Andy Burnham has set out his vision for “good growth in every postcode”. It may seem like levelling up 2.0 – and if so, that’s very good news for the country. Because, unlike his Labour and Conservative predecessors, Burnham may well have a far better sense of how to deliver it. Boris Johnson lifted the…
There are few things on which this column would agree with George Osborne. Voting to remain in the European Union was one. Backing Labour’s Ed Miliband to be the next chancellor is another. Mr Osborne, whose austerity programme redistributed pain downwards while protecting privilege at the top, had only a week ago on his podcast, Political Currency,…
It is a cast-iron rule of the comments-section era that there is absolutely no celebrity you can write about without some person dialling in to post a contemptuous: “Who?” Did I say some person? Forgive me: I think I might have meant some guy. Strangely, you never see a “who?” below articles about sport, as…
It is two years this month since Axel Rudakubana burst into a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in Southport, murdered Alice da Silva Aguiar, Bebe King and Elsie Dot Stancombe, and injured 10 other people. The government’s pledge to implement all 67 recommendations from the public inquiry signals its determination to protect the public in future. Its chair,…
After my adoptive father died in November last year, my adoptive siblings found a short story by Enid Blyton among his possessions. The Child Who Was Chosen was read to us as children to explain the circumstances of my adoption. It follows a nice middle-class couple whose domestic bliss is marred by childlessness, prompting them…
Donald Trump is not known for his reverence for the US constitution. But in his second term, he is doubling down on his claim from the first: that the text grants him “the right to do whatever I want as president”. This is, to put it mildly, an extremely unusual interpretation of article 2. But…
It is a scene that would have seemed unthinkable just a few months ago. In late June 2026, in the dead of the Baghdad night, Iraqi security forces sealed off all access points to the highly secured Green Zone. In a raid unprecedented since the 2003 US invasion, 47 high-ranking officials, including members of parliament…
From certain angles, it might appear as if President Trump is having a tough month. He messed up the renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool, which he blamed on acts of vandalism no one has been able to stand up. The supreme court rejected both his bid to appeal against the $5m (£3.8m) civil…
Since Brexit, Daphne du Maurier’s final novel, Rule Britannia, has been seen as a prescient warning about the UK cutting itself adrift from Europe. After joining and then leaving the EU’s predecessor, the Common Market, in a referendum, Du Maurier imagined the UK facing such economic instability that its prime minister submits to a US…
Keir Starmer has stepped down and Andy Burnham is, in all likelihood, about to walk through the door of No 10. I have had the rare privilege of working closely with both men. For five years I served as a chief prosecutor while Keir Starmer was director of public prosecutions (DPP). And for much of…
