AboutArticles by John Rentoul

Reeves is facing a ‘trilemma’ ahead of her Budget

13 Oct 2024

It is hard to see how Rachel Reeves can achieve the three incompatible objectives she has been set in the Budget. Her choices resemble one of those Venn diagrams popular...

If you found Cleverly’s exit shocking you are not alone

11 Oct 2024

When the herd moves, it moves, as Boris Johnson said of his parliamentary colleagues. It looks as if Conservative MPs assumed that James Cleverly would definitely be in the final...

Labour’s polls are dreadful — but they can bounce back

10 Oct 2024

Top Blairites tell me they are “not surprised” by Labour’s one-point lead in the latest opinion poll, carried out at the weekend. Some holders of a torch for New Labour...

Hasn’t Johnson done enough damage to the Tory party?

06 Oct 2024

If only Boris Johnson had been in a position to do something about the European Court of Human Rights, he wouldn’t need to be calling for a referendum on it...

Starmer had a plan to win, but no plan for government

23 Sep 2024

Nobody had high expectations of this Labour government. That could have been one of its strengths: that people would accept it had taken over at a time when the public...

If Streeting saves NHS he could easily be our next PM

16 Sep 2024

Keir Starmer is following the Tony Blair model for fixing the NHS. He takes advice from Blair himself, and has brought back two of the people who were key to...

Boris Johnson was the most left-wing Tory PM

15 Sep 2024

When Kemi Badenoch said at the launch of her Conservative leadership campaign that the party had “talked right but governed left”, many people were puzzled. What did she mean? Well,...

Jenrick must be cautious if he’s playing the Trump card

06 Sep 2024

We have been here before. I had to come to the defence of Tower Hamlets, the east London borough where I live when, earlier this year, Paul Scully, the otherwise...

Oprah Winfrey was not Oprah, she was Orpah

02 Sep 2024

We opined last weekend on the allegation of cronyism in some of the new government’s civil service appointments. “The Tories doth protest too much, methinks,” wrote our commentator. Thanks to...

Starmer and Reeves face big test of their relationship

01 Sep 2024

Most Labour MPs were “OK with it”, I was told, when Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, announced she was cutting the winter fuel payment to pensioners. They accepted the argument, put...

John Rentoul

Chief Political Commentator, The Independent; visiting professor, King's College, London.

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