Peter Oborne

Blackpool For the last 20 years the annual TUC conference has occupied a subsidiary role in the political season. During 18 years of Tory government, the unions carried no weight. Their autumnal seaside rumblings could be ignored with a clear conscience. Nor did they relinquish this peripheral role when Tony Blair first came to power

The greatest part of the Blair premiership has been notable for its sideways, crablike movements. Even on the occasions when the Prime Minister has been clear in his own mind about his destination, he has been opaque with the public at large and even with colleagues. There is an embedded belief in No. 10 that

Peter Oborne reveals the scandalous consequences of the government’s timid approach to Robert Mugabe, a tyrant who is now creating a famine among his own people This autumn Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of Africa, is on the verge of man-made famine. Soon refugees will be pouring out over the borders, above all into neighbouring South

Few phrases in modern political history have done more damage than Margaret Thatcher’s notorious remark that ‘there is no such thing as society’. It was made to the magazine Woman’s Own in 1987, when Thatcher was at the height of her power. It has been used against her ever since. The former prime minister’s political