Labour
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…
My late husband’s insatiable appetite for ‘sticky willies’
Labour’s just deserts Sir: Last week’s leader hit the nail on the head (‘Desperate retreat’, 16 May). You have to…
Is Al Carns rich enough for the Romans?
Some Labour MPs are demanding that Colonel Alistair Carns, a former Royal Marine who served in the military for 24…
Apart from Mandelson, who is Labour’s biggest freebie lover?
Keir Starmer is Labour’s king of freebies. He promised to clean up politics, but has accepted more free stuff than…
‘It’ll be a photo finish’: inside the Gorton and Denton by-election
British by-elections are often prolonged affairs, dragging on for months. Yet in the Manchester seat of Gorton and Denton –…
Nick Thomas-Symonds: ‘The Brexit architects essentially ran away’
With his owlish expression and affable manner, Nick Thomas-Symonds looks more like the academic that he was, rather than the…
Labour’s war on heritage
Britain’s heritage is slowly going up in smoke. Medlock Mill was Manchester’s oldest standing textile mill until it burnt down…
Starmer has bought himself time. Can he use it wisely?
The Labour conference in Liverpool was a curiously upbeat affair. Much of the good spirit came from schadenfreude at the…
Inside Zarah Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ rally
The ‘nonce party.’ That’s how Zarah Sultana described the Labour party at a rally in Brixton last night where the…
Emily Thornberry for deputy!
They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but I have a better serving suggestion. How about revenge plated…
Angela Rayner’s not-so-scandalous ‘third home’
Angela Rayner, it’s reported, has bought a ‘third home’. The three-bedroom seaside flat on the south coast that she has…
Can Reform beat the blob?
Shortly after he was elected as Britain’s youngest council leader last month, 19-year-old George Finch of Reform UK had a…
How Labour governments always end
Couldn’t we just skip to the end? I’m old enough to have seen this so often: must I sit through…
Kemi’s one chance at recovery? Trussonomics
You may have noticed that for some while the BBC News people have stopped referring to Reform UK as ‘far…
The problem with Keir Starmer’s pledges
Keir Starmer still clearly misses opposition. He spent almost as much of his reset speech complaining about the Tories and…
Labour can’t help Kamala Harris
The news that Labour is sending volunteers to assist Kamala Harris’s campaign is an outrage. In what world is it…
Labour’s first 100 days: the verdict
This Saturday marks Labour’s 100th day in office. But they are unlikely to be popping champagne corks in Downing Street…
Does Keir Starmer have a soul?
One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations.…
The sugared-almond theory of economic consequence
Let me ease you gently into a big and boring-sounding word for a small dishonesty that today corrupts the language…
Morgan McSweeney is the new Peter Mandelson
It’s an iron law of politics that when the staffer becomes the story they have to go. Dominic Cummings had…
Who’d be an MP now?
Sir Keir Starmer offered a sausage to fortune when he let Lord Alli bankroll half the cabinet. One’s heart does…
Wes Streeting is convincing, but where’s his plan?
This Labour conference has largely been about Keir Starmer and his ministers making the argument for what they are doing,…
Keir Starmer needs to sell his government
Keir Starmer has his big speech today at Labour conference and, like Rachel Reeves’s offering yesterday, the Prime Minister plans…
