As Labour gather in Liverpool, in an attempt to regain some moral credibility after a dire first few months in power, a storm is gathering on Starmer’s Left. For now it lacks the media spotlight of donor-funded birthday parties and …
Sue Gray’s deadly grip on Starmer
It should not be this bad, this early. Nowhere near. And yet it is — it really is. For the Labour Party, barely two months into government, preparing for conference, it is time to panic.
While there is an understandable …
Inside Starmer’s feuding No. 10
“Who is gripping?” With these three words, the late Jeremy Heywood ruled Whitehall. The demand would stir his aides into action: calls would be made, emails sent, each carrying the imprimatur of the Cabinet Secretary and with it, the person …
Inside Starmer’s feuding No. 10
“Who is gripping?” With these three words, the late Jeremy Heywood ruled Whitehall. The demand would stir his aides into action: calls would be made, emails sent, each carrying the imprimatur of the Cabinet Secretary and with it, the person …
Starmer has revealed his weakness over Israel
Power corrupts, famously — but it also reveals. With each decision a political leader takes, we catch a glimpse of the instincts which guide them. The same is true of Keir Starmer’s decision to revoke arms licences to Israel, the …
Labour’s war on pleasure
Was England ever merry? We’re stagnant, divided, increasingly heavily taxed, and even our Prime Minister promises it’s going to get worse. Barely two months into a premiership in which he promised to “tread more lightly” upon the lives of Britons, …
Can Labour avoid the stench of scandal?
Keir Starmer is clearly no Lynn Anderson fan. On Tuesday, he stood in the Downing Street Rose Garden, addressing assembled public sector workers, and promised that “this garden and this building are back in your service”. He said this with …
The sisterhood is a feminist lie
What is the collective noun for female Labour MPs? The question arose anew last week as 13 politicians glammed up for a Vogue article and accompanying photo shoot.
Written in the hagiographic style beloved of women’s glossies, the piece presents …
Starmer needs the strength of Thatcher
We are witnessing a breakdown of order with few obvious parallels in recent British history. There have been moments of resemblance, of course: the London riots of 2011 or the “skinhead terror” of the early Seventies. The clashes between Oswald …
How Britain ignored its ethnic conflict
Following the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, the aftermath, like those of other recent terrorist atrocities, was marked by what later revealed to be a coordinated British government policy of “controlled spontaneity”. Pre-planned vigils and inter-faith events were rolled out, …
Will the police ever protect women?
“The police are still struggling to get the basics right.” So stated Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspectorate of Constabulary, in his annual assessment of the state of policing in England and Wales, published last week, highlighting particular failures relating …
Keir Starmer’s war on mothers
As their swift suspensions indicated, Keir Starmer can probably cope with a rebellion of “pissed-off” Labour MPs over his failure to commit to scrapping the two-child benefit cap. But when even Suella Braverman, the Right-winger that right-thinkers love to hate, …
Keir Starmer’s favourite radical socialist
Modern politics is a business that obliterates the self. It turns its winning practitioners into one-dimensional media-facing personalities schooled for the soundbite and the photo-op. Yet plenty of voters, and news outlets with gnat-sized attention spans, still hanker for glimpses …
What Roger Scruton can teach Starmer
Not long into David Cameron’s first term as Prime Minister, the conservative philosopher Roger Scruton refounded an old Tory dining club that had, for a short time in the Seventies, exerted an outsized influence on British politics. The Conservative Philosophy …
How snobbery killed suburbia
The new Labour government’s day one commitment to a vast national housebuilding effort has been almost uniformly welcomed, yet there are some glaring exceptions. Naturally, the rump Corbynite Left is grouching on social media that plans to work with private …