John Rentoul is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday, and visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London, where he teaches contemporary history. Previously he was chief leader writer for The Independent. He has written a biography of Tony Blair, whom he admired more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning. Click here and 'like' to receive updates on Facebook
Matthew d’Ancona says David Cameron’s talk is of “clearing the battlefield”. Which is a nice way of saying, “everything looks like a shambles now, but just imagine what it will be like the week after next when all this bad stuff is out of the way”.
D’Ancona reports what I had heard, which is that No [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 18 May 2013 at 9:54 pm
The UK Independence Party is on 19 per cent, the highest share recorded by any pollster, in a ComRes poll for tomorrow’s The Independent on Sunday, shared with the Sunday Mirror.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 18 May 2013 at 7:27 pm
We have a ComRes opinion poll in The Independent on Sunday tomorrow, shared with the Sunday Mirror. The results will cause a bit of a stir.
As well as asking people how they would vote, and who would be the best prime minister, we asked if people agreed or disagreed with the following:
If a referendum were [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 18 May 2013 at 10:27 am
Falling a bit behind in the series of the book, Questions To Which The Answer Is No.
This is number 947, asked by Huffington Post (alien fish, pictured).
Number 948 was asked by Mary Riddell:
Will Ed Miliband be the Doctor Who of politics?
A bit baffling, that one (unlike all the others). Will he reverse the polarity of the neutron [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 17 May 2013 at 9:37 pm
Nigel Lawson, Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1979-81 (second from left in picture), told Treasury civil servants at a seminar organised by the Mile End Group two weeks ago (but online only today):
There’s a reason why you today can feel confident … Based on the example of what we did in the 1980s, squeezing public [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 17 May 2013 at 2:14 pm
That’s the blog post I would like to write – not because I am a cheerleader for the Prime Minister but because it would be a challenge. But, despite Dan Hodges’ best effort to explain why Ed Miliband has blown his chance (Times, pay wall), it doesn’t seem possible to explain how this week’s EU referendum [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Wednesday, 15 May 2013 at 12:02 pm
No, this is not my long-promised lecture of the above title. I am under-qualified to deliver it, in any case. Suffice it to say that those who idolise Clement Attlee as a way of criticising New Labour have got the wrong man.
Someone who could deliver it is David Hayes, one of the finest essayists, whose [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 14 May 2013 at 9:59 pm
Number 944 in my series of Questions To Which The Answer Is No, asked by guess who.
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Tuesday, 14 May 2013 at 11:19 am
We are used to Ed Miliband’s post-neo-liberal mumbo-jumbo on the economy. We heard more of it in his speech to Progress on Saturday (see below). What was surprising, reading David Sainsbury’s book, Progressive Capitalism, is that he too criticises the New Labour government, in which he too was a minister, because it failed to “question fundamentally [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 13 May 2013 at 6:19 pm
The next question is whether Ed Miliband will match David Cameron’s promise of a referendum on EU membership by the time of the 2015 election. He could have pre-empted Cameron’s promise, which was advertised several months in advance, but he chose not to. I suspect that there was a vigorous debate with Ed Balls, who [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 12 May 2013 at 3:01 pm
1Doctor Who ‘The Name of the Doctor’ – Series 7, episode 13
2On The Road at the Giro d’Italia: Feeling ill and racing in the rain must be pretty grim
3Where have property prices been reduced most in the UK?
4Syria’s cannibal rebel defends himself
5Dish of the Day: How to… make one of the sublimest of cocktails, the Negroni
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