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Sebastian PayneFinancial Times |
Let’s be honest, no one in politics is particularly normal. People who put aside stable careers for a precarious existence where success is often...
From the moment he was proclaimed “Mr Rules”, Sir Keir Starmer set himself up for an almighty fall. Just as Rishi Sunak’s pledge to lead a...
“This can’t go on” is one of the most grating mantras in politics. Yet it’s one that often turns out to be true. When Boris Johnson first...
Back in the David Cameron era, when the Conservatives were still in power, two battle cries were heard at the Treasury when the Government was in a...
Where is Nigel Farage? When in doubt a good assumption is in America, doing all he can to support his compadre Donald Trump. He might be at home...
Tony Benn was no friend of Whitehall – and the antipathy was mutual. Reflecting on his difficult relationship with officialdom, the hero of the hard...
It’s not the most obvious nickname that comes to mind, but Robert Jenrick is the first Conservative leadership contender to acquire one. “Bobby...
Imagine a different world. The Bank of England still announced the first interest rate change in over a year yesterday, bringing rates down from a...
And without a bang, more of a social media ping, the Conservative leadership contest is off. Three contenders are now formally in the race to succeed...
“It is always an error in diplomacy to press a matter when it is quite clear that no further progress is to be made,” Winston Churchill prophesied...
Frank Luntz is the famed American pollster who actually understands Britain. It was he who first predicted that Conservative MPs with majorities of...
Is this a tale of two elections? Let’s start with Labour’s positive story: the Conservative Party faces a grinding spell in opposition after...
The incandescent ghost of Dr Ian Paisley is haunting the election. When Rishi Sunak went head to head with Sir Keir Starmer in the BBC debate this...
The decision to call an early election was always a gamble. But the stakes have been raised (pardon the obvious pun) after two Conservative candidates...
Apathy. No momentum. Low turnout. A general sense of disengagement. The result: a limp landslide that was baked in from the start and barely impacted...
It’s Tuesday 9 July and our new Parliament is gathering for the first time. Some old faces greet their colleagues after six tough weeks out on the...
Is it time to make plans for Nigel? What, if anything, the Conservatives should do about the Reform UK is being debated following Jacob...
Kate Forbes isn’t someone I’d typically rally to. We might be the same age and both take a great interest in politics. We’re also broadly...
The tension between Sadiq Khan and Susan Hall has finally erupted into real rancour. As the London mayoral race enters its final, critical week, the...
On 2 May only two names will matter. When large swathes of the country go to the polls for this year’s local elections, all eager Westminster eyes...
There is almost no debate more tribal, toxic or territorial than around trans issues. Often conducted on social media, through piecemeal posts and...
To leave or not to leave? That’s the question Rishi Sunak might soon have to answer when the Rwanda asylum plan returns to the political fore very...
It was the phrase that kick-started a presidency. Addressing the nation for the first time as leader, Donald Trump painted a dystopian, dark, sinister...
Will we ever stop talking about Rwanda? It’s rapidly coming up to two long years since Boris Johnson announced plans to off-shore processing of...
To understand Lee Anderson is to understand where he comes from. Ashfield in the East Midlands fits many of the stereotypes of the “Red Wall” that...
In the end, Jeremy Hunt had a bad hand and played it the best he could. Despite loading up with £10bn of tax cuts and some measures to boost growth,...
It’s Budget time once more, but how much does next week’s really matter? Is this the tentative pre-election fiscal event to merely set out the...
What a mess. The parliamentary shenanigans of Wednesday evening’s Israel-Gaza ceasefire vote may prove to be the downfall of Commons Speaker Sir...
“There’s no easy popularity in what we are proposing but it is fundamentally sound, I believe people accept there’s no real alternative.” So...
Elmo might just be the most astute political analyst of our times. When the Sesame Street star took to social media this week to ask how everyone...
After all that, it was not even a dozen. After months of darkening threats, both quiet and loud, Conservative MPs unhappy about the Safety of Rwanda...
The by-election bandwagon rolls again. The writ for Kingswood has been moved on Wednesday and another £200,000 or so will be spent electing an MP who...
For once, Sir Keir Starmer’s righteous indignation was correct. “You’re right to be anti-Westminster,” he fumed at an aeroplane factory this...
“It is a radical vision but it is also a realistic one,” so said Rishi Sunak two summers ago. Many want to forget the leadership wars of that...
What’s going to be the most important number in British politics next year? Three hundred and twenty-six? – the number of seats for a...
Harold Wilson was fixated on political plotting and intrigue. He spent much of the 1970s in a paranoid state about a notional secret cabal within the...
Larry Summers is no tubthumping right-winger. The former president of Harvard University has long-standing links to progressive American politics –...