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Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee

The Guardian

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At last, the chance to legalise assisted dying in the UK – and end the untold, unnecessary anguish

Every Labour government forges ahead with life-changing liberal reforms, and this one will be no exception. Expect the right to die to be one of this...

yesterday 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

A whole new community on the site of a defunct power station near Erewash? Yes, please

When Keir Starmer promises that his new government will “bulldoze” through the planning system as “the builders not the blockers”, there is...

23.07.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Starmer will bin the two-child benefit cap and outdo New Labour on tackling poverty – I’ll bet on it

I will eat my hat – or several – if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don’t soon find the money to bury the pernicious two-child benefit cap. The...

19.07.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I went to see how the Tories are handling defeat – and found Faragism and a total lack of reflection

The Bruges Group celebrated its 35th anniversary last week in the august portals of the Army and Navy club in Pall Mall in central London. The group...

16.07.2024 90

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour will rightly be judged by how it fixes our problems. But never forget who left the UK in such a rotten state

Lest we forget, here is an audit of the state of the country Labour inherits. Pin it up, brand it into public memory so no one can forget the...

12.07.2024 80

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Cleaning up our fetid politics is Keir Starmer’s toughest task yet. Here’s how he can do it, fast

Winning the election was almost easy compared with the next task Keir Starmer has set himself. “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our...

08.07.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Celebrate: we have waited so long for this routing of the Tories. An unbearably rare moment of pure political joy

Hallelujah and hosanna! (If not now, when?) At the stroke of 10, the country knew it had liberated itself from the most contemptible government in...

05.07.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Could central London, headquarters of God and mammon, really be turning red?

A red glow spreading across the land may be so bright you could see it from space, if polling predictions are right. In that Labour flare, let’s...

28.06.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I went looking for the few remaining Tory voters. They don’t want Farage, but they don’t want Sunak either

Who are the people who will still vote Tory? True, there are not many left, but a solid core of 20% of the population will opt for more of the same,...

18.06.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Europe is lurching right on immigration. Despite Farage and Sunak’s best efforts, Britain will not follow

There’s turmoil in the EU as the far right advances. Macron risks all, trusting that people vote in protest for the remote EU parliament, but vote...

11.06.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Infant mortality is rising and births are plummeting. This is the legacy of 14 years of Tory cruelty

In all the sound and fury of the election, annual statistics land unnoticed. Yet these grim Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures are the best...

07.06.2024 60

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I’ll welcome a Labour victory and a brighter future, but Britain deserves a better election than this

Another month to go: can we bear it? Brainless dishonesty, puerile insults, false accusations, the whole charade takes us for idiots. The more...

04.06.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Memo to Labour amid the Diane Abbott debacle: stop the pointless rows, stop making enemies

Whatever your view of Diane Abbott, or your view of Keir Starmer, there has plainly been a serious blunder in Labour’s campaign when her treatment...

01.06.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The pensioners’ party plays its last moth-eaten card: national service for the young

When the Tories reach the very bottom of their bad ideas barrel, they come up with a dead rat plan for conscription. The notion is so decrepit that...

27.05.2024 60

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour’s top brass know the election battle will be brutal, but they can hardly believe their luck

Here is the one and only great service Rishi Sunak could perform for his country. Nothing so became him as the leaving of office, despite the deluge....

23.05.2024 60

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I have finally mastered a TikTok recipe for bao buns – but they take almost five hours

I have been following the rise of the bao bun very keenly – the pallid little puffballs are enjoying a boom in Britain’s snack sector – on...

21.05.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

At a festival for the super-rich, the argument for higher taxes couldn’t have been clearer

The Elite London, described as the city’s “most exclusive jet-set lifestyle event”, filled Wycombe Air Park with row after row of gleaming...

21.05.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The Tories’ war on foreign students isn’t for the good of the country – it’s about saving their own skins

A key turning point in British politics was Tony Blair’s famous three priorities: “education, education, education”. A giant step was his...

17.05.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I’ve seen how firms cheat the law to exploit workers and here’s a warning: those days are ending

How did Labour let its most life-transforming policy get more publicity for its suspected “watering down” than it ever got for the policy itself?...

14.05.2024 60

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Keir Starmer should be embracing the Tories’ disgruntled voters – not their turncoat MPs

No, no, this is an uncharacteristic mistake. Keir Starmer’s welcoming hand on Natalie Elphicke’s shoulder is a picture his enemies will relish as...

09.05.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Rachel Reeves is right: this government is gaslighting us over the economy

Labour’s tanks roll relentlessly across Tory lawns, not pausing a heartbeat to celebrate phenomenal local election results in England. It treated...

07.05.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

How old is too old? I’m 77 and I don’t know yet. But I will when I get there

How old is old? That depends on how old you are, for as you age you will nudge that number upwards. A recent German study asked people over the age of...

04.05.2024 90

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The right’s Brexit ‘bonfire of red tape’ was just wind and smoke. And even Tories want more regulation now

As the sewage-filled waters start to close over the heads of Torydom, their Tufton Street thinktankers carry on like the orchestra on the Titanic. In...

02.05.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

It’s Sunak’s doom loop: the more desperate and cruel the Tories become, the more voters reject them

The prime minister rounds up asylum seekers on the eve of local elections, not to sway voters but to appease the hyenas lurking on his backbenches. He...

30.04.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The Tories’ poisonous anti-culture politics has crushed the arts. Bring on election night

A culture change is on the way when this moribund government of the living dead is gone. Clock-watching, we wait for that witching hour on election...

26.04.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The expansion of free childcare has been a Tory-fied mess of a bright Labour idea

Panic and a screeching U-turn. The prime minister dismissed claims there were too few nursery places for every two-year-old in England (with working...

23.04.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Let’s end the annual torture of GCSE resits – and give students qualifications they’ll actually use

That time of year approaches when we ritually sacrifice 40% of our 16-year-olds to mark them down as failures. Exam season is coming up – that...

19.04.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Jammed 999 lines and not enough ambulances to go round: come see the sharp end of this NHS crisis

This is a sick country, getting sicker. NHS waits will take years to clear, if at all. While people wait, they get sicker. When more and more people...

17.04.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The manifesto Britain needs The Tories have sucked the joy from the education system. Here are three ways Labour can bring it back

Children became unhappier in the past decade, according to the annual Good Childhood report. The number of eight to 16-year-olds with mental health...

29.02.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Most Britons say poor people deserve support. So what do Sunak’s Tories do? Cut, cut, cut

The alarm sounds over and over again. Every organisation concerned with the cost of living and children going without is trying to alert the public to...

27.02.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The Commons needed to focus on the horror in Gaza. Instead this was a grubby game of political chess

A squalid day in parliament. The most important of debates was the most pointless and dishonest. It preached on the high ground and played politics in...

22.02.2024 3

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The Tory press can publish all the tax avoidance guides they like – the rich won’t flee a Labour government

It’s a done deal – just about. Down at the bookies, you can get 14/1 on a Tory majority at the next general election, while betting on Labour to...

20.02.2024 60

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The Tory press can publish all the tax evasion guides they like - the rich won’t flee a Labour government

It’s a done deal – just about. Down at the bookies, you can get 14/1 on a Tory majority at the next general election, while betting on Labour to...

20.02.2024 9

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Revealed: Donald Trump’s secret to looking younger

16.02.2024 8

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The voters of Wellingborough and Kingswood said one thing with one voice: the Tory era is over

The rout of the Tories gallops on across the country, as yesterday the voters of Wellingborough and Kingswood stampeded away from them in yet more...

16.02.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

We’ve heard lots about what Labour won’t do, but here’s something they should: close the Tories’ tax loopholes

The prime minister’s tax return crept out with the house in recess. But the front page of the Financial Times splashed a blunt warning: “Sunak...

13.02.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Starmer’s £28bn green plan was bungled but Labour still has bold hopes for the country – and the planet

“Labour is running scared!” blasts the Telegraph. How did that happen? To see a party with an unswerving 20% lead chased away from its headline...

09.02.2024 60

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

First photo ID, now votes for expats: the Tories are showing us exactly what election rigging looks like

It may have passed you by that last week was Welcome to Your Vote week, encouraging sixth-formers to get excited about a vote denied to them. “We...

06.02.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Guardian Opinion cartoon Ben Jennings on Labour’s refusal to reinstate the bankers’ bonus cap – cartoon

01.02.2024 6

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

It’s time for Labour to kick back against the Tory attacks. This is where it should start

Like a hornet in the ear, that £28bn is buzzed into every voter. Tory central office sends out daily attack press releases that say nothing else....

01.02.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Wales has been brave enough to completely rethink the hated council tax. Take note, England

It is the very worst of taxes. (Probably – there’s tough competition for that title.) Council tax is, as it stands, “indefensible” says the...

30.01.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Banning prayer rituals in school? Just get religion out of education completely

Schools are too often the crucible in which social conflicts are fought out, with teachers expected to put right whatever we fail to fix in the world...

23.01.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Sunak is praying for the Lords to block the Rwanda bill – so he can blame the left

Feuding parties never win, No 10’s flailing political guru, Isaac Levido, warned rebellious MPs last week. Though the prime minister’s position is...

18.01.2024 4

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Ben Shankland is a GP, but the rightwing press would tell you he’s an enemy of the people. Don’t listen

Why would they do that? The sheer perversity is incomprehensible. Just when ministers and the opposition call for more community treatment to prevent...

16.01.2024 90

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Britain is a poorer, sicker place. No wonder disability claims have trebled in a decade

Any government would take fright at the astonishing rise in people on disability benefits. It began pre-pandemic, but really shot up afterwards. Rishi...

12.01.2024 80

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

As Sunak tumbles headlong into traps of his own making, all Labour needs to do is watch

Never interrupt your enemy when he’s making a mistake. So said Napoleon (though you would never know he ever had an interesting thought, judging by...

09.01.2024 9

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The six things Keir Starmer can do to restore our faith in politics – fast

In his first speech of 2024, the message from the man who will be prime minister this time next year (barring a large asteroid crashing into Earth)...

05.01.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Royal Mail has been heading for collapse for years. Now it can’t even deliver my Christmas present

It was nice of Royal Mail to send me a message. “Delivered”, it said. To prove it, there was a photo of my parcel on the doorstep. Except it...

22.12.2023 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Starmer’s £28bn green pledge is a vote winner. Labour must ignore Tory attacks and keep the faith

Just as I sat down to write this, yet another one thumped into my inbox. “£28bn every year … Labour have not changed – their irresponsible...

18.12.2023 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I spent a day in a court where ‘no-fault’ evictions reach 10 an hour. Whose fault is this, Rishi Sunak?

This is where the housing pressure-cooker explodes. This is Manchester’s civil court, like others all across England, where people are made...

15.12.2023 90

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

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