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
I see that Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, has beaten me in trying to answer Tony Blair’s seven questions for the Labour Party (Times, pay wall).
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Monday, 15 April 2013 at 2:10 pm
I know longform is just a long way of saying long, but sometimes there is a place for long articles, which they do in America but not here so much. They also do them in Australia. Or, at least, David Hayes does them in Inside Story.
He has written a magnificent 6,000-word essay called “Britain’s military [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 14 April 2013 at 10:18 pm
One of the seminars Jon Davis and I teach in the “Blair Government” and “New Labour in Government” classes at Queen Mary, University of London, discusses the merits of British prime ministers and tries to place Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the league table, as I mention in The Independent on Sunday today.
YouGov’s poll [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 14 April 2013 at 11:34 am
Digital data can be amazing. I wrote an article for the New Statesman in the 1980s called “Fear of fridges”, in which I quoted a speech of Hugh Gaitskell’s in which he seemed to blame Labour’s lack of electoral success in the 1950s on the spread of fridge ownership.
That was all I could remember, but [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Sunday, 14 April 2013 at 10:54 am
Voters disagree with David Cameron’s description of Margaret Thatcher as “the greatest British peacetime prime minister” by 41 per cent to 33 per cent, according to a ComRes poll for tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday, shared with the Sunday Mirror. And 60 per cent oppose taxpayer funding for next week’s funeral.
The poll, taken on Wednesday and [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 13 April 2013 at 7:26 pm
The Committee has convened, and is pleased to approve the following for addition to the Banned List.
“Financial products.” Nominated by Dan Jackson. Or just “product” to refer to any non-tangible output.
“Palpable sense of relief.” Carlos Lozada, editor of Washington Post Outlook section editor.*
“The public square”, when not referring to Tahrir, Tiananmen, Trafalgar (pictured) and so on.
“Offers [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 13 April 2013 at 11:25 am
We have a ComRes opinion poll in The Independent on Sunday tomorrow, shared with the Sunday Mirror. We ask a lot of questions about Margaret Thatcher, in addition to our usual questions about how people intend to vote: Is there a Thatcher effect?
We asked people what they remember her for, and if they agreed or [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Saturday, 13 April 2013 at 10:03 am
Unexpectedly, this, asked in the New Statesman’s centenary edition, is not a Question To Which The Answer Is No. The New Statesman has used only the last paragraph of my answer, so here is the full windbag version:
When I worked for the New Statesman in 1988, I read some of its earliest editions for the [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Friday, 12 April 2013 at 12:29 pm
I cannot find these figures on the internet, so I post them in case anyone else needs them. These are the shares of the vote won by the main parties in recent general elections, in Great Britain only.
The UK figures are widely available, and are often cited when the GB figures should be used. These [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 11 April 2013 at 9:39 pm
In the New Statesman centenary edition:
He was the most brilliant talker I’ve met and the best argufier. At the Statesman he was largely gay, idly anti-Semitic and very left-wing. Then ripple-dissolve to someone who was twice married and had discovered himself to be Jewish and become a neocon. An odd progress, though he didn’t do [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye | Thursday, 11 April 2013 at 4:42 pm
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