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Andrew RawnsleyThe Guardian |
Whatever you say about it, don’t call it a relaunch. Sir Keir Starmer will fanfare a new “Plan for Change” this Thursday and it is being bigged...
As slogans go, it is a tongue-twister. You wouldn’t want to try organising a chant of “Starmer Farmer Harmer” with a group who had been necking...
German politicians used to know where they were with their voters. If they gave you one term in power, they were likely to offer a second serving and...
Peas from the same pod they sure ain’t. No one is ever going to think that Keir Starmer and Donald Trump are twins who were separated at birth....
No one who knows her describes Kemi Badenoch as a politician who is much troubled by self doubt. Yet the manner of her victory in the Tory leadership...
It is a shocker that about 100 current and former Labour party staffers are hopping over the pond to campaign for Kamala Harris in swing states as the...
I have now heard so many Labour people quiver that Rachel Reeves’ looming budget is a “make or break” event that I’ve given up counting....
When I read people referring to the competition to be the next leader of the Tory party as “a beauty contest”, I reach for my red pen. It has more...
Over a cuppa in Liverpool, the Labour MP was getting nostalgic about the election campaign. Drivers would spot her on the street and stop their cars...
Should have gone to Specsavers. You don’t need £2,435-worth of designer glasses to see how corrosive it is to the government when the media,...
Sir Ed Davey celebrated a highly successful election night by belting out a cover of Sweet Caroline and his party is still feeling so good, so good,...
I hope he enjoyed it while it lasted. From being promisingly positive when he moved into Number 10, Sir Keir Starmer’s personal ratings have soured...
Every prime minister has their verbal tell-tales. “Reset” is a favourite Starmerism. When he visited Berlin last week to pave the way to a...
When a new prime minister crosses the threshold of Number 10, he or she receives briefings from the director general of MI5 and their counterpart at...
You think that the public finances are in a bad way? Tomorrow (Monday) Rachel Reeves will come to parliament to tell you different. No, the chancellor...
When Labour was in opposition, but looking very likely to be the next government, some intrepid explorers gathered together all the food and water...
For a man whose first speech to the new parliament expressed disdain for “the politics of performance”, Sir Keir Starmer is putting on quite the...
David Lammy likes to tell a story about sitting at his kitchen table with Sir Keir Starmer shortly after Labour’s cataclysmic defeat at the 2019...
Sir Keir Starmer is prime minister presumptive. Unless the polls are more wrong than they have ever been or there is a sensational late shift in...
I ought to have put money on it. When a downpour-drenched Rishi Sunak made his soggy start to this election, I suggested to you that the Tory campaign...
From the off, this election has been Labour’s to lose – and boy does it know it. Every indicator signposts victory, but Labour is fighting it as...
It is not so much the elephant in the room as the big fat hairy mammoth. Brexit is the most consequential thing the Conservatives have done since the...
Sir Ed Davey doesn’t mind acting the silly stunt. If it’s Tuesday, he’s on Windermere to demonstrate his absence of flair for paddleboarding by...
The defining image of the last general election was Boris Johnson driving a digger emblazoned with “Get Brexit Done” through a fake wall made of...
Who scares wins. That has been the motto of many, often successful Conservative election campaigns. Fear may not be an edifying strategy for securing...
I bring you exclusive news that another Tory MP is in negotiation with Sir Keir Starmer about defecting to Labour. As luck would have it, I can even...
The mayoral elections demonstrated that there is a way to win for a Conservative. This is to make out that you have nothing to do with the Tories. Of...
I’m not certain who minted the phrase, but it is an excellent one to describe the decade or so that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall and the...
James Daly, the Tory MP who pestered the Greater Manchester police into reopening inquiries into Angela Rayner, rather gave the game away when he was...
Talking about the prospect of a Labour government, some people sound like they are preparing the obituary before they have witnessed the birth. Sir...
Reader, I was there. It was shortly after 3am on 2 May 1997 when the Labour celebrations at the Royal Festival Hall turned from noisy exuberance at...
It has been such an atrocious six days for Rishi Sunak that his most lowering point was not Lee Anderson, the gargoyle the prime minister appointed as...
The polls will tighten. The polls will tighten. The polls WILL tighten. This has been the drumbeat banging away in the background of British politics...
Conservatives would usually be the first to complain when police officers are diverted from their duties tackling crime and maintaining order to...
Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since a speaker of the Commons stood down from its high chair with dignity and to applause. Being appointed...
Liz Truss, a name with which you will be painfully familiar if you have had to remortgage your home since she was prime minister, has claimed that...
I know a dead pledge when I see one, and I’m looking at one now. Labour’s green prosperity plan is history. It’s kicked the bucket, run down the...
What was unimaginable in the days of Jeremy Corbyn has become routine under Sir Keir Starmer. The rapprochement between Labour and capitalism was on...
A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Donald Trump. In London, Paris, Berlin and every other significant European capital, bar Moscow, the...
Sir Keir Starmer recently surprised some colleagues by telling them that he regards the time he has spent in parliament since he became a Labour MP as...
To the widely voiced reasons to admire Alan Bates, the heroically dogged leader of the campaign to achieve justice for the victims of the Post Office...
It is an occupational hazard of being leader of the Labour party to receive a lot of unsolicited advice from people who think they have a better idea...
One member of the cabinet likes to amuse himself at meetings with his civil servants by making ludicrous statements in order to test whether the...
What will be an appropriate epitaph to inscribe on the tombstone of this Conservative government? Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, came up with a...