Madeline Grant

In fairness to Keir Starmer, it took some nerve to turn up and tell deflated Labour candidates what had gone wrong at the local elections when even David Lammy, not a man known for his awareness of his immediate surroundings, had admitted that one of the most regular problems on the doorstep was the Prime

Oh dear, it’s all looking a bit glum for Zack Polanski. A string of headlines about both him and his party has been less than flattering. It’s beginning to twig in some quarters that the Greens aren’t just a cuddly group who want to make sure that nature gets a fair hearing – sort of

There was a veritable ‘last day of school’ vibe in parliament as it was prorogued in anticipation of the King’s Speech in May. Though, to be fair, I’m not sure many schools – not even Eton – have quite the same concentration of shady characters as Westminster does these days. It’s the traditional time to

The slow political death of Sir Keir Starmer continued again today. Westminster must increasingly resemble a torture chamber for the Prime Minister. He’s probably looking forward to next week and his party’s evisceration at the local elections as a moment when he might be blessed with the sweet release of career oblivion. In the meantime,

Sir Keir Starmer is now approaching a whole week with his head in the sand. One can imagine the plaintive ‘meep, meep’ noise echoing from the Downing Street sandpit during the wee small hours. After being laughed at on Monday and then savaged on Tuesday, today brought the challenge of getting through PMQs while pretending

Ding ding! Round two – or is it round 22? – of the Mandelson saga was underway in the Foreign Affairs Committee. Sir Olly Robbins was going to give his side of the story.  There was a narrative that the past Tory government was at war with the civil service. In fact, it seems that

You can always tell it’s going to be a good day in the Commons when the government spin operation happens before a Prime Ministerial statement. Clearly predicting a bloodbath, No. 10 tried to trot their lines out early. We were told that Sir Keir had inadvertently misled the House, in response to which we would

Handbags at noon! It’s always nice to watch Sir Keir Starmer descend into the sort of incandescent fury that living under his government induces from most people on a daily basis. The absolute standout moment of today’s PMQs was one not caught by the cameras but a behind-the-scenes bit of piggy rage from the PM.

‘Samantha Niblett’s Summer of Sex’ sounds like something that the police would have shut down during the grubbiest era of Soho peep shows. Not so: it is – just as the world teeters on the brink of geopolitical collapse – an actual initiative by a Labour MP announced today. The dignity-phobic South Derbyshire MP Samantha

There’s an entire glorious genre of photos that we might tentatively entitle: ‘Keir Starmer standing in front of people who visibly loathe him.’ His trip to the Gulf this week means we can add military personnel to the list of people who’ve been subjected to these grey reluctant photobombs, alongside oil workers, school children and

British history is littered with elections and Elections. The first type, common or garden elections, are fought with prosaic issues at their core. Readers might remember the 2001 general election, which saw such pressing topics as the fate of Kidderminster hospital pushed to the fore. The 1865 general election was also considered uneventful by contemporaries.