Politics

Yvette Cooper is attempting to put as much distance as possible between her and the anonymous ‘Taliban New Labour’ comments. In an article for the Huffington Post, Cooper’s campaign chair Shabana Mahmood says there is no place for negative briefing in the Labour leadership contest. Mahmood sets out two promises from the Cooper campaign: ‘If anyone is speaking on behalf of the campaign, they will do so explicitly on the record. There will be no unattributed negative briefings about other candidates because that’s not the kind of politics Yvette has ever wanted to champion ‘If anyone else is speaking to you and claiming to do so on Yvette’s behalf and wants to criticise opponents –

On Wednesday at Noon, George Osborne will rise to respond for the government at Prime Minister’s Questions. The symbolism of this moment won’t be lost on anyone on the Tory benches. It will be the start of Osborne’s audition for the top job. A few years ago, the idea of Osborne as Prime Minister was—as one of his backers puts it—‘a minority taste’. But now, he continues, ‘it is a mainstream assumption’. What has changed things is the economic recovery and the Tories’ surprise election victory, which has vindicated Osborne’s political strategy. Osborne, I argue in the Mail on Sunday, has also become a better politician in recent years; more

As England’s longest-running weekly magazine for women, The Lady magazine has an illustrious roll call of former employees. However in recent years, its editors have often attracted attention for the wrong reasons. Boris Johnson’s sister Rachel was appointed as editor in 2009 but departed three years later following a feud with the publisher Ben Budworth’s mother Julia, who claimed that Rachel was ‘sex-obsessed’. History was then made when Budworth appointed Matt Warren as her successor, making him the magazine’s first male editor. Alas, he too had an undesired effect when it was revealed that he was having an affair with his secretary. With Warren now stepping down to juggle journalism with work as a paragliding instructor, the

Mary Creagh has announced she is withdrawing from the Labour leadership contest. The shadow international development secretary has explained in tomorrow’s Guardian that she is quitting the race but won’t be backing another candidate. Given that Creagh had just seven MPs openly backing her — with only a rumoured handful still in the shadows — it was increasingly clear over the last week that she wouldn’t get the 35 names she needs to get on the ballot paper. Creagh has used her spot in the Guardian to attack Ed Miliband’s leadership. She says Labour was too anti-business under him and that this approach must be reversed if the party is to have any chance of making it back into power. Creagh cites an incident during her