menu_open
Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee

The Guardian

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

In Kent, Labour has a fight on its hands – and a make-or-break test for its housing revolution

Watch what happens in Swale, as it’s a tale that will be repeated often in the next few years. Here in Kent is a test of Labour’s determination to...

previous day 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The right to die is about freedom – don’t let those who see it as a line on a spreadsheet torpedo it

That is a low blow, health secretary. On a matter of life, death and personal freedom, the debate should be elevated above this. Wes Streeting...

14.11.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Voters around the world wish a plague on all incumbents. Labour can avoid that fate

Those panic alarms in MPs’ welcome-to-Westminster packs may have been eyed nervously by some on the Labour benches in the past week. The shock of...

12.11.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

It’s OK to feel despair at Trump’s victory. The important thing is not to give in

With wailing woe in the small hours, many of you shared that wrenching despair when the US election result extinguished hope. Beyond reason, beyond...

07.11.2024 90

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

All these sad stories of the stricken rich prove one thing: Labour’s budget is on the money

Someone had to pay. Is this a “class”-based budget, the chancellor is asked on the BBC? No, it’s raising money urgently needed for the NHS and...

05.11.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Rachel Reeves needs more than just policies if she wants to make this week’s budget sing

It’s the mood music that matters most. The budget needs to sing “Here comes the sun” after too many grey months of grim prognosis. That hefty...

28.10.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Another day, another social care review. But don’t despair, it may actually work this time

A collective groan greeted the rumour that the government will announce yet another royal commission on social care. The fear is that it just kicks...

24.10.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour gave us Sure Start to tackle child poverty. Now it should hike tax to keep it

As the budget approaches, outrage from the Tories and their media outriders at any mention of proposed tax rises is reaching boiling point. Never a...

22.10.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Don’t listen to the Tories – Labour is right to raise taxes

As the budget approaches, expect more balderdash and hogwash from Labour’s enemies and their foghorn media. Listen to them protest that raising...

18.10.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Let’s get this straight: private healthcare will and must work for the NHS – not the other way around

Our critically injured public services beg for help, but the totem signifying the state of the nation will always be the NHS. The monthly waiting time...

15.10.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The super-rich claim they’ll flee to escape a Labour ‘tax grab’. Here’s an idea for how to stop them

They’re off! The millionaires are taking flight in droves, chased away by Labour’s budget plans. Day after day, rightwing thinktanks and media...

11.10.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Two deaths shaped my belief in the right to die. This bill could change everything

Bravo to Kim Leadbeater. She can expect a rough ride for introducing an assisted dying bill. If passed, the Leadbeater legislation will enter the...

09.10.2024 80

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Time is ticking for Labour to scrap the two-child limit – and then make Britain a welcoming place for children again

At a stroke, this government could wipe out much of the extra child poverty caused by the last government. It would be a bargain, at a cost of just...

03.10.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Call this a party conference? It’s more like a weird Tory festival of mass delusion

Inside the Tory party sinkhole, its denizens pretend to understand what has befallen them, but they act like the undead who haven’t realised they...

01.10.2024 7

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Take it from me (and Keir Starmer) – you should never pretend to be more working class than you are

“I’m not working class any more,” Keir Starmer told LBC’s Nick Ferrari this week. Of course that’s the case. As the Daily Mail rushed to...

26.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour has been overdoing the doom and gloom – but now Reeves has given us a glimpse of sunshine

With the hail of bad freebie stories echoing the Mersey downpour, this looked set to be a less joyous conference than was due a party that had just...

24.09.2024 20

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Fear and sanctions have failed to get Britain working. Why not try tea and empathy?

Jobcentres are the “least well-used” and “least well-loved” of all public services, a failure at the heart of the economy that helps account...

20.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

If Keir Starmer wants to be braver than Tony Blair, this is how: be gentle on crime

Of all the landmines planted by the last government, bursting prisons were the most dangerous. This left Keir Starmer with no choice but to release...

17.09.2024 80

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The NHS is in critical condition – but with the right care, it can make a recovery

Broken but not beaten, is Lord Darzi’s verdict on the NHS in England. “My colleagues in the NHS are working harder than ever but our productivity...

12.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Beaten, marooned, demoralised – and yet still the right clings to Thatcher. I’ve seen them: they’re so lost

I crept into the inaugural Westminster meeting of The Future of the Right, a Policy Exchange project from a bygone age of Tory ascendancy. I admit it:...

10.09.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Knock knock: it’s the rental inspectorate here about renewing your landlord licence

04.09.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The anti-Labour rightwing press is on the warpath. If you wanted this government, defend it

The honeymoon for Labour is over, say the massed ranks of the rightwing media. What honeymoon was that? It seems to have been over since 5 July....

04.09.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Say it loud and rejoice: the days of anti-union worker exploitation in Britain are coming to an end

This is what a fundamental power shift looks like. Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, has swept away the worst of the Tories’ strike-banning...

13.08.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The far right promised violence and mayhem last night – but decency took back the streets

These were the headlines after an extraordinary night. “Peaceful atmosphere at Sheffield”, “No signs of disorder in Liverpool”,...

08.08.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

England’s GPs are squaring up to the government – but it’s an unnecessary battle

GPs in England have embarked on industrial action for the first time in 60 years. The 10 actions they can choose from could bring the NHS to a...

06.08.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour is right to ditch the winter fuel allowance – it isn’t ‘robbing’ old people

That sounded like a totemic cut, one that everyone could understand. She cut old folk’s winter fuel allowance! Is it like Margaret Thatcher, milk...

02.08.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The billions Britain needs are at Rachel Reeves’s fingertips, and no fiscal promises need be broken

That was authentic anger, Rachel Reeves’s indignation well justified as she thundered in the Commons at the inheritance she has been left. Labour is...

30.07.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

At last, the chance to legalise assisted dying in the UK – and end the untold, unnecessary anguish

Every Labour government forges ahead with life-changing liberal reforms, and this one will be no exception. Expect the right to die to be one of this...

26.07.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

A whole new community on the site of a defunct power station near Erewash? Yes, please

When Keir Starmer promises that his new government will “bulldoze” through the planning system as “the builders not the blockers”, there is...

23.07.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Starmer will bin the two-child benefit cap and outdo New Labour on tackling poverty – I’ll bet on it

I will eat my hat – or several – if Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves don’t soon find the money to bury the pernicious two-child benefit cap. The...

19.07.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I went to see how the Tories are handling defeat – and found Faragism and a total lack of reflection

The Bruges Group celebrated its 35th anniversary last week in the august portals of the Army and Navy club in Pall Mall in central London. The group...

16.07.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour will rightly be judged by how it fixes our problems. But never forget who left the UK in such a rotten state

Lest we forget, here is an audit of the state of the country Labour inherits. Pin it up, brand it into public memory so no one can forget the...

12.07.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Cleaning up our fetid politics is Keir Starmer’s toughest task yet. Here’s how he can do it, fast

Winning the election was almost easy compared with the next task Keir Starmer has set himself. “The fight for trust is the battle that defines our...

08.07.2024 7

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Celebrate: we have waited so long for this routing of the Tories. An unbearably rare moment of pure political joy

Hallelujah and hosanna! (If not now, when?) At the stroke of 10, the country knew it had liberated itself from the most contemptible government in...

05.07.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour may win big under first past the post, but it is morally obliged to bring in a fairer system

In one great whoosh, the country looks set to hose away this despicable government on an outflow of its own sewage. Kicking the bastards out is what...

02.07.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Could central London, headquarters of God and mammon, really be turning red?

A red glow spreading across the land may be so bright you could see it from space, if polling predictions are right. In that Labour flare, let’s...

28.06.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I went looking for the few remaining Tory voters. They don’t want Farage, but they don’t want Sunak either

Who are the people who will still vote Tory? True, there are not many left, but a solid core of 20% of the population will opt for more of the same,...

18.06.2024 10

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Europe is lurching right on immigration. Despite Farage and Sunak’s best efforts, Britain will not follow

There’s turmoil in the EU as the far right advances. Macron risks all, trusting that people vote in protest for the remote EU parliament, but vote...

11.06.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Infant mortality is rising and births are plummeting. This is the legacy of 14 years of Tory cruelty

In all the sound and fury of the election, annual statistics land unnoticed. Yet these grim Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures are the best...

07.06.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I’ll welcome a Labour victory and a brighter future, but Britain deserves a better election than this

Another month to go: can we bear it? Brainless dishonesty, puerile insults, false accusations, the whole charade takes us for idiots. The more...

04.06.2024 40

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The pensioners’ party plays its last moth-eaten card: national service for the young

When the Tories reach the very bottom of their bad ideas barrel, they come up with a dead rat plan for conscription. The notion is so decrepit that...

27.05.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Labour’s top brass know the election battle will be brutal, but they can hardly believe their luck

Here is the one and only great service Rishi Sunak could perform for his country. Nothing so became him as the leaving of office, despite the deluge....

23.05.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I have finally mastered a TikTok recipe for bao buns – but they take almost five hours

I have been following the rise of the bao bun very keenly – the pallid little puffballs are enjoying a boom in Britain’s snack sector – on...

21.05.2024 80

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

At a festival for the super-rich, the argument for higher taxes couldn’t have been clearer

The Elite London, described as the city’s “most exclusive jet-set lifestyle event”, filled Wycombe Air Park with row after row of gleaming...

21.05.2024 30

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The Tories’ war on foreign students isn’t for the good of the country – it’s about saving their own skins

17.05.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

I’ve seen how firms cheat the law to exploit workers and here’s a warning: those days are ending

14.05.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Keir Starmer should be embracing the Tories’ disgruntled voters – not their turncoat MPs

No, no, this is an uncharacteristic mistake. Keir Starmer’s welcoming hand on Natalie Elphicke’s shoulder is a picture his enemies will relish as...

09.05.2024 70

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

Rachel Reeves is right: this government is gaslighting us over the economy

Labour’s tanks roll relentlessly across Tory lawns, not pausing a heartbeat to celebrate phenomenal local election results in England. It treated...

07.05.2024 60

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

How old is too old? I’m 77 and I don’t know yet. But I will when I get there

How old is old? That depends on how old you are, for as you age you will nudge that number upwards. A recent German study asked people over the age of...

04.05.2024 100

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

The right’s Brexit ‘bonfire of red tape’ was just wind and smoke. And even Tories want more regulation now

As the sewage-filled waters start to close over the heads of Torydom, their Tufton Street thinktankers carry on like the orchestra on the Titanic. In...

02.05.2024 50

The Guardian

Polly Toynbee

adf0aea31433af884af98edbd080d82d