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Robert Shrimsley

Robert Shrimsley

Financial Times

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The ECHR needs saving from itself

Rulings on climate and migration offer Europe’s populists a rallying cry against the court’s legitimacy

17.04.2024 10

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Labour has a great plan for winning — but for governing?

While Keir Starmer’s cautious strategy may reassure voters, the party needs a programme for what it will do in power

10.04.2024 4

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

‘Don’t knows’ will not save the Conservatives

But they could help turn a potential electoral catastrophe into a normal-sized defeat

03.04.2024 20

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

The frightening chill on free speech

In the tussle between good intentions and bad actors, society is in danger of losing sight of what it most needs to protect

27.03.2024 3

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Football-focused Tories have left Labour an open goal

State intervention in everything from childcare to small-town soccer clubs will help the opposition argue for even more

20.03.2024 7

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

How Labour would roll back the frontiers of Brexit

Keir Starmer is looking for ways to rebuild relations with the EU step by cautious step

13.03.2024 10

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

A payday loan of a Budget

Tax cuts now put off the reality of how to pay for them later — for both Jeremy Hunt and the shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves

06.03.2024 2

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Sunak risks more than defeat by not policing the Tories’ paranoid frontier

Conservatives must confront the inflammatory rhetoric of the right and resist the gravitational pull to the extremes

28.02.2024 10

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Parliament finds itself in a dangerous position after the Speaker’s intervention

MPs are asking whether Lindsay Hoyle’s procedural manoeuvre has made them more or less safe

22.02.2024 4

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

The Conservatives have been unwitting handmaidens to statism

The UK has experienced the steady and stealthy erosion of individual freedoms

14.02.2024 10

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Mandates are overrated — Keir Starmer just needs the win

Labour doesn’t need detailed pledges because if the party is voted in it will have scope for change

07.02.2024 5

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Rishi Sunak’s ‘Italian Job’ moment

Wobbles damage the prime minister but Tory critics have no solutions — and are implicated in the years of chaos

31.01.2024 7

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

SNP’s new strategy exposes nationalists’ desperation

Humza Yousaf cannot offer a convincing route to the independence his party demands

24.01.2024 9

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Politics is failing Britain’s universities

Both parties are in denial about the importance and the scale of the financial crisis in higher education

17.01.2024 4

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Why Starmer will not tread lightly on voters’ lives

Labour’s traditions of government activism are strong and the public will expect improvements in hollowed-out state services

10.01.2024 10

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

The clearest sign of a party pressing self-destruct

If the Conservatives won’t stand up for their record, they invite UK voters to agree that they deserve a long spell in opposition

20.12.2023 9

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Sunak’s Rwanda fight is really a battle for control of the Conservatives

The Brexit ultras resent the realism that the prime minister has sprinkled into government

13.12.2023 10

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

The Conservatives cannot get off the immigration hook

MPs’ fear of Reform UK, and the scale of the numbers, have led to tougher measures without political relief

06.12.2023 3

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Spare us the sanctimony on fit and proper media owners

The UAE-Telegraph deal should probably be blocked but the roll call of UK press barons is hardly one to shout about

29.11.2023 5

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

A Tory chancellor walks into a bar . . . 

Hunt has given the Conservatives a story to tell the voters but no one should assume it has a happy ending

22.11.2023 3

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Sunak, a ‘Brexity Cameron’, has handed his enemies a sword

Braverman may not be the beneficiary, but the right will now seek to blame the centre-right cabinet for election defeat

15.11.2023 8

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Sunak reshuffle shows a government running on empty

The prime minister picks a fight with the right as the pragmatists return

13.11.2023 9

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

The strategic confusion at the heart of Rishi Sunak’s final push

Embodying change worked for his more shameless predecessor but this prime minister has failed to make a break

08.11.2023 5

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

The perils of an unquestioning ‘album culture’ in politics

Labour’s row over the Israel-Hamas war is indicative of forcing an entire set of positions on supporters of both left and right

01.11.2023 9

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Forget the glitter — Starmer offers hope as a mechanic, not a magician

The first task of an opposition is to ensure the voters have a viable choice. Labour is electable and the credit for that is his

11.10.2023 3

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Sunak’s strategy makes Starmer the real election issue

The Conservatives cannot be a party of change, but they can destabilise Labour’s promises of being one

04.10.2023 3

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Sunak’s new strategy exposes 13 years of Tory failure

Any attempts at reinvention are hampered by a governing record the prime minister can’t escape

27.09.2023 7

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

Sunak’s Conservatives are betting too heavily on the past

There has been a breakdown in the economic promise that previously swung voters to the right as they got older

20.09.2023 7

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

The plot to smash the Conservative party

Either by starting a new party, or seeking to steer the existing Tories to the right, the populists are on the move

13.09.2023 10

Financial Times

Robert Shrimsley

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