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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 [...]

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 [...]

in 1985, I prosecuted my second capital murder case. The accused had killed multiple victims with a gunshot to the back of the head and abandoned the last woman face [...]

This is Tim Farron's seventh general election. His first was in 1992, when his Tory opponent was a 36-year-old called Theresa May. He was just 21 and they were both [...]

As anyone who has recently found themselves feeling deliriously happy to be at the kind of social event they might once have dismissed out of hand--the wedding of a distant [...]

On the issue of lockdown, the Prime Minister's hands are tied by a rope with three strands. The first strand is the cabinet in general and the Chancellor Rishi Sunak [...]

The Gambler Tom Bower WH Allen, 592pp, 20[pounds sterling] Shortly after my review of Tom Bower's biography of Jeremy Corbyn had been published, I bumped into a former aide to [...]

The most important thing to understand about Boris Johnson is that he enjoys a practical joke. One of his most frequent--which he has played on any number of unsuspecting audiences [...]

Which piece of digital technology was most valuable to the major political parties in the run-up to the 2019 general election? Which single innovation helped mobilise more volunteers, raise more [...]

One of the more reliable sources of gallows humour for shadow cabinet members is the regular supply of updates they receive from voter focus groups run by Labour's director of [...]

One of the least surprising things about Rishi Sunak's autumn Budget was that the Department for Education (DfE) did so poorly out of it. In a spending settlement that handed [...]

How a Conservative politician feels about wearing a mask tells you something about what worries them most: their voters, or the good opinion of their colleagues. Ordering the public to [...]

I only met David Amess properly once, early in my career, when I decided, for reasons passing understanding, that an excellent way to break the ice with a senior parliamentarian [...]

Although Rishi Sunak does not drink alcohol, he is not free of vices. One is Mexican Coca-Cola, which is made with cane sugar rather than fructose syrup. Another is a [...]

Late one September evening, as she was preparing for bed, Labour's deputy leader, Angela Rayner, received a phone call from Keir Starmer. After nearly ten minutes of pleasantries, Starmer reached [...]

It has become a cliche to say that 'nobody' won the 2017 election, but this, of course, isn't true. The 2017 election was won by Liz Truss--it just took until [...]

If Conservative MPs have a specific anxiety about Boris Johnson's government it is that the Prime Minister is a leader for good times: that he cannot deliver bad news or [...]

For a Londoner, getting out of bed early and taking a bus, then the Tube, before sitting on an intercity train for the best part of two hours just to [...]