Labour
Portrait of the week
Home The British economy grew by 0.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2015, the slowest quarterly growth for…
Here’s everything Islamophobic that I have to say, all at once
A couple of weeks back I wrote an article headed: ‘Call me insane, but I’m voting Labour.’ Among the many…
Russell Brand’s heart is in the right place – but it’s not the place he talks out of
I write at a difficult time. The balls are in the air, but we know not where they will land.…
Welcome to Miliband country: how Labour would wreck rural life
A ‘progressive alliance’ would be a profound threat to rural life
If you thought politics was boring, you should check out today’s political theatre
How has political theatre fared during the coalition? Not very well, writes Lloyd Evans
Portrait of the week
Home The prospect of a parliamentary alliance between Labour and the Scottish National Party injected an element of fear into…
Spectator letters: England’s defining myth, and another forgotten genocide
Enemies within Sir: I thought Matthew Parris was typically incisive in his last column, but perhaps not quite as much…
Why so many bankers secretly like Labour’s non-dom proposal
The interesting thing about Labour’s pledge to abolish non-dom tax status — a squib designed to trap Tories into expressing…
Portrait of the week
Home Launching the Conservative party manifesto, David Cameron, the party leader, told voters he wanted to ‘turn the good news…
David Starkey’s diary: Why don’t we celebrate the triumphs of private dentistry?
To the dentist. And for an extraction. I hadn’t had a tooth out in decades. But the twinges when I…
Call me insane, but I’m voting Labour
Quite often when I deliver myself of an opinion to a friend or colleague, the reply will come back: ‘Are…
Won't somebody please try to win this election?
The age of two-party politics is over: we know that because everyone keeps saying so. We are entering an era…
Is this election a Champions League game? Or Millwall vs Brighton?
I’ve been trying to think of a good football analogy to describe the battle between the two main parties as…
The election result that everyone expects – and no one wants
To form a coalition, David Cameron had to give up the Prime Ministerial prerogative to determine when the election was…
Why are so many men on diets? I blame feminists
According to Jenni Russell, my colleague at the Times, David Cameron has lost 13lb since Christmas, mainly by giving up…
Alex Salmond sets out his terms for Ed Miliband
‘Would you like a glass of pink champagne?’ asks Alex Salmond at 3.30 p.m., sounding very much like a man…
How (and why) we lie to ourselves about opinion polls
A strange ritual takes place on Twitter most evenings at around 10.30 p.m. Hundreds of political anoraks start tweeting the…
The real threat to Britain (and it’s not the SNP)
What a load of mendacious balls everybody talks about Scotland. It’s like a disease. It’s like, you know how they…
Andy Burnham interview: 'I wanted a different approach, because I'm mainstream Labour'
Andy Burnham on the NHS, ‘mainstream Labour’ and his party’s leadership
If you really love the NHS, you know it needs to change
To adapt Aeschylus’s aphorism on war and truth, the first casualty in a general election campaign is objectivity. Over the…
No one wants to fight a national campaign. This will be the least general election in years
There’s normally an easy way to tell which party is losing a general election campaign. Whenever one side starts telling…
Why an SNP surge at Westminster could mean the end of Britain
A landslide for the SNP will inevitably lead to the end of the Union
Even the people who make political adverts aren’t sure they work
It is a common prejudice about modern politics that it is all focus groups and spin, all public relations and…
Immigration, not money, will improve Scotland's most deprived schools
I suppose we should be thankful that Nicola Sturgeon has acknowledged there’s a problem with Scotland’s public education system, even…
How Labour lost Scotland (and could lose the Union)
Just four months ago Scotland was the scene of great cross-party co-operation — unprecedented in peace-time politics. Gordon Brown was…
