Whitehall

What shape is the Treasury in now?

18 June 2022 9:00 am

Don’t bring a bottle. Your chances of finding a party in full swing down those chilly corridors are close to…

Snafu at Slough House: Bad Actors, by Mick Herron, reviewed

14 May 2022 9:00 am

Reviewers who make fancy claims for genre novels tend to sound like needy show-offs or hard-of-thinking dolts. So be it:…

Workshy Whitehall: why can’t the PM get his civil servants back to work?

23 April 2022 9:00 am

Too few civil servants are returning to the office

Is this the end of borrow and spend?

30 March 2022 2:00 am

Since the spring statement last week, Rishi Sunak has been dealing with complaints from all sides: the right have been…

Boris Johnson's survival rests on reforming Whitehall

10 July 2021 2:22 am

More than 40 years after it was written there are still lines in Yes Minister that are painfully accurate about how…

How is Britain going green? By shutting down industry

2 April 2016 9:00 am

A fortnight ago, the energy minister, Andrea Leadsom, declared grandly that Britain, alone in the world, would commit to a…

Osborne’s false prophet: why Jim O’Neill will never deliver a ‘northern powerhouse’

4 July 2015 9:00 am

Why Jim O’Neill isn’t fit to run the Northern Powerhouse

Dominic Cummings (who ought to know) is not impressed by Michael Barber, Tony Blair’s former adviser and self-styled ‘delivery man’

28 March 2015 9:00 am

In 2001, Tony Blair took Sir Michael Barber from his perch as special adviser in the Department for Education and…

David Cameron's misogynistic reshuffle

19 July 2014 9:00 am

The PM doesn’t want the new women in his cabinet to do anything but look nice

The spy who came in from le Carré

8 March 2014 9:00 am

The single most terrifying moment of my adult life occurred at 8.55 a.m. on the morning of Tuesday 5 August…