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Polly ToynbeeThe Guardian |
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
“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...
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...
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....
It is the very worst of taxes. (Probably – there’s tough competition for that title.) Council tax is, as it stands, “indefensible” says the...
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...
Feuding parties never win, No 10’s flailing political guru, Isaac Levido, warned rebellious MPs last week. Though the prime minister’s position is...
Why would they do that? The sheer perversity is incomprehensible. Just when ministers and the opposition call for more community treatment to prevent...
Any government would take fright at the astonishing rise in people on disability benefits. It began pre-pandemic, but really shot up afterwards. Rishi...
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...
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)...
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...
Just as I sat down to write this, yet another one thumped into my inbox. “£28bn every year … Labour have not changed – their irresponsible...
This is where the housing pressure-cooker explodes. This is Manchester’s civil court, like others all across England, where people are made...
After her suicide and the coroner’s judgment, Ruth Perry’s name will mark not just the downfall of Ofsted’s reign of fear, but an end to the...
Notwithstanding the sound and fury of the Conservative party descending into more mayhem, pledging to cut immigration will not be its saviour. If the...
Free childcare! Thirty hours a week from nine months until primary school was the eye-catcher in the chancellor’s spring budget. Was this, finally,...
The country staggers under the effects of austerity, Brexit and extreme mismanagement of just about everything, ensuring Covid and the ramifications...
The bond is breaking between many children, parents and schools, with rising absences and more disruption. Even allowing for post-pandemic mental...
Winter is coming, as it always does, and the NHS creaks and groans. The chancellor will not tomorrow hand over the £1bn it needs to cover the cost of...
What flavour of government have we here? Amid this week’s drama at the eviction of Suella Braverman, there has been too much talk of a U-turn back...
The home secretary, queen of the anti-woke, is gone, again. Her grandstanding infuriated many colleagues, yet most of them share the same sinking...
Here we go again, tightening the screw and lengthening prison sentences to please that insatiable appetite among some voters for locking up more...
The silk bag holds the government’s plans not just for a year but for “the next 70”, says the prime minister, whose sands of time are fast...
Let “the bodies pile high in their thousands”, Boris Johnson supposedly said. Not once but often, the Covid inquiry has heard that he was for...
Day after day we watch the pulverising of Gaza as deaths reach more than 8,300 according to the Hamas-run health ministry; thousands more are certain...
There have been times when I (very secretly) wished women had never got the vote. In nearly every election from 1945 to 2015, more women voted Tory...
The lasting influence of some children’s books is one of the ironies of literary life – when considered alongside their lowly status, and the much...
A doomed party in freefall loses whatever shred of sanity it had left. After byelections that show no seat is safe, Tory MPs shriek at the pilot, turn...
In a darkening world, a radiant beam shines out from Poland. Look, it is possible to push back the authoritarian populist tide. Extreme rightwingers...
I delight in messages from UK Biobank, making me feel useful for minimal effort. Back in 2006, with half a million others aged between 40 and 69, I...
H ere’s one dog that didn’t bark at Labour’s conference, amid the clapping and the sparkling. Only a few months ago, Keir Starmer’s refusal to...
T here is a case for changing the post-16 curriculum in English schools. Education is devolved, but the Northern Irish, Scottish and Welsh governments...
H olding their breath, curbing their enthusiasm, Labour people do their best not to burst out singing. High command bans glee and gloating, yet...
“R ishi Sunak is a man in a hurry,” briefs his Downing Street press secretary. Yes, indeed: Tory prime minister No 5, your time is nearly up. But...
“I want to scare the shit out of you,” Frank Luntz, a focus-grouper to the US right, proclaimed to the Tory party audience. He hardly needed to....
W inter is coming, and it will be harsher. People in “negative income”, whose incomings don’t cover their bills, are about to be hit even...
Rishi Sunak has brandished the starting gun for the election, but “cutting the green crap” has misfired badly. The national mood is unlikely to...