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On a cool summer's day in August, I met Keir Starmer for the first of several conversations about his leadership and Labour's future. We were in Swindon, where Labour has [...]

Humbled by multiple defeats but rejuvenated by leaving Westminster, Andy Burnham believes he has what it takes to be leader of the moribund Labour Party. So will it be third [...]

Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain Sathnam Sanghera Viking, 320pp, 18.99 [pounds sterling] The New Age of Empire: How Racism and Colonialism Still Rule the World Kehinde Andrews Allen [...]

During the prolonged Brexit deadlock, there was a running gag on Twitter. Each parliamentary vote or debate would be described as the 'season finale' of British politics--the culminating episode of [...]

Boris Johnson's march on Downing Street seems unstoppable. Yet he is far from unassailable as Tory antagonists plot the resistance For most of Boris Johnson's political career, it was a [...]

Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn Gabriel Pogrund & Patrick Maguire Bodley Head, 384pp. 18.99[pounds sterling] This Land: The Story of a Movement Owen Jones Allen Lane, [...]

Keir Starmer wants to re-establish his party's conservative credentials and become the champion of working people. But does the route back to power involve becoming more liberal? Shortly before the [...]

One of the strange features of the age of coronavirus is a frequent state of surreality. I'm used to conducting interviews in a restaurant, cafe or office. I'm not used [...]

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour leader in September 2015, most of his fellow MPs regarded his unexpected victory in the same way that you might think of a [...]

At last, after another turbulent week in politics, Theresa May has called the bluff of the Brexiteers. If they want to topple her, they need two things--a convincing candidate and [...]

[A] IS FOR ARIANA GRANDE As the first reports of a terror attack in Manchester on 22 May began to trickle in, it became clear that an Islamist had targeted [...]

For the Record David Cameron William Collins, 752pp. 25 [pounds sterling] When David Cameron first launched his campaign to be the Conservative Party leader in 2005, he had the support [...]

The Labour leader believes he can confound his disparagers inside and outside the party by inspiring another surge of support for the left at the next election, as he did [...]

Dominated by libertarian Thatcherites and privileged reactionaries, Boris Johnson's cabinet will repel social liberals. But could it win an election? In 2016 a senior civil servant of my acquaintance, approaching [...]

As Labour enters another summer of crisis, morale is low in Jeremy Corbyn's leadership team. Yet they believe one man can save them: Boris Johnson One morning late in the [...]

There is something about Boris Johnson that makes Conservative MPs think about food. One parliamentarian told me a little under a year ago that they would rather eat broken glass [...]

It is important to understand what the Brexit crisis at Westminster is not about. First, and most obviously, it is not about whether Theresa May survives in office.Yes, the accord [...]

'I don't think you're up to it.' It is 1970, and Diane Julie Abbott, aged 17, is keen to apply to Cambridge University, but her history teacher has other ideas. [...]

2016 was a wild political year. Thank goodness it's over A IS FOR ABORTIVE TORY LEADER RACE In the days after the EU referendum--while the mutinous Labour Party still had [...]

One of the most important prime ministerial functions is that of referee: to mitigate disputes between departments, or to solve tricky political decisions. Downing Street tends to operate, as one [...]

Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour's Lost England Sebastian Payne Macmillan, 432pp, 20 [pounds sterling] Always Red Len McCluskey OR Books, 280pp, 16.99 [pounds sterling] Red Knight:The Unauthorised Biography of [...]

David Lidington's career has, in a sense, been defined by the United Kingdom's relationship with the European Union. Shortly after the Conservative MP and former cabinet minister was first elected [...]

The new Prime Minister has rebranded herself as a champion of social justice and equal rights. Should we believe her? Over the past two weeks, a strange phenomenon began to [...]

There are streets in Hampstead, the wealthy northern suburb of London, where the pro-EU posters outnumber cars. A red 'Vote Remain' in one. A 'Green Yes' in another. The red, [...]

Do you remember the Ed Stone? Yes, we're trying to forget it, too A is for abuse on social media Who is getting abuse on social media, and from whom, [...]

Britain has been in lockdown for the best part of a year, but in Downing Street the lockdown has never really been in place. That's the complaint made by Conservative [...]

I have Doctor Who on the brain a lot at the moment more so than usual. One reason for this is that Jodie Whittaker's time in the Tardis is almost [...]

Last month, I watched a programme that I found so offensive, I immediately resolved to cancel my Netflix subscription. It wasn't Jimmy Carr's His Dark Material, in which the comedian [...]

One of the things I miss most about the era before coronavirus was the occasional day when--whether due to teacher training, an unhappy misalignment between parliament's recess dates and the [...]

Under Keir Starmer, the ranks of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) have been opened up to Christian Wakeford, the Bury South MP first elected under Conservative colours in 2019, but [...]

Conservative politicians are furious. One bemoans the stupidity and thoughtlessness of their party's leadership and predicts that the local elections in May will be 'a catastrophe'. Another complains that they [...]

In the early hours of 8 May 2015, a sombre Nick Clegg was waiting for news from his constituency count in Sheffield Hallam while, across the country, his fellow Liberal [...]

How do we know that Britain hasn't left the European Union yet? For most people, the answer is 'because a polling card for the European parliamentary elections came in the [...]

When Adam Price was first elected as Plaid Cymru's MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr in 2001, he made his name as one of the toughest critics of Tony Blair [...]

'Inadvertent parenting' is what happens when you are so ground down by the demands of looking after children that you make small mistakes that force you to do yet more [...]

Theresa May managed something this week that few MPs thought she still had the ability to do: she surprised them. The Prime Minister has grown fond of making statements outside [...]

When David Cameron was prime minister, political journalists would often call Conservative MPs to find out what the mood in Downing Street was. Now that Theresa May is prime minister, [...]

John Bercow, the Speaker, is like electoral reform: politicians' affection for both increases the further away they are from power. Only the political circumstances of 2009, when the Labour Party [...]

By an unfortunate coincidence, this was the week that the toilets in the Commons voting lobby broke down, which meant that MPs had to endure an unpleasant stink as they [...]

Tom Watson's reputation for intrigue is sufficiently well-established at Westminster that MPs tend to see double meanings in everything he does. In the summer of 2017, one Labour peer collared [...]

If Labour wins the next election, then the title of most important civil servant will belong to a man who retired from the civil service in 2015: Bob Kerslake. The [...]

At 7am on 18 February, seven Labour MPs arrived at County Hall, the former home of the Greater London Council, long since sold off to private investors and now regularly [...]

Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn exchanged letters about Brexit over the past week, each describing a product and naming a price. The product is a Brexit deal that is acceptable [...]

If you fancy reading a newspaper interview with Jeremy Corbyn, you have a better chance by picking up your local paper than any of the national titles. The Labour leader's [...]

What did the United Kingdom vote for on 23 June 2016? Westminster's most starry-eyed Brexiteers think that they know the answer: Canada, an open and mid-sized economy whose rules and [...]

Constitutions are written by the winners. That is no less true for a country such as the United Kingdom, whose constitution is largely unwritten, than it is for those founded [...]

They can't all be right. Someone in this queue is an idiot. But who? One MP texted me these words on their way to vote against the withdrawal agreement on [...]

A soft Brexit could pass the Commons, but it is no one's first choice --so all the other factions are running down the parliamentary clock. No deal is a real [...]

Anna Turley Redcar A former civil servant and self-confessed 'back-room person', Anna Turley won back the north-east England seat of Redcar from the Lib Dems. The 36-year-old maintains that she [...]

A Promised Land Barack Obama Viking, 768pp. 35 [pounds sterling] When, in the autumn of 2006, Barack Obama was considering whether to run for the presidency, he met with David [...]