Labour party

Is next year’s London mayoral contest a done deal? When the Tories first started the process of candidate selection, the general sense was that they had little chance of taking the mayoralty from Sadiq Khan. However, as the Labour mayor has faced a voter backlash over his support for Ulez (the ultra low emission zone), the race looks closer than previously thought. What’s more, there is one man who could decide it. Step forward Jeremy Corbyn. The former Labour leader – who is currently banned from standing as a candidate for the party – could deny Khan a third term as London mayor if he decides to run as an

Did Gillian Keegan need to apologise? The Education Secretary thought her ITV interview had ended and she could speak frankly. She insisted the schools’ concrete crisis was down to ‘everyone else’ who had ‘sat on their arse’. It was a fair point, inelegantly expressed. It’s been almost 25 years since the order first went out from Whitehall to inspect schools and hospitals for crumbling reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (Raac). When a roof eventually collapsed at the Singlewell Primary school in Kent in 2018, the government sent out surveys to inquire about building material – but that was largely it. Like lazy homeowners, or dodgy landlords, successive administrations assumed the problem

When prime ministers sense the end is near, they tend to follow a similar pattern. They change senior civil servants and appointees, as Boris Johnson and Gordon Brown did. They avoid consulting their cabinet and instead hide behind special advisers. They declare they don’t like polls, before saying that the only poll that matters is the election. But before all of this, they usually attempt a ‘reset’. It’s rarely a sign of rejuvenation, but rather the start of the embalming process. Rishi Sunak is aware of this, which is why there’s no use of the word in No. 10 as politics prepares to resume. He has so far resisted calls

If a general election is held, as is rumoured, in November next year, Labour could return to power exactly 20 years after the Hunting Act was passed, and there is the very real possibility of field sports being finished off altogether. Then, the government’s assault on hunting was a long, bloody, open conflict. Today, the campaign against countryside pursuits is more covert – a gradual process of lawfare. Over the past two decades, more and more regulation has crept in. Field sports and the rural economy that surrounds them are suffering. The groups set up to protect rural England often now work against the interests of both gamekeepers and farmers,

The battle for the next Labour manifesto is already under way. ‘I will stay up to 2 a.m. if I need to,’ warned one member of the shadow cabinet ahead of last week’s national policy forum meeting in Nottingham. The trade unions and grassroot members were pushing for radicalism, Keir Starmer for moderation. The squeals of the Labour left are seen as useful by Starmer’s team Starmer misses no opportunity to make the point that realism, not revolution, is the path to power. He was quick to blame the party’s narrow defeat in the Uxbridge by-election on Sadiq Khan’s support for the extension of London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone. ‘In

Rishi Sunak goes into the summer holidays in the same position he began the year: 20 points behind in the polls. In other ways it feels as if his premiership has gone backwards. Mortgage rates have risen above the levels they were under Liz Truss. The Tory psychodrama of the Boris Johnson era has led to two of the three by-elections taking place this week. Little progress has been made on Sunak’s ‘five priorities’ – the junior doctor strikes show no sign of abating and the Rwanda scheme is held up in the courts. ‘At this point Keir Starmer could probably announce backing for freedom of movement and still scrape

The Labour party is preparing for power and the unions are deciding what role they might play. Friend or foe? Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, has already incited their ire by refusing to commit to accepting independent pay-review body recommendations. Unite, the second-largest trade union, this week debated cutting ties with Labour and starting its opposition early. There is growing anxiety from the left that Starmer is abandoning party traditions in the pursuit of power The motion was, in the end, rejected. ‘The Labour party has decided we want to win,’ insisted one party figure. The union hit back. It insisted that Starmer has been ‘put on notice’ and that

Jonathan Ashworth has started carrying a card in his shirt pocket. It’s the licence his father was given when he got a job in the 1970s at the Playboy casino in Manchester. ‘It’s silly, really. But it’s just a reminder that my dad was able to start a job as a croupier from a very poor working-class background in Salford and that completely changed his life,’ the shadow work and pensions secretary says when we meet in his Commons office. It was at the casino that his father met Ashworth’s mother – a Playboy bunny girl working as a waitress. ‘Every week, the Playboy bunny girls had to queue up

Is Labour really going to reform the House of Lords? The party has ended up in a bit of a pickle over abolishing a chamber that it also wants to stuff with its own peers. The party’s spokesman yesterday told journalists that there was still a plan to create a Labour majority in the Lords because it was ‘essential’ for the party to be able to get its business through the Upper Chamber. The party’s leader in the Lords, Angela Smith, also told Times Radio that ‘there are 90 more Conservatives than Labour. The priority for Keir will be ensuring he gets the Labour programme through.’ It isn’t mutually exclusive

When the political cabinet met on Tuesday, by-elections were on the agenda. The Prime Minister is facing four of them. David Warburton, suspended from the party last year over a sex and cocaine ‘sting’, is the latest to step down. On 20 July the Tories will try to defend his constituency of Somerton and Frome, Boris Johnson’s old seat of Uxbridge and South Ruislip and Nigel Adams’s Selby and Ainsty. Despite announcing she was also quitting on social media, Nadine Dorries is taking her time to trigger a vote in Mid Bedfordshire – and the whips’ office is assuming that she may hang on all the way to the next