Politics

As Rachel Reeves attempts to woo investors at Davos, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has stayed behind in London as work gets underway on Labour’s comprehensive spending review. Darren Jones also found time to set out his thinking in a keynote speech at the Institute for Government’s 2025 conference, where he laid out stricter funding requirements for government departments and plans for Treasury reform in a bid to impose tighter controls over spending.  Jones batted off attempts to pin him down on government controversies playing out elsewhere – using, as Keir Starmer did in PMQs on Wednesday, the ‘speculation’ excuse to avoid commenting on plans to install a third

Rishi Sunak (remember him?) is back in the public eye. The former prime minister has landed new jobs at Oxford and Stanford universities. The roles are his first since returning to the backbenches last year following the crushing Tory defeat at the general election in July. His time in Downing Street doesn’t look as bad as it once did Sunak is joining Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government as a member of its world leaders circle. He will also be taking up a visiting fellowship at Stanford’s Hoover Institution in California. Both universities are Sunak’s alma maters. He studied politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford before completing a masters of business

As a biographer of the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and thus possessed of a certain expertise in the matter I want to add my thoughts about Elon Musk’s bizarre raised right arm salute. Many on the left, including historians who ought to know better, say that the gesture delivered with such passion at the rally in Washington for the party faithful after Trump’s inauguration was a fascist or Nazi salute.  If Musk had made such a gesture in front of the Duce, he would have been instantly banished to the beautiful Tremiti Islands off the coast of Puglia along with the gays But not just on the left. Even alt-right Steve

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK has had a rather good few months, with a number of opinion polls showing the Clacton MP’s party topping the Tories – and, occasionally, even Labour – among Brits. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has rubbished the idea of a Reform merger – but it would appear her backbench colleague Suella Braverman has other ideas… Speaking in Washington DC, the former Tory Home Secretary lauded Donald Trump’s style of ‘unfiltered conservatism’ and said her party should follow his lead in making the ‘unsayable mainstream’. She insisted the ‘formula to beat Labour’ involved the Tories and Reform working together. ‘I like Nigel Farage,’ Braverman told the Telegraph before

The Commons was half asleep at PMQs. Trump’s re-election has severely damaged Sir Keir Starmer’s authority. Last summer, he unwisely allowed his Labour colleagues to campaign for the worst presidential candidate in American history. When Kamala lost, so did the Labour leader who now has zero influence over the US. He couldn’t even bring himself to say ‘Trump’ today, let alone to acknowledge his inauguration on Monday.  Kemi Badenoch might have gloated over Sir Keir’s American gamble but she ignored it entirely. And she failed to bring up the Southport triple-killer. As if obeying the Labour whips, she asked about education, and she claimed that Tory reforms had propelled Britain’s

Oh dear… it appears that birthday and greetings cards are sexist. This is, at least, the claim of a group of MPs who have submitted an EDM (Early Day Motion) calling for more representation of female footballers on such items by their manufacturers. The motion was tabled by Liberal Democrat MP for Epsom and Ewell, Helen Maguire, who told the BBC that the greeting card industry was ‘not moving with the times’.  Perhaps it is not the companies who are sexist then but the public? I certainly am Poor Ms Maguire explained how she had been motivated by the trauma of searching for a card for her ‘massive football fan’ office manager