Tim Shipman

Can Reform beat the blob?

16 August 2025 9:00 am

Shortly after he was elected as Britain’s youngest council leader last month, 19-year-old George Finch of Reform UK had a…

Motherland: how Farage is winning over women

9 August 2025 9:00 am

On the campaign trail in the Midlands ahead of May’s local elections, a journalist asked Nigel Farage: ‘Do you have…

The asylum hotel crisis will cost Labour

2 August 2025 9:00 am

Yvette Cooper doesn’t do holidays, which is probably just as well since she is the minister who, this summer, holds…

Can anything stop Reform?

26 July 2025 9:00 am

A close associate of Nigel Farage received phone calls from three civil servants in the past week, asking how they…

‘Let Keir be Keir’: inside the cabinet’s away day

19 July 2025 9:00 am

Labour ministers face a range of terrible political choices, but when the cabinet met for an away day at Chequers…

The reign of Rayner

12 July 2025 9:00 am

Angela Rayner declined an invitation to a hen do last weekend where the entertainment included axe-throwing. ‘She was worried about…

Can Starmer convince the French to finally sign a migrant deal?

8 July 2025 11:19 pm

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, hits town today. It’s Macron’s first state visit to the UK and the first by…

Norman Tebbit was a proper politician

8 July 2025 8:58 pm

Norman Tebbit, who has died at the age of 94, was one of the dominant political figures of my youth.…

Can Keir Starmer fend off Labour’s big beasts?

5 July 2025 9:00 am

It was the chronicle of a death foretold. Last year Keir Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, drafted a memo…

Revealed: Morgan McSweeney’s memo to the PM on how Labour could fail

5 July 2025 3:18 am

In this week’s cover story, I revealed details of a memo written by Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s chief of…

‘It’s Liz Truss territory’: how bad are things for Kemi Badenoch?

28 June 2025 9:00 am

Around 5 p.m. on Monday one of Kemi Badenoch’s aides was having a drink with a friend in the Two…

Why has a leak inquiry been launched into Hermer’s legal advice?

27 June 2025 12:24 am

I have now been told by four people in government that a leak inquiry is being conducted into the revelations…

Starmer’s war zone: the Prime Minister is in a perilous position

21 June 2025 9:00 am

Sir Keir Starmer was alerted in the early hours of Friday by his national security adviser, Jonathan Powell, that Israel’s…

Hyper-history: why did politics go crazy?

27 April 2024 9:00 am

On the day Theresa May signed her Brexit withdrawal agreement with Brussels, Dominic Raab, the Brexit secretary, resigned. She tried…

Brexit: how to make a TV drama out of a crisis

28 July 2018 9:00 am

I spent a bit of time last week on the set of the new Brexit film, which James Graham has…

Brexit’s breaking points

10 December 2016 9:00 am

Trying to write the first draft of history on the EU referendum and the leader-ship mess that followed had both…