A government ends and a new government begins, determined to make a splash with its early policy announcements. We can expect to see and hear plenty from the new Prime Minister Andy Burnham and his senior ministers in the coming days, making arguments, travelling the country and trying to make an impact. Burnham’s new cabinet…
There is a depressing familiarity to the conversation among MPs about their safety. It is a topic those on all sides will regularly reflect on in private, given the day-to-day impact it has on many of them. But the latest news about counter terrorism police taking over the investigation into Ann Widdecombe’s death has brought…
Andy Burnham will give what his team has called “his first major leadership speech” on Monday morning and will promise to “lift Britain back up to where it should be”. In an address at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, the new MP for nearby Makerfield will say as prime minister he would “give Britain…
He pointedly said every cabinet minister, every government department, had contributed cuts to their long-term, so-called capital budgets, to provide more for defence. The prime minister himself was involved in plenty of these negotiations, I’m told – and some were pretty hard going, given it required reopening budget deals that had been assumed to have…
Incidentally, there are plenty of Labour MPs exasperated that the whole issue of Brexit is a major public talking-point again. “It’s mad. The referendum decision has to stand,” one minister said to me. “I know what plenty of Labour Party members are like. They think the country got it wrong and they’d love to reverse…
As well as Labour and the Conservatives, in the English local contests there are the Liberal Democrats, there is Reform UK, there is the Green Party of England and Wales and there are often competitive independents too. In the devolved elections, in Wales there is Plaid Cymru, which would one day like to see an…
As Starmer acknowledged, it is balancing act that strikes at the heart of what freedom and democracy is all about – including the right to protest, while addressing the deep hurt, anger and fear the repeated protests cause for many in the Jewish community. Plenty of the Prime Minister’s critics, in opposition parties and beyond,…
Dave Mason, the English singer, songwriter and guitarist who wrote mainstays of the classic-rock canon like “Feelin’ Alright?” and “Only You Know and I Know,” and who was a founding member of the seminal band Traffic before starting a successful solo career, died on Sunday at his home in Gardnerville, Nev. He was 79. His…
