AboutArticles by John Rentoul

Labour party is now the low-immigration party

29 May 2023

Something significant happened this week. Labour confirmed its position as a party advocating lower immigration than the Conservatives. When a Redfield and Wilton opinion poll this month asked which party...

Starmer’s U-turns make it look as if he doesn’t believe anything

21 May 2023

Keir Starmer is “working forwards not backwards”, a Blair-era cabinet minister told me after one of the Labour leader’s recent U-turns. This was a cryptic way of saying that Starmer...

Starmer will say whatever it takes to win

14 May 2023

You have to admire Keir Starmer’s ambition. He wants to fight the 1945, 1964 and 1997 elections all at once. “In 2024 it will have to be all three,” he...

Starmer may be on course for No 10 and coalition of chaos

07 May 2023

The Conservatives did so badly in the local elections that their own spin backfired. Greg Hands, the party chair, said he was expecting to lose 1,000 seats, with the transparent...

‘Come outside and we’ll sort it out’: Lee Anderson’s thuggishness is a throwback to an undemocratic past

29 Apr 2023

Lee Anderson sent me an email last night headed, “Here’s what happened at 7pm, John.” I thought he was going to explain the fracas in which he was involved with...

Labour campaign machine is definitely out of control

16 Apr 2023

Speculation about the next election is constant, yet it alternates between two outcomes that ought to be unlikely. One is a Labour majority, which would require an unprecedented recovery in...

As Biden visits Northern Ireland, can US again help seal the deal?

10 Apr 2023

One of the stars that aligned when Tony Blair felt the hand of history on his shoulder 25 years ago was the changing politics of the Irish lobby in the...

Jeremy Corbyn’s terrible warning to Keir Starmer

02 Apr 2023

One of my vivid memories of working in TV was the moment when John Habgood, the Archbishop of York, responded to a question from Jonathan Dimbleby in a BBC On...

Starmer’s impossible promises are harder to believe

26 Mar 2023

The reaction to some of his pledges was “a sharp intake of breath”, Keir Starmer said on Thursday. He welcomed that because “nobody can doubt the scale of our ambition,...

Boris Johnson has been humiliated on two fronts

23 Mar 2023

Boris Johnson spent three hours giving evidence to the Committee of Privileges, trying to keep the flame of a comeback alight – including when he had to interrupt said testimony...

John Rentoul

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

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