Local elections
Letters: Yvette Cooper for PM!
Bet on Yvette Sir: Were Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham or Wes Streeting to succeed Sir Keir (‘After Starmer’,…
Which animals are older than David Attenborough?
Travel sickness Three people were reported to have died in an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship returning to…
In the local elections, think local
In March, just before Artemis II rounded the far side of the Moon, the Transport Secretary had her own lunar…
March of the Greenshirts: Polanski’s party are the real racists
‘Back us to stop the far right,’ say the Greens. But what if parts of the Greens are the far…
With a shudder, I’m voting Labour in the local elections
You may be disturbed by a column urging whites (among others) to vote as a bloc in the coming local…
How many people undergo security vetting?
Balls to that Why are elections called ‘ballots’? — The word ballot comes from the Italian, pallotta, meaning a small…
‘Even Corbyn at his worst never lost here’: how bad will it be for Labour in Wales?
Of all Labour’s heartlands, none has more mythos or magic than Wales. Its history of pits and pulpits produced Nye…
My apology to Reform
I have read countless commentaries explaining why we shouldn’t take Reform’s victories last Thursday too seriously. They are all wrong.…
The secret behind Reform’s local election campaign
It is an irony of Brexit that, since we left the EU, British politics has become more European. The local…
Real life
An angry text exchange between me and a former Tory councillor after she lost her seat has got me thinking.…
Who is more upset about Labour’s results: Starmer or the BBC?
It’s not just the Labour Party which is institutionally incapable of understanding why the Conservative Party kicked the hell out…
Andy Burnham makes life more difficult for Starmer
As Keir Starmer spends the weekend working out how exactly to bounce back from disappointing results for his party in the…
Andy Street’s success is part of the English political realignment
Andy Street won the West Midlands mayoralty in 2017 by the slimmest of margins, with 50.4 percent of the vote…
The ‘mandate wars’ won’t be resolved anytime soon
So what does it all mean? The first thing to bear in mind is that more than one thing may…
Can the UK government navigate the SNP’s calls for a second referendum?
The Unionist tactical voting in Scotland makes it tempting to see the country as split down the middle between pro-independence…
Welsh Labour proves again it’s a distinctive, winning brand
After the news of a Tory landslide in Hartlepool was announced early Friday morning, senior Welsh Labour figures were worried.…
Real life
Being told by the Tories not to put a local election poster in my window because it will only remind…
How bad will the local elections be for the Tories?
Next week, the Tories will face their first big electoral test since failing to deliver Brexit on time. On Thursday,…
Red London: Labour is poised to take the capital
Ever since last year’s general election, when Jeremy Corbyn inspired the strongest Labour surge since 1945, the Conservatives have been…
