Last week I discussed the long-term trends in party support. This week: the short term—what the coming elections can tell us about what is going on right now. In some ways next week’s contests are a ...

Alan and Lionel are asked about Tortoise's imminent takeover of the Observer. The hosts discuss a surprisingly timely encounter, and share some breaking news about Prospect. They also discuss blasting ...

On a balmy afternoon in early April, Sarah Pochin is trying to convince locals in Runcorn to elect her as the Cheshire town’s first non-Labour MP in 52 years. “Runcorn,” Pochin tells me, “has been so ...

Many MPs who are in favour of Kim Leadbeater’s assisted dying bill are said to be boiling mad at the possible delay in implementation, which they feel may hole the plan below the water line. They’ll ...

Richard Wagner may, in the words of WH Auden, have been an “absolute shit”, but he was unlucky in the acolytes and slavish disciples he gained, and who then created a cult that ended up in some very ...

Parsing the signals from a new Labour government in July, advocates of prison reform felt a trickle of not exactly optimism, given their decades of disappointments, but hope. Labour's campaign ...

In Tel Aviv, a festering scandal reaches the top of Israeli society. In London, a shrug of a regulator’s shoulders. Welcome to the latest twist in the baffling story of the Jewish Chronicle. You may ...

It is late November and I’ve come back to my grandfather’s house. Most of his belongings are already gone—distributed among family, taken to charity shops, consigned to the skip. The heating in the ...

Two aphorisms are often used to describe the Conservative party. The first is that its “secret weapon is loyalty”, and the second is William Hague’s description of it as “an absolute monarchy ...

At last, after a period of stasis that has lasted since the Covid-delayed release of No Time to Die in 2021, events are finally moving in the right direction when it comes to the next 007 adventure.

Oh, to be a galanthophile. To spend weeks, months and years looking at catalogues, picking out varieties and planting thousands upon thousands of bulbs, all for those few short weeks—from late January ...

In the months after a decisive election, voting intention polls have no predictive value. That is why I have largely ignored them so far. But tracked over time, they do tell us something. That is why ...