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Anne McelvoyThe Guardian |
To govern is to choose between disadvantages, as the wily General de Gaulle diagnosed. Keir Starmer is less categoric. At the Lord Mayor’s white-tie...
The early months of this Government have been rock and roll – and not in a Rolling Stones kind of way. Sore heads about rising taxes and farmland...
Rod Stewart is playing Glastonbury next year at the age of 80, beating Stevie Wonder, rumoured to also be performing, at a mere 74. Elton John did his...
Brexit, to many European leaders at the time and since, has been a swearword. On my professional shuttles between Brussels, Berlin and Paris, it’s a...
Britain has had a sleepy agricultural lobby compared with more excitable European counterparts. Occasionally, the pro-hunting and shooting Countryside...
The Keir-miles are mounting fast. A leader whose previous experience of the world beyond Holborn and St Pancras and legal London was limited to human...
Six thousand miles away from Washington, DC, the ghost of a Donald Trump victory hangs in the oil-tinged air on the Caspian Sea at the COP29 climate...
Democratic campaign merch, like Kamala Harris’s election bid, is now in the clearance bin – in the airport gift shop in Washington DC, I spotted a...
So much for the anticipation of a “first gentleman”. One consequence of electing another male White House incumbent is that the tradition of...
The Spectator editor’s office comes with a battered antique leather chair and distressed sofa so old that I can remember sitting on it when I worked...
Sitting in a parliamentary office with Kemi Badenoch shortly before the close of the Tory vote last week, two things struck me. The first was that...
The style was brisk, the pussy bow blouse had echoes of the Margaret Thatcher Powerfrau era – but alas it proved a bit droopy in the heat of the...
It looked like an election devoid of an “October surprise” – the kind of last-minute turnaround that could shift the White House race from...
Whose fault is the upcoming Budget – an event that will leave many more of us paying more tax? The run-up to Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s speech...
It is an image that channels chirpy, geezer gangsters on TV: a convicted armed kidnapper released early from jail in Kent yelling, “big up Keir...
In his recent memoir, Tony Blair retells an American joke for election season. A politician arrives at the pearly gates and St Peter offers him a...
No one wishing for a quiet life would suggest voting for Kemi Badenoch in the Conservative leadership race. One of the last two competitors for the...
The Government’s skirmish with DP World, the large Dubai-based investor to the UK, has ended in a peace treaty at the expense of the Transport...
A year on from the Hamas’s attack on Israel, most of us can remember the anxiety and horror of the days afterwards as the images of human carnage...
Well, that was quick. As Keir Starmer nears his 100 days milestone, a pinnacle used by incoming governments to declare their early successes and point...
On it rumbles, the quarrel about donations to support trendy prime ministerial spectacles, posh frocks for the the first lady of No 10, freebies to...
It was the battle for second place – the chance for the vice presidential contenders to amplify their respective campaigns. Tim Walz, the stolid...
For the depleted tribe of Tory members, a thin crowd of diehard acolytes and the weary leadership candidate teams arriving at the party’s Birmingham...
There’s never much va-va-voom about Keir Starmer’s rhetoric, which is heavily dependent on well-trodden metaphor. After the “sunlight of hope”...
It has often been claimed in this election year that “violence has no place” in American politics. Reality begs to differ: the election season got...
Keir Starmer is bedding into the less enjoyable side of being Prime Minister. This weekend, it is a cash-for-dresses moment over alleged failures to...
‘Expect the unexpected” is the bland but pointed advice given by the evasive editor of the Daily Beast to the bemused William Boot, accidental...
Given the propensity of both sides to project a winning streak, it is often clearer to ask who lost a campaign debate than who won it. Donald Trump...
The art of power play in the Royal Family has taken many forms down the centuries. In the case of the Princess of Wales, a video happily announcing...
This Tuesday will see the first thunderclap disrupting the “sunlight of hope” promised by Keir Starmer after his July victory. Having foregrounded...
It’s a disconcerting sign of how Germany’s expectations have shifted that the far-right Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD) first place result...
I woke up just before Oasis tickets went on sale, opened up two browsers and settled into a stupor of checking if we had made it to the front of...
Keir Starmer went to Berlin this week aiming for a semi-success. A trip to Germany so early in his tenure is intended to signal seriousness about a...
It was billed as the great debate of the 2024 US election – the electoral equivalent of Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier’s epic boxing clash in the...
The Tory chumocracy is dead, long live Labour’s fast-track scheme for its friends. The first weeks in office are busy ones behind the doors of No 10...
In a country that prides itself on escaping the social strictures of pre-independence, British-dominated America, the Democratic Convention is proving...
Bye Joe, hello Kamala. President Biden’s farewell at the Democratic National Convention was a stirring and, at times, tearful valedictory in front...
Kamala Harris’s travel plans to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago began when her role was simply to whip up support for a faltering...
Asked why he robbed banks, an apocryphal serial robber was said to have replied, “because that’s where the money is”. A similar logic is on...
No sooner had Keir Starmer dealt with a damaging outbreak of violence at home than he found himself in another fight as the rhetorical target of...
The first place a smart but inexperienced new leader should look when crisis flares and criticism laps at the Downing Street door is in the mirror. No...
It’s on: the televised debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on the ABC network a month from now, location and format TBD, fireworks and...
Whatever might befall the Kamala Harris campaign after her choice of Minnesota governor Tim Walz as running mate today, it will not be for want of...
A wry 19th century American discussing changes of government said that they resembled a journey by stagecoach: the best that could be said was that...
The Cold War roll call of prisoner swaps began in earnest in 1962, with the exchange of Rudolf Abel and Francis Gary Powers at the Glienicke Bridge...
The unravelling of Huw Edwards is a moment of deep trouble for the BBC, its most senior news managers and executives and the Director General himself....