AboutArticles by John Rentoul

Keir Starmer should go easy on Boris Johnson

13 Dec 2021

The most effective form of attack is courtesy. Many Labour supporters naturally want Keir Starmer to go over the top, with metaphorical bricks and bottles, to condemn the worst prime...

Tony Blair can’t resist being confrontational — Keir Starmer will be furious over his wokeism comments

27 Nov 2021

Even his enemies concede Tony Blair knows how to do two things. One is to win elections; the other is to generate headlines. “Blair calls for Labour to reject ‘wokeism’”...

Budget will be a compromise between PM and chancellor

24 Oct 2021

I promise this is the last time I will mention the Tony Blair and Gordon Brown TV series until next week (Monday’s episode, the fourth of five of Blair &...

Labour’s win in Batley and Spen should bother Boris

03 Jul 2021

There have been sensational by-election victories in the past. The first Liberal win in a safe Conservative seat in Orpington in 1962; the Scottish National Party breakthrough in Hamilton in...

British politics: How did Prime Minister Boris Johnson become the defender of working-class culture?

21 Jun 2021

Nothing could better illustrate the Great Class Inversion in British politics than a book to be published next month by David Skelton, called The New Snobbery. Skelton is a Conservative...

UK politics: The siren calls for an electoral pact

06 Jun 2021

One of the things for which Boris Johnson was wrongly mocked was writing two articles about Brexit, one in favour and one against. It was the sort of intellectually rigorous...

Boris’s former top adviser Cummings’s evidence could be a box-set series finale that disappoints viewers

25 May 2021

Dominic Cummings likes his metaphors of chaos and destruction. He used to take the pin out of an imaginary grenade before throwing it over his shoulder into a meeting room...

Starmer will survive any election disappointment

02 May 2021

You have to hand it to the anonymous Conservative MP for a “red wall” seat who told The Times: “There is concern among colleagues that if we win Hartlepool, Starmer...

Cummings failed to make charges against Johnson

25 Apr 2021

Dominic Cummings uses a lot of colourful words about the prime minister: “unethical” (twice), “foolish”, “possibly illegal”, “almost certainly broke the rules”, and “below the standards of competence and integrity...

Alex Salmond’s new party is too clever by at least half

28 Mar 2021

The first and natural reaction to Alex Salmond launching a new party is that he is a bitter egotist who will set back the cause of independence by splitting the...

John Rentoul

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

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