Right from the start she was heading Left. Nicola Sturgeon, suited up in Kremlin red, marched on stage to rouse the masses from a podium branded ‘progress’. The First Minister had got herself one of those radical visions that are all the rage these days. Socialism is now so mainstream they’ll be selling it in […]

Party conferences are the pantomime season of political life. Star turns and bit players tread the boards, competing for the limelight with hammy monologues and broad humour. There are in-jokes, knowing looks, the familiarity that nods through gags that would otherwise be considered a bit on the edge. Everyone has a hearty laugh, heads down […]

Like a sharp-suited shark-hunter, John Swinney dumped the chum in the water and waited. The blood pooled out, the scent spread, and the feeding frenzy began. It was the first day of SNP conference in Glasgow and Nationalists were having a right old time tearing chunks out of the opposition. The Deputy First Minister got […]

This time last year she was riding high in the polls but her numbers have since plummeted. Her minority government, propped up by a small fringe party, lumbers from crisis to crisis. The country’s future relationship to Europe is fast becoming a source of division in her once united party. Not Theresa May, who doesn’t […]

Theresa May’s Manchester meltdown was unfolding on live television, like a particularly excruciating Fisherman’s Friend advert, and Nicola Sturgeon was watching nervously 200 miles to the north. The First Minister fired off a tweet: ‘Spare a thought for those of us still to deliver our conference speech and now fretting about all the things that […]

There is no rule that says all great things must come from Manchester, it just seems to work out that way. The Warehouse City lays claim to some of England’s finest writers, from Jack Rosenthal to Howard Jacobson, and from its post-industrial streets emerged sounds to define generations of British pop. Without Manchester there would […]