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Theresa May’s speech to the Tory conference was a daring raid on the right of the Conservative party. It was not, as many commentators are saying, about making the party nasty – it was about making her leader. She set out her stall as the hard woman who would stand up...

A new blue dawn has broken, has it not? The prime minister lifted the key Blair phrase that ushered in 13 years of Labour rule and updated it to a time when, he hopes, his Conservative party can rule for that long and much more. David Cameron took to the stage in...

I interviewed Denis Healey as part of the research for my biography of Aneurin Bevan in February 2011. He immediately seized on Bevan’s remark that ‘the right kind of leader for the Labour party is a kind of dessicated calculating-machine’. While Clement Attlee was...

As Boris Johnson bowed out as mayor before the Tory faithful with a trademark bang, Zac Goldsmith took up the baton with a definite whimper. While it is always a challenge to be the warm-up act for one of the best orators the Tories have produced for a generation,...