Andrew Rawnsley

In the global race to dominate green technology, Britain is still tying its shoelaces

As the US, China and now the EU compete for the fruits of the green economy, the UK is hamstrung by Tory dogma, dither and delay he United States is out of the blocks. The European Union is hurrying along the track. China is competing too. Here in…

The 100-day test for new leaders and why Rishi Sunak is flunking it

He promised an end to the degeneracy of the Johnson years, but the scandals keep coming and the prime minister seems too weak to deal with them his week, Rishi Sunak will clock up – celebrate wouldn’t be the mot juste – his 100th day at Number 10. It…

Three years after Brexit, where is the new golden age that they promised us?

At 11pm on the last day of January, it will be precisely three years since the UK departed the European Union, an anniversary that prompts me to ask: how are you enjoying the “new golden age”? That’s what we were promised by the proselytisers of…

If Rishi Sunak doesn’t drop the macho act, we’re in for a spring of continuing misery

The wave of public sector strikes will only get worse until the government realises that compromise is not a dirty word s the legendary political thinker Zsa Zsa Gabor once put it: “Macho does not prove mucho.” Faced with the most disruptive…

Rishi Sunak v Keir Starmer: battle of the speeches revealed the critical choice facing Britain

The fundamental differences of belief between the two party leaders are much more important than their superficial similarities ome people look from Sir Keir Starmer to Rishi Sunak and ask: what’s the difference? They are damned as carbon-copy…

Labour has suddenly become a hot favourite, but the race isn’t won until election day

Sir Keir Starmer’s party must be ready to face a lot more scrutiny this year ollow the money and it is saying that our next government will be Labour. The betting markets think Sir Keir Starmer will enter Number 10 sometime in the next two years. The…

After a year when the only certainty was Tory chaos, could 2023 be even worse?

octors assessing people for signs of dementia have traditionally asked their patients: “Who is the prime minister?” Some health professionals report that they stopped using that question this year. There has been so much manic mayhem at the apex of…

Abolition of the Lords, that house of cronies, toadies and donors, can’t come too soon

he cure for admiring the House of Lords is to describe it to someone from abroad. To an American, you will have to explain why there are more than 800 people entitled to sit in our grotesquely bloated upper chamber when the US manages with 100…

This winter of discontent will harden the feeling that the Tories have broken Britain

icket lines at hospitals of all places. Workers in many critical roles on strike. A contingencies unit scrambled together in Downing Street to respond to the crisis. The army on standby. Ministers secretly debating whether things were getting so dire…

As disgraced Tory MPs shame politics, will Rishi Sunak keep his promise to clean up the house?

candal is a motif of extended periods of Tory government. The longer the stretch of uninterrupted Conservative rule, the bigger the scandals tend to get. At the fag end of Harold Macmillan’s premiership in 1963, the most lurid of them was the Profumo…

Britain is on a highway to hell – and the Tories are about to make life even harder

ory MPs are publicly contemptuous of Matt Hancock, but they may soon be privately envious. There are worse fates for a politician than being force-fed kangaroo testicles and ostrich anus in return for a very large cheque. While the disgraced former…

What Keir Starmer needs to do if Labour is to successfully challenge Rishi Sunak

he American writer Joe Klein once described elective politics as “the art of competitive storytelling”. We know the story that Rishi Sunak wants to sell to the public. The scion of an upwardly mobile family of Indian ancestry who has reached the apex…

If the Tory party brings back Boris Johnson, it really will be fit only for a straitjacket

ontemplating a regime of churning chaos presiding over extreme financial volatility, some market analysts no longer treat Britain as a G7 country and bracket us with emerging markets. This is unfair. There are many developing countries with much more…

Liz Truss hasn’t saved her own skin by making a sacrifice of Kwasi Kwarteng

f you are in politics and want a friend, get a dog. When Liz Truss was making her fateful advance on Downing Street, her friendship with Kwasi Kwarteng was touted as the foundation stone and guarantee of the successful programme they would deliver.…

Johnson was slow-poisoning arsenic for the Conservatives. Liz Truss is instant cyanide

n the wake of the self-devouring carnival of cannibals, the most disastrous Conservative conference anyone can remember, parliament will reconvene this week. Then the dark fun and gory games will really begin. On paper, Liz Truss commands a hefty…

Ms Truss’s brand of havoc has got Britain moving… towards the resurgent Labour party

he slogan for this week’s Conservative conference is “Getting Britain Moving”. Good to their word, the government has already generated some highly dramatic movements – the pound plunging, mortgage rates surging and the morale of Conservative MPs…

The Tories’ huge gamble offers a fabulous opportunity Keir Starmer’s party must seize

oris who? Theresa who? David who? The names escape her. Rishi who? Philip who? George who? The names elude him. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, the devil-may-care duo of Downing Street, declare themselves an audacious break with the failed orthodoxies…

Keir Starmer: ‘The hope of a Labour victory has turned into a belief’

In an interview with the Observer, the party’s leader says the battle lines with the Tories are clear – and he’s ready for the challenge Sir Keir Starmer used to get quite cross with people who called him dull, once rebuking mutterers in the shadow…

Keir Starmer unveils green growth plan to counter Liz Truss’s tax cuts

Keir Starmer will pledge to deliver a new era of economic growth and permanently lower energy bills by turning the UK into an independent green “superpower” before 2030, through a massive expansion of wind and solar energy. Announcing details of the…

Liz Truss can’t speak for the national mood because she really doesn’t understand it

top all the clocks, cut off the telephone,Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,Silence the pianos and with muffled drumBring out the coffin, let the mourners come.The barking of politics appears to have been respectfully hushed since the…