Election

Elections aren’t just fights between the parties over policy. They also include conspiracies of silence where neither side will benefit from talking that much about an issue. Social care is one of those toxic problems: it is a key driver of inefficiency in the NHS, and should have been reformed three decades ago. It is also expensive, complicated and little-understood by voters, who resent any iteration of reform because all involve someone shelling out money when many people think it is free currently (it is not), or that it somehow should be. When Wes Streeting and Keir Starmer launched their big NHS plans last week, they failed to mention social

Questions over whether Diane Abbott had been banned from standing as a Labour candidate were a distraction for Keir Starmer’s campaign this week, eventually ending with Starmer confirming that Abbott was ‘free to go forward’ for Labour. Some in the party are unhappy with Starmer welcoming Tory defectors while suppressing left-wing candidates such as Lloyd Russell-Moyle and Faiza Shaheen, who were both barred from standing for Labour this week. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg, Baroness Chakrabarti claimed Diane Abbott had been bullied by ‘overgrown schoolboys in suits’ sending anonymous briefings. Chakrabarti said she had been ‘personally assured’ by the Labour leadership that those briefings were unauthorised, but implied that Abbott had

In spite of his conviction for falsifying business records, Donald Trump is still expected by many to make a remarkable political comeback in November’s US election. Could we see an equally remarkable comeback this side of the Atlantic, too, with Liz Truss returning to the stand for the leadership of the Conservative party? It’s possible to see a scenario where Truss is one of the few hopefuls remaining Today’s Electoral Calculus poll predicting that the Conservatives could be reduced to just 66 seats on 4 July raises the question: who would still be around to lead the party after the almost certain resignation of Rishi Sunak? Electoral Calculus’s model is

They say a week is a long time in politics but in the Labour party just three days is enough. On Tuesday evening, the Times reported Labour sources saying Diane Abbott would be blocked from standing as a Labour MP at the election. An outcry followed from Abbott who was backed by the Labour left, some centrist Labour MPs and various celebrities and public figures. Now Keir Starmer has used a campaign visit to say that Abbott is ‘free to go forward’ as a candidate at the election. Speaking to reporters today, he said: She’s free to go forward as a Labour candidate. The whip is back with her. It’s

Another day, another defection. This time it’s Mark Logan, now former Conservative MP for Bolton North East, who has announced he will be backing Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party at the general election. It’s yet another blow for poor Rishi Sunak who is already facing an exodus of 78 MPs while the Tories remain 20 points behind Starmer’s army in the polls. Steerpike would point out that Logan’s excruciatingly small majority of, er, just 378 in 2019 made his one of the most marginal seats in the country — and he would be unlikely to win it back even if he did remain a true blue. On his reasons for