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John HarrisThe Conversation |
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...
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...
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...
As Kemi Badenoch takes control of the Conservatives and tries to somehow restore their credibility and coherence, one thought remains inescapable:...
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...
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...
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...
Last Wednesday, the announcement that Conservative MPs had decided on a conclusive leadership battle between Kemi Badenoch and Robert Jenrick was...
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...
The key emotion circulating at the Tories’ strangely fascinating conference was what I’ve seen described as “survivor’s elation”: a kind of...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
This column was completed in a tent on the borders of Dorset and Wiltshire, during the somewhat bleary morning that followed a brilliant Saturday...
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...
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...
For a politician who has usually avoided high-flown rhetoric, Keir Starmer is suddenly sounding remarkably ambitious. As he addressed the House of...
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...
However airless and dull this election campaign has been, one thing remains incontestable: that, unless something very strange happens, we are about...
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...
In the midst of dizzying opinion polls and a seemingly unprecedented Tory collapse, it is worth remembering a basic political fact: Labour governments...
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...
To instantly understand what this election means for the Conservative party, look no further than the departing Tory politician who has been centrally...
As an illustration of the gap between high politics and everyday reality, last week’s news stories about education policy were grimly perfect. The...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Of all the promises made by Conservative politicians over the past 14 years, the pledge to convincingly reduce the UK’s regional inequalities has...
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...
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...
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...
Last Thursday, I spent 20 joyous minutes standing outside an office block in Northamptonshire, loudly arguing with a very wealthy former Tory donor...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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,...
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...
Sometimes, politics looks like an absurd fight over different versions of the same words. Rishi Sunak says he wants to help people “realise the...