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Martin Ivens

Martin Ivens

Chicago Tribune

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Labour Keeps Picking Fights With the Wrong Opponents

Rachel Reeves has the rare distinction among Britain’s chancellors of bearing the description ‘professional economist’ on her CV. Mysteriously,...

24.11.2024 3

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

The Fall of an Archbishop Shows Apologizing Isn’t Enough

Archbishops of Canterbury are more likely to be executed by the state — the fate of Thomas Cranmer and William Laud in the Reformation era — than...

18.11.2024 5

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Keir Starmer Can’t Remain AWOL for His Next Hundred Days

In days of old, a monarch could in theory do no wrong — until the revolutionaries stormed the gates of the palace. Blame fell on ‘evil’...

12.10.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Tories Remain the ‘Party Party.’ Time for a Bouncer.

The waiters serve a decent glass of champagne on the crowded decks of the Tory Titanic. No matter that the Conservatives suffered their worst...

05.10.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Time’s Up for Starmer and the UK Avoiding Hard Choices

The Conservatives are the party of “easy answers,” sneered Keir Starmer in his speech to the Labour party conference in Liverpool this week. He...

28.09.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Starmer’s Path to the Promised Land Starts With NHS

If everything is so good for the UK’s ruling Labour Party why does it feel so bad? Delegates gathering in Liverpool this weekend for their annual...

21.09.2024 6

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Starmer Is Burning Through His Political Capital

Franklin D. Roosevelt famously kicked off his first 100 days as US president declaring, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” In the...

14.09.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Tories Are Having an Identity Crisis as Unpopular Populists

First, the good news for the next leader of the UK’s benighted Conservative party — the popularity of the new Labour government is tanking. After...

07.09.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Pessimistic Keir Starmer Needs a Better Story to Tell

“How’s that hopey, changey stuff working out?” sneered defeated Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin, a year after Barack Obama...

02.09.2024 5

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Starmer Versus UK Labor Unions: Fight or Flight?

As a cub reporter, I once asked Margaret Thatcher why she hadn’t employed her tough new labor laws against a militant trade union. “Mr Ivens,”...

23.08.2024 6

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Starmer's Two Urgent Challenges After a Week of Unrest

Swift justice has made hooligans think twice about joining the mobs that brought mayhem to Britain’s streets last week. Round-the-clock courts and...

10.08.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Southport Violence Is an Early Test for Keir Starmer

The worst targeted attack on children in Britain for nearly three decades left three little girls dead and five more seriously wounded on Monday. A...

03.08.2024 7

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

The Tories Are Holding an Ugly Pageant for Their Next Leader

After its worst electoral drubbing in history, the Conservative Party is staging a so-called beauty contest, with nominations for the party leadership...

29.07.2024 8

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Labour’s Foreign Policy Walks a Tricky Tightrope

David Lammy, Labour’s foreign secretary, insists he can find “common ground” with his Republican pal JD Vance, Donald Trump’s pick for his...

22.07.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

UK Tories Should Use Their Time in Opposition Wisely

Bereavement is said to be typically followed by five stages — denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Many Tories are still markedly...

06.07.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Keir Starmer's Character Remains as Elusive as His Policies

The camera-phone shot of Keir Starmer and his wife Victoria at a Taylor Swift concert in London has rightly been described by his allies as "the...

30.06.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Tories Wage the Worst Election Campaign in Living Memory

Half the Cabinet, minus Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, joined donors at the Tory summer party at London’s elite Hurlingham Club on Thursday night. Amid...

22.06.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Labour Party Dissembling on UK Taxes Is a Necessary Evil

By tradition, Labour election manifestos — election-winning ones at least — are accused of betraying party ideology. There’s even a joke: A...

15.06.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Rishi Sunak’s D-Day Gaffe Reflects a Military Blind Spot

Echoing Ronald Reagan’s famous Pointe du Hoc speech 40 years ago commemorating the D-Day landings, President Joe Biden declared on Thursday that the...

08.06.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Is Keir Starmer Acting as Ruthlessly as a Tory?

“Loyalty is the Tory party’s secret weapon,” Conservative minister David Maxwell Fyfe once famously remarked. He was wrong then, and he’s...

01.06.2024 20

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

UK Election Perplexities Will Test Keir Starmer’s Mettle

Before the general election campaign was even called, pollsters were declaring it game, set and match to Labour leader Keir Starmer. The opposition...

23.05.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Starmer Echoing Blair Beats Sunak Channeling Thatcher

It’s deja vu all over again in UK politics. In response to dire local election results, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak rallied his Tory troops with a...

18.05.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Tory Party Defectors Flee a Clearly Sinking Ship

Two Conservative Members of Parliament have recently crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join the opposition Labour Party, which is the...

11.05.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Rishi Sunak Limps on as the Best Leader the Tories Have

When Anthony Eden, Winston Churchill’s successor as prime minister, failed to stamp his authority on the country, his deputy R.A. Butler came to his...

06.05.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Europe and the UK Need to Be on a Full War Footing

The ink was barely dry on US President Joe Biden’s signature of a long delayed Congressional bill to aid Ukraine when artillery and air-defense...

27.04.2024 20

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Warning: Banning Smoking Can Endanger Your Political Health

In arguments about the merits of restricting smoking, libertarians lose hands down. The “nanny state” has the weight of science, common sense,...

20.04.2024 20

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Starmer’s Labour Must Define Itself Before Others Do

The opinion polls all suggest that the UK’s Tory government is toast, but there is no such unanimity about the Labour Party. Standing on the...

12.04.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Rishi Sunak Faces a Dilemma on Continuing to Arm Israel

The Israeli Defense Forces airstrike on the World Central Kitchen aid convoy in Gaza that killed seven of its workers, including three Britons, poses...

06.04.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Tory Party’s Scorched Earth Economy Will Be Labour’s Headache

UK Defense Secretary Grant Shapps made a special trip to the western Atlantic last month aboard the submarine HMS Vanguard, one of the vessels that...

30.03.2024 20

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Labour Party Channeling Thatcher Is a Risky Move

The UK Labour Party once came to bury its most formidable foe, Margaret Thatcher, not to praise her. No longer. In December, Keir Starmer saluted the...

23.03.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Tory Mud-Wrestling With Extremists Won’t Salvage UK Election

The UK government has issued a new “definition” of extremism. Islamists and far-right factions that incite violence and undermine democracy will...

16.03.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Labour Should Imitate Tory Party’s Magpie Behavior

When Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt stole the Labour Party’s signature policy of taxing the overseas income of foreign residents to pay for...

11.03.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Galloway Shows How US-Style Culture Wars Are Spreading to the UK

If truth is the first casualty of war, then the first casualty of culture war is civility. The sufferings of Israelis and Palestinians shown nightly...

02.03.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Labour’s Keir Starmer Should Be Willing to `Win Ugly’

On Wednesday, a crisis threatened Keir Starmer’s steady progress toward No. 10, with as many as 100 Labour members of Parliament and several members...

24.02.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Royal Drama Is the UK’s Respite From Excessive Politics

One in two men in most western countries past the age of 65 is diagnosed with a form of cancer at some point. So the news that King Charles III is...

10.02.2024 9

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Cameron Outshining Sunak Is a Bad Look for the Tories

David Cameron grabbed the limelight this week with a bold suggestion that the UK might recognize a Palestinian state in advance of a Middle East peace...

04.02.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

The Woman Best Placed to Replace Rishi Sunak

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak saw off a forlorn attempt at a party coup last week, mounted by a less-than-famous former cabinet minister, Simon Clarke,...

27.01.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Europe Should Arm Against Barbarians at Its Gates

If you want peace, prepare for war, was the Roman maxim. Following that injunction the US maintains its place as first among superpower equals, even...

20.01.2024 30

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Britain’s Post-Office Scandal Echoes Earlier Debacles

A famous West End production of J.B Priestley’s morality play An Inspector Calls ends with the walls of a home falling down around a rich family,...

13.01.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

The NHS Death Spiral Requires More From Labour Than Promises

Nearly 53,000 more people died in the UK last year above the normal rate of mortal attrition — the highest figure recorded in a non-pandemic year...

06.01.2024 10

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

The EU’s Enthusiasm for Populism May Infect Britain

The Atlantic and the English Channel are narrower than you might think. The fashionable theory these last few years was that President Donald Trump...

23.12.2023 20

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Right-Wing Rebel Tories Won't Let Sunak Off That Easily

A group of right-wing dissident Tory factions, dubbed “The Five Families” — a tribute to the mafia clans popularized in The Godfather —...

14.12.2023 5

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

Rishi Sunak Bets the House on Rwanda — and May Lose

One famous definition of insanity, wrongly attributed to Einstein, is “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” For 13...

08.12.2023 20

Bloomberg

Martin Ivens

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