Labour Party
Labour’s backwards steps on free speech
Free speech advocates like me need to stop talking about the meagre gains we made under the last government because…
Labour’s age of miracles
I am not yet eligible for the winter fuel allowance. Nor am I especially in favour of it, regarding it…
Portrait of the week: Sir Keir’s tax warning, Russian air attacks and another prisons crisis
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, speaking in the garden of 10 Downing Street, warned that the Budget in…
Is this Rachel Reeves’s idea of a programme for growth?
It is certainly true that the Labour party has been more than a little devious over the tax rises that…
The death of free speech in Britain
In Michel Houellebecq’s satirical novel Soumission, the French elite submits to Islamic rule rather than accept a National Front government.…
Are Labour about to u-turn on the winter fuel payment?
Could Labour be about to water down its removal of the winter fuel payment for pensioners? The chorus of muttering…
Things can only get worse for Keir Starmer
When Rishi Sunak announced a July election during a torrential downpour, one leftist wag played ‘Things Can Only Get Better’…
Now Sue Gray’s son is in the firing line
It seems that bad headlines run in Sue Gray’s family. After a week of newspaper reports suggesting that Keir Starmer’s…
Keir Starmer’s mission impossible
Labour backbenchers have spent years dreaming of the day they are in power and get ‘the call’ from the Prime…
Starmer’s first big test
During the election campaign, Keir Starmer confessed to taking Friday nights off. ‘I’ve been doing this for years – I…
Save our grey belt!
While working as a callow speechwriter for the Labour party in the mid-1980s, I suggested to a member of the…
Who’ll be blamed for Rachel Reeves’s tax hikes?
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt entered Downing Street with one mission: to clean up the public finances after Liz Truss’s…
Things can always get worse for the Tories
Before migrating to Wiltshire where I will be for August, I had a friendly dinner with a clutch of Conservative…
The intersectional feminist rewriting the national curriculum
The appointment of Becky Francis CBE to lead the Department for Education’s shake-up of the national curriculum is typical of…
Labour won’t spend outside fiscal rules, says Reeves
Chancellor Reeves adamant she will ‘make sure the sums add up’ Rachel Reeves gave an interview with Laura Kuenssberg this…
Will Reeves boost public sector pay?
As the dust around the election settles, a question Tory MPs and supporters still grapple with is why Rishi Sunak…
How to drown your sorrows
Age. At the Spectator party last week, the editor asked me how long I had been attending the festivity. I…
Can Starmer control his party?
Labour MPs ought to have been jubilant when they gathered for their weekly all-party parliamentary meeting on Monday. Most were…
Portrait of the Week: Starmer’s first steps, Biden’s wobble and Australia’s egg shortage
Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, appointed several ministers who are not MPs, but will be created life peers.…
Starmer’s ruthless efficiency has risks
A couple of years ago, an anecdote about Keir Starmer did the rounds at Westminster. The story was that when…
What’s the worst that can happen for the Tories?
When Rishi Sunak stunned his cabinet colleagues by calling a snap election, they feared the worst. Fast forward a month…
What’s the real reason Jim Ratcliffe is backing Starmer?
On the face of it, there could hardly be a better example of a turkey voting for Christmas than the…
Portrait of the Week: Farage returns, Abbott reselected and Trump guilty
Home Nigel Farage took over leadership of the Reform party from Richard Tice and is standing for parliament in Clacton.…
Home insulation is the latest net zero farce
Zoe Godrich of Swansea might best be described as collateral damage in Britain’s glorious march towards net zero. Three years…
Starmer’s safety-first campaign is backfiring
The problem with spending an election campaign saying as little new as possible is that it does leave a big…
