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Starmer is gone – can King Andy Burnham save Labour? | Quite right!

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Spectator Life

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Three bets for the big all-weather meeting

From Spectator Life

Newcastle stages some quality all-weather racing this weekend, the highlight of which is tomorrow’s JenningsBet Northumberland Plate (3.15 p.m.). As I feared in last week’s column, my main fancy for the race has not made the “cut” and is instead in the consolation race. Cerulean Bay was one of the many eyecatchers at Royal Ascot despite being out of the places There are two main reasons why the quality of this meeting, run on an artificial Tapeta surface, is particularly high this year. Firstly, the generous level of prize money – the Plate, for example, is worth more than £77,000 to winning connections. Secondly, a lot of trainers whose horses prefer soft ground are observing the current heatwave and concluding a race on the all-weather is better than no run at all.

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An evening with Rory Sutherland: The world according to the Wiki Man

  • Wednesday 29 July 2026, 7:00pm
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This week's magazine

Burnham’s odyssey

Can he resist the siren call of the left?

Can Burnham resist the siren call of the left?

Power, when it is gained and lost, is transferred in stages: the actual, the visual and the constitutional. The latter took place on Tuesday evening when the prime minister presumptive sent a letter to Antonia Romeo, the Cabinet Secretary, requesting that she commence access talks with his team. Keir Starmer had already given permission for them to proceed, but the propriety and ethics team in the Cabinet Office had told Romeo she could not initiate proceedings. Andy Burnham had to ask first. To all intents and purposes, he is already the vessel from which power flows. At the same time, it became clear that James Purnell, the former Blairite cabinet minister, will lead the transition team and stay on to become chief of staff in 10 Downing Street.

Can Burnham resist the siren call of the left?

Power, when it is gained and lost, is transferred in stages: the actual, the visual and the constitutional. The latter took place on Tuesday evening when the prime minister presumptive sent a letter to Antonia Romeo, the Cabinet Secretary, requesting that she commence access talks with his team. Keir Starmer had already given permission for them to proceed, but the propriety and ethics team in the Cabinet Office had told Romeo she could not initiate proceedings. Andy Burnham had to ask first. To all intents and purposes, he is already the vessel from which power flows. At the same time, it became clear that James Purnell, the former Blairite cabinet minister, will lead the transition team and stay on to become chief of staff in 10 Downing Street.

Culture

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Dull, duller and Dulles – was Churchill’s jibe about America’s Cold War icon unfair?

From the magazine

In the era of Trumpian foreign policy incoherence, a new intellectual biography of the American Cold War icon John Foster Dulles might seem welcome for hawks and doves alike. Indeed, Dulles’s tenure as secretary of state during the first six years of the Eisenhower administration could be viewed – even by the harshest left-wing critic of American imperialism – as a useful and reassuring point of reference, despite its narrow anti-communist dogma and too cavalier approach to the dangers of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union and China. After all, the Eisenhower administration extricated the United States from President Truman’s stalemated Korean War and started no major new wars before the end of Eisenhower’s second term in January 1961.

Podcasts

Cartoons

Nick Newman

‘‘OK, try counting something other than Brexit benefits.’’

Cartoon

Wilbur

‘‘I think I preferred it when she was doomscrolling.’’

Cartoon

Thomas Munson

Britain wants you to binge drink

From Spectator Life