menu_open
John Harris

John Harris

The Conversation

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

I travelled up and down the UK this year. One album sums up what I saw

sunday 7

The Guardian

John Harris

What kind of society would willingly traumatise its children in the name of education?

15.12.2024 40

The Guardian

John Harris

Labour is a sitting duck for its calculating rivals. The only solution? Build, build, build

08.12.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

Labour’s big relaunch won’t solve its biggest problem: this government doesn’t speak human

Keir Starmer’s people don’t like the word “relaunch”, but that’s what it is. On Thursday, the prime minister will give a set-piece speech...

01.12.2024 40

The Guardian

John Harris

The streetlights going out over Britain tell a brutal story: austerity isn’t over – it’s getting worse

All over the country, the lights are going out. The level of need for adult and children’s care is constantly increasing. People are still suffering...

17.11.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

From Trump’s victory, a simple, inescapable message: many people despise the left

There is no need to pick only a few of the many explanations of Donald Trump’s political comeback. Most of the endless reasons we have heard over...

10.11.2024 60

The Guardian

John Harris

With Kemi Badenoch as leader, the Tories and Labour are on different political planets

As Kemi Badenoch takes control of the Conservatives and tries to somehow restore their credibility and coherence, one thought remains inescapable:...

03.11.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

If Labour can invest in infrastructure, it can invest in people, too – starting with the children who need it

This week’s budget looks set to be much like Keir Starmer’s government: a cause for genuine optimism – but also a trigger for plenty of anxiety...

27.10.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

How can Britain plot its future when it is so deeply stuck in the mud? Empower the citizens

No one really saw it coming, but here we are, in the midst of what passes for a watershed debate about assisted dying, centred on the Labour MP Kim...

20.10.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

What kind of person would drag autistic children into the culture wars? The Kemi Badenoch kind

For the past 18 months or so, a bundle of ideas about human psychology has been getting increasing attention on the political right. Like a lot of the...

14.10.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

It’s easy to laugh at the Tory leadership farce – but its outcome will pollute British politics

Last Wednesday, the announcement that Conservative MPs had decided on a conclusive leadership battle between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick was...

13.10.2024 40

The Guardian

John Harris

British history is being destroyed before our eyes – and it has nothing to do with culture wars over statues

The People’s Story Museum in Edinburgh is a part of the city’s cultural fabric whose name says it all: a museum and archive, opened in 1989 and...

06.10.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

After the ‘Tory idol’ speeches, who most looks like a leader in waiting? Our panel passes judgment

The key emotion circulating at the Tories’ strangely fascinating conference was what I’ve seen described as “survivor’s elation”: a kind of...

02.10.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

Labour’s back-to-normal approach has begun to jar. What is normal about modern British politics?

If one of the most memorable images of a party conference is of hands around a human throat, something has surely gone very wrong. Last Monday, on the...

29.09.2024 70

The Guardian

John Harris

‘Change begins’ is Labour’s conference slogan. It should start with its approach to housing

Whatever the Starmer administration’s woes, Labour’s first conference as the party of government in 15 long years will still have an element of...

22.09.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

I’m a devout agnostic. But, like Nick Cave, I hunger for meaning in our chaotic world

There is a tension in 21st-century life that may come close to defining how millions of us now live. Whenever we want to commune with other people, we...

15.09.2024 40

The Guardian

John Harris

Starmer and Reeves are playing a dangerous game. How much more do they think Britain can take?

As the nights begin to draw in, the brief euphoria of 5 July increasingly feels like something that happened in a lost time of sunny innocence. Today,...

10.09.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

As festival season ends, let’s celebrate their communal magic – and the fact they’re a rare national asset

This column was completed in a tent on the borders of Dorset and Wiltshire, during the somewhat bleary morning that followed a brilliant Saturday...

01.09.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

In this new austerity moment, a fight is on: for the rights of children with special educational needs

Autumn, it seems, will begin on Tuesday, with a set-piece speech by Keir Starmer. The sunny anthem that serenaded New Labour to power has been...

25.08.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

The Tories need a clear ideology – Farage and the hard right offer only moral and electoral ruin

In October 2005, one of the candidates in a watershed Tory leadership election gave a speech at the party’s annual conference, in the wake of its...

04.08.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

Populism has plenty of false promises to solve Britain’s problems. Labour will need to expose them

For a politician who has usually avoided high-flown rhetoric, Keir Starmer is suddenly sounding remarkably ambitious. As he addressed the House of...

22.07.2024 30

The Guardian

John Harris

Travelling round Britain, I found it at a crossroads between fury and hope. Which way will Labour take us?

To find optimism, I often go to Milton Keynes – and if that triggers a smirk, it is probably proof that you have never been there. Long known as...

07.07.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

Prepare for the toppling of private school politics – and a cultural change within Westminster

However airless and dull this election campaign has been, one thing remains incontestable: that, unless something very strange happens, we are about...

30.06.2024 60

The Guardian

John Harris

I’ve seen all the ‘landslide’ polls – but they can’t tell us what’s really going on in this election

A small but very noisy section of the British news media seems to have come close to losing its collective sanity. The election campaign is maybe not...

23.06.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

The election is farcical and frustrating, but deeply significant – under Labour things really could get better

In the midst of dizzying opinion polls and a seemingly unprecedented Tory collapse, it is worth remembering a basic political fact: Labour governments...

16.06.2024 60

The Guardian

John Harris

When even Surrey’s middle classes are this angry with the Tories, you know it’s all gone wrong for Sunak

To understand the meltdown the Conservative party faces, you do not have to go too far from Westminster. A short hop on a commuter train will do it...

09.06.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

Farewell, Michael Gove: from Brexit to levelling up, you sowed the seeds for this Conservative crisis

To instantly understand what this election means for the Conservative party, look no further than the departing Tory politician who has been centrally...

26.05.2024 40

The Guardian

John Harris

Education’s deepest crisis is being ignored by Westminster – and even harsher cuts are on the way

As an illustration of the gap between high politics and everyday reality, last week’s news stories about education policy were grimly perfect. The...

19.05.2024 90

The Guardian

John Harris

Something is stirring in England: right to buy looks imperilled, and not a moment too soon

More than a decade after her death and 34 years since she left Downing Street, Margaret Thatcher continues to haunt us. After Liz Truss’s cosplay...

12.05.2024 50

The Guardian

John Harris

We pay a lot more for a lot less, and people know it. That’s why Sunak’s Tories were thrashed in these elections

Late last Monday, I got home from a long day of political reporting to find a political leaflet produced by the Conservative party. It had nothing do...

05.05.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

Children left to drown in the Channel – is this where Britain’s drift to the right is taking us?

In the hourly deluge of outrage and nonsense that passes for the national conversation, it was only another fleeting moment. But last Tuesday, as the...

28.04.2024 100

The Guardian

John Harris

A radical British politics rooted in nature is spreading – and the establishment doesn’t like it

Something very interesting is happening in the UK, to do with nature, the expanses of land we think of as the countryside, and where all those things...

21.04.2024 90

The Guardian

John Harris

The Tory party has lost the plot – and could be bad news for Labour

For many people reading this, the analogy will seem ludicrous, but hear me out: if the Conservative party was one of your friends, you’d be very...

08.04.2024 70

The Guardian

John Harris

Neglected, derided and exploited more than ever: why won’t the UK protect those who rent a home?

Last week, a news story broke about the sheer impossibility of everyday living for millions of people all over the UK. According to the Office for...

24.03.2024 30

The Guardian

John Harris

Birmingham’s cuts reveal the ugly truth about Britain in 2024: the state is abandoning its people

Four years ago, I saw something on a computer screen that I have never forgotten. The UK was six weeks into lockdown, and I was working on a series of...

17.03.2024 30

The Guardian

John Harris

Why British nightlife is shutting down – taking with it all its magic and messy glory

An uneasy quiet is starting to settle on the UK, particularly at night. People still go out; millions of us still seem to have a deep fondness for...

11.03.2024 100

The Guardian

John Harris

The manifesto Britain needs Tory levelling up has been a scam. Here are three things Labour can do to make it actually mean something

Of all the promises made by Conservative politicians over the past 14 years, the pledge to convincingly reduce the UK’s regional inequalities has...

07.03.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

For years, the Tories said austerity was over. But look around: it’s getting worse, and there’s more to come

A few days before Rishi Sunak emerged from 10 Downing Street to warn of forces “trying to tear us apart” and his belief that our streets have been...

03.03.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

Your illness worsens – so care is cut off. A scandal is playing out in eating disorder treatment

Last week, I had a long conversation with a woman who is trying desperately to loosen the awful grip of an eating disorder. She wanted to remain...

25.02.2024 30

The Guardian

John Harris

If you win by saying almost nothing, what happens when you take power? Welcome to the Starmer paradox

On the assumption that the Conservative party soon suffers a rout and Labour at last takes power, one place will be seen as the battleground where the...

18.02.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

Who’s steering the Conservatives to the right? The backseat drivers of Reform UK

Last Thursday, I spent 20 joyous minutes standing outside an office block in Northamptonshire, loudly arguing with a very wealthy former Tory donor...

04.02.2024 40

The Guardian

John Harris

Thinking small may get Labour into No 10. It could also stop it from staying there

In about 10 days’ time, we are told, the deadline will fall on policy submissions for Labour’s draft manifesto. Reports over the weekend have...

28.01.2024 20

The Guardian

John Harris

Deaths unexplained, lives devastated: here’s another national tragedy hidden in plain sight

Just over a week ago, I got a message from a grassroots group in the east of England. “Can you investigate this?” it said. “We’re hitting...

21.01.2024 10

The Guardian

John Harris

One by one, England’s councils are going bankrupt – and nobody in Westminster wants to talk about it

A new financial year looms. The government is reportedly in the mood for pre-election tax cuts; the opposition talks of iron fiscal discipline. And...

14.01.2024 80

The Guardian

John Harris

As councils crumble, a new scapegoat has been found: the parents of disabled and vulnerable children

Midway through last week, I had a long conversation with a man called Steven Wright, who lives in Suffolk. The previous day, I had spent a lot of time...

07.01.2024 200

The Guardian

John Harris

Vinyl is back for good and that’s exciting. Don’t let the greed of big labels ruin it

At first, it looked like it might be a momentary revolt against the digital future that would inevitably fade away: a rebellion based on plastic,...

31.12.2023 10

The Guardian

John Harris

Through a delayed train’s window, I see how Britain’s ‘blue wall’ is crumbling - town by commuter town

Ten or so days ago, I was embroiled in a truly absurd public transport ordeal. Because the train drivers’ union was going on strike, travelling from...

17.12.2023 20

The Guardian

John Harris

How one English town fought cookie-cutter housing by daring to dream a different future

Sometimes, politics looks like an absurd fight over different versions of the same words. Rishi Sunak says he wants to help people “realise the...

10.12.2023 40

The Guardian

John Harris

198e45ac0e729b16fe8a0d01dba3e60c