Labour
No election? Don’t bet on it
When Dwight D. Eisenhower had to decide whether to launch the D-Day armada he kept a close eye on the…
Andy Burnham cannot solve Labour’s Gaza problem
Prime Ministers usually wait until they have been in office a little while before issuing apologies. Andy Burnham made one…
Andy Burnham is a joke
Can I shock you? I like Andy Burnham. Not in a gay way. More that, when he comes on the…
Burnham is trying to do a Brown
Tomorrow, Andy Burnham will become Britain’s 59th Prime Minister. The team around him has been strikingly circumspect when it comes…
Labour politicians make the pilgrimage to St Andy
Warm wine, small talk and curling canapés have long defined the Westminster summer scene. But regime change has added a…
Beware Andy Burnham’s ‘devolution revolution’
Andy Burnham is a lucky politician. And Nigel Farage has just given him another piece of surprising good fortune. The…
The real story of Manchesterism isn’t the one Andy Burnham is telling
‘Manchesterism,’ Andy Burnham declared in his Makerfield by-election campaign video, ‘is the end of neoliberalism.’ The path to power, he…
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…
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…






























