far-reaching ‘fiscal event’ (ineligible to be called a Budget), said…
‘We’re so close’
Cautious optimism at the Labour party conference
After Boris
Boris Johnson has so dominated politics for the past few years that it is hard to imagine things without him.…
British politics is stuck
One of the favourite phrases of British political commentators is ‘oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them’. As with all…
After Keir
What’s next for Labour – and the Tories?
Has Putin saved Boris?
It was with some relief that I heard that Labour’s Diane Abbott was opposed to the Russian invasion of Croatia,…
Boris’s surprising saviour
Boris Johnson has a lot of people to thank for his survival in 10 Downing Street, but Keir Starmer should…
Crisis? What crisis?
When a political party is hit by a crisis, the tendency these days is for both the politicians and their…
Business rates reform: for once, a useful Labour idea
A worthwhile policy proposal amid the Labour conference dogfight? Now there’s a surprise. But shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves’s scheme to…
Portrait of the week
Home The crisis of the week was a shortage of fuel at garages. ‘There is no need for people to…
Its own opposition
Labour’s conference was all about in-fighting
Labour has gone back to 1983
One day quite soon someone at a petrol pump is going to get a tyre iron wrapped around their head.…
