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The UK's tax system entrenches inequality, stymies growth, and rewards a few at the expense of the many. Will Labour fix it? Labour is heading for power as an incoming [...]

Britain will hold a general election on July 4th. Announcing the news in Downing Street on May 22nd, his expression plaintive and his jacket soaked with rain, Rishi Sunak had [...]

The lives of those daily in the public eye are bound to attract attention, especially when they are politicians telling us what to do. The Greek essayist Plutarch (d. c. [...]

One of the main arguments against hereditary peerages is that talent and ability are not always passed down across generations. There is much to this. Students of history will know [...]

This Saturday marks Labour's 100th day in office. But they are unlikely to be popping champagne corks in Downing Street--even if Lord Alli offered to pay for the Dom Perignon. [...]

An unreal consensus grips our politics. Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak offer only technocratic fixes for a Britain that no longer exists An unreal consensus grips British politics. The cost-of-living [...]

I hate being in opposition. I can see what needs changing with ever greater clarity, but have little agency to do anything about it. It has never been my style [...]

A quiet satisfaction can be detected in the high liberal centre of British politics. With the implosion of Liz Truss's experiment in debt-financed libertarianism, Britain can at last have the [...]

The local elections in England confirmed what Keir Starmer already believed: Labour is on course to win the general election. But will the party need the support of Liberal Democrats [...]

Attack ads are fundamental to politics. But the smear campaign against Rishi Sunak is a strategic and moral error A column is not a political party. It is ill-disciplined. It [...]

When David Cameron resigned as prime minister in June 2016, hours after Britain voted to leave the EU, he said the country needed 'fresh leadership'. What it would like now [...]

VISITING WASHINGTON this month, David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, and John Healey, his colleague covering defence, paused for a photo by a bronze memorial to President Franklin Roosevelt. It [...]

BRITAIN IS 'robust' and 'ahead of many of our partners' in responding to a rising China, Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said on July 13th. The House of Commons Intelligence [...]

SIR TONY BLAIR is now 70 years old. It is 29 years since he became Labour leader, and 16 since he left Downing Street. And yet still he puts on [...]

VISITORS TO Sir Keir Starmer's home in north London report finding a worried man. The Labour leader frets about how he would organise Downing Street, and about the aptitude of [...]

Unemployment is rising, inflation is at its highest for 40 years and we have endured decades of economic stagnation. Now is Labour's moment to lead a once-in-a-century change at Westminster [...]

Her son was born in 2020, as covid-19 https://www.economist.com/britain/2020/07/18/how-centralisation-impeded-britains-covid-19-response . So no health visitor came to check on him and she could not take him to play groups, where she [...]

Theresa May, a former prime minister, was an underappreciated wordsmith. 'Brexit means Brexit' was magisterial in its circularity. 'No deal is better than a bad deal' stuck around long after [...]

Ramsgate Harbour once held a busy fishing fleet. Today the only sign of life is aboard four berthed cutters of the Border Force, whose task is to intercept migrants from [...]

Absurdly violent imagery has a long tradition in the Labour Party. In 1976 activists attached an ice pick to the front of their bus on their way to vote against [...]

'Do you remember 1969?' 'Vaguely.' 'I loved it. So many things were going on. I don't know what happened afterwards. It really seemed like the start of a new era.' [...]

In 2001 a resurgent party held 412 seats. Today it has 199. Why? Former leaders, ministers and key advisers recall a tragedy in ten acts Twenty years ago, the Labour [...]

Paul Mason My family despises war movies, so it's way after Christmas that I get to see Ridley Scott's dire Napoleon film. The most embarrassing scene is where Josephine lifts [...]

I once heard a clergyman preach against walls. Halfway through, he got the kids to build a wall of polystyrene bricks right across his nave and then to climb up [...]

By Adrian Wooldridge The Labour Party has the smell of a dying animal. It has not only lost its heartland--first Scotland and then the north--it is losing its sense of [...]

IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, as in the domestic sort, change comes from seizing opportunities. One may present itself in 2024 after Britain and America hold elections. After a disastrous defeat in [...]

The battle for the next Labour manifesto is already under way. 'I will stay up to 2 a.m. if I need to,' warned one member of the shadow cabinet ahead [...]

Britain's actual problem with free speech A T TIMES, THE rise of Captain Tom Moore felt like a fever dream. When Britain entered lockdown in March 2020, the 99-year-old veteran [...]

It is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of Tory rule T HE BEST guide to British politics today was written 13 years ago and [...]

An interview with the woman who hopes to run Britain's finances W HEN RACHEL REEVES, Britain's shadow chancellor, describes the Labour Party's industrial policy as the 'sounds and the sights [...]

A crisis in the Channel is disturbing for every part of the political spectrum O N SATURDAY OCTOBER 29th, 990 people set off in 24 dinghies from continental Europe to [...]

Labour's surge and the Tories' troubles could refresh the United Kingdom O UTSIDERS WATCHING Britain in recent years have toyed with a gloomy calculation. Which would survive longer: the ancient [...]

The NHS was opposed by doctors from the start and has suffered decades of ministerial harm. Can Labour fix it? It is hard to know whether we are celebrating a [...]

We need to talk about Labour culture. What, you say, do we really? Culture is such a hazy word. It doesn't come with numbers attached. In hard times, even writing [...]

If you drive around southern England, you quickly notice what a lot of it there is--endless undulating fields; huge post-industrial stretches of sheds and crumbling walls; the 1930s sprawl along [...]

On a cloudy Saturday in March, a group of unlikely characters gathered in an office near London's Old Street for political training. A scientist, a prison officer, an army veteran [...]

After a frosty decade, business leaders are warming to Labour A S THE LABOUR PARTY gathers for its annual conference in Liverpool, attention will focus on the lecture hall, where [...]

Labour and the Lib Dems are learning to play nicely with each other A HIERARCHY OF hate exists on the progressive wing of British politics. True, Labour wallahs may not [...]

He's to the right of you, Jeremy Sir Keir Starmer has broken the hard left's grip on his party T HREE YEARS AGO Momentum seemed to be riding high. The [...]

Voters might reasonably ask what there is to choose between a Conservative creed expressed in September 2022 by Liz Truss, who told the House of Commons: 'You can't tax your [...]

A slow-burn crisis in the nhs could hole the Tories, rather as the financial crisis did Labour C LICHéS ARE common in British politics. It is a land where a [...]

Recently, the Conservatives celebrated being in continuous government longer than their Labour predecessors. So how do the two compare? Actually, simply to pose the question 'Which were more successful: the [...]

The Conservatives once appeared destined for a new era of hegemony. Their embrace of the Brexit project led to victories in dozens of seats in Labour's 'Red Wall' heartlands in [...]