Madeline Grant
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Articles by Madeline Grant
England, whose England?
For a long time, the mainstream political parties have adhered to an omertà – a ‘never complain, never explain’ – on the subject of Englishness. The ghost of Powellism was deployed so effectively that the question of what it means to be English became the preserve of fringe figures on the right, while Westminster retreated into a fantasy world where national identity was, as once articulated by Sir Keir Starmer, defined by ‘cutting the half-time orange’.
Andy Burnham’s cry for help at PMQs
The first question at PMQs was something which may not go away: Andy Burnham’s engagement with Manchester City – now firmly on the footballing naughty step – during his time as Mayor of Manchester. Fellow Mancunian Lucy Powell scowled ominously, like a rejected prototype of the Chucky Doll, as it was implied that the New Jerusalem might not have been as squeaky-clean as its MPs have been trying to suggest. Louise Haigh did a kind of panto grimace at any who dared question Burnham.
Burnham’s Brexit babblings have already backfired
It was back to the future in the House of Commons today. After their weeks of backslapping and self-delusion, MPs were back in parliament and indulging in a full-blown nostalgia overload. That’s right – traumatic for those of us who had to report on it and downright tedious for everyone else – the Brexit wars were back. Burnham had spent the last week focused on foreign affairs, including a trip to the UN.
The Tories love Kemi – but who loves them?
I swear that every year the introductions to leaders’ speeches at party conferences become more and more of a circus. Gone are the days of a weird music hall song by Jim Callaghan or a butchered Python joke by Mrs Thatcher, today we get a whole cavalcade of strangeness before the leader has even stepped on stage. So it was today as Mrs Badenoch addressed the Tory faithful. We were treated to Chris Philp and Nick Timothy as a sort of Tory Home Affairs Bill and Ben.
At conference, the Tories are haunted by their past
Day three of the Tory conference. A giant drone hung over the stage for the afternoon’s session on defence. Plenty of giant drones were hungover in the audience too. We heard from a Ukrainian politician who lamented that we lived in an era where ‘force of law’ had been replaced by ‘law of force’. Unfortunately, Britain is a country which has yet to learn that lesson itself. This was the grand unveiling of new shadow foreign secretary Tom Tugendhat; not a man known for his shy and retiring nature.
Burnham and Farage don’t fear the Tories… yet
It was a big day for the Tory conference. There was a real celebrity in town. Normally the sort of famous people who choose to come to party conferences are people for whom the credulous adulation of showbiz wasn’t enough and so they go to the bit beyond the bottom of the barrel and look to politics for their ego highs: think the supremely dislikable Izzard. Yet in Birmingham today was someone – though not without his controversies – who is actually liked by the British public.
Zack Polanski offers Labour voters the full-fat nut milk
You have to feel sorry for the people of Brighton. No, seriously. In the last two weeks they’ve been subjected not just to a deluge of Lib Dems but now also the entirety of the Green party. Even for the residents of Britain’s progressive Mecca – or should that just be Mecca – that might be a bit much. Today was the opening of the Greens’ conference. Sian Berry spoke first, with a deranged rant about the A23 and ‘showing arses’ to fascists.
Britain is entering its Rococo period
There were many reasons why John Ruskin hated Rococo. The overly decorated style was a bête noire for the great architectural critic because he thought it the supreme example of excess and by its excess it concealed its true meaning. We are in an era of British life which I can only think of as ‘late Rococo incompetence’. The excess of bad news, government ineptitude and baffling decisions made by the state is now so great that we are struck dumb, incapable of meaningful reaction.
Burnham’s brand of patronising tweeslop reigns supreme
Labour are in Liverpool and, as their conference reached its apogee, I was put in mind of John Lennon. What could an entitled pseud, who preached tolerance and kindness while being intensely venal and malicious in his personal life, possibly remind you of in today’s Labour party, I hear you ask? Well, specifically what came to mind was Lennon’s hatred for particular, mawkish and sentimental parts of the Beatles’ oeuvre which he called ‘Paul’s Granny S***’.
The fantastical world of Ed Davey
I’m sort of in awe of Ed Davey. How does he still manage to wake up every day and, despite all the other challengers for the title, somehow knock it out of the park as the nation’s most embarrassing political leader? His address to the Liberal Democrat conference this week was a masterpiece. There he was, the Postmaster’s Friend, wedged into a pair of dad-chinos and reminiscing about his radical days at the college JCR.
The continuity idiocy of Labour’s foreign policy
There was for a time the vaguest sense that things had got better since Andy Burnham took charge. That the insanity and inanity of Starmerism had finally bitten the dust. In some narrow respects this is true, yet in the sphere of foreign policy there remains a continuity idiocy which threatens to make Britain even more of an embarrassment than it already is. Key in this are two dismal figures: Luke Pollard and Jonathan Powell.
America is not our friend
Imagine, if you will, King Charles in the Deep South. The aesthetics are easy enough: it doesn’t take much to picture His Majesty in crumpled linen, Her Majesty the right side of a large mint julep. But imagine if, in Richmond, Virginia, Charleston or New Orleans, His Majesty makes an off-the-cuff comment about how good it would be if the territories he was speaking in seceded from the United States and that it would be ‘a very great thing’ if claims of the Confederacy were honoured.
When will Labour ‘do their bit’ on illegal immigration?
Lisa Nandy’s media-round sounds like the sort of thing you might be signed up to if you failed to make the cut as a Newsround Press Packer. Unfortunately for us, it’s actually a key part of the government’s comms strategy as the Culture Secretary was sent out on to the airwaves this morning. Inevitably she was asked about the Piddington fiasco. The government is ‘listening’ to villagers in Piddington, purred Nandy, but is ‘not going to change our plans’.
On assisted dying, sense prevailed
Sequels to horror films can be a mixed bag. Some become classics in their own right, others fall into the category of things better left forgotten. Think Leprechaun: Origins. The House of Commons was back this week debating assisted suicide again. Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the chamber, here we were, the same arguments in favour, the same cast, the same lingering air of horror. The quality was not good: this was Children of the Corn II territory.
Long live death’s dark humour
One of the things people don’t tell you about grief is the humorous side of it. Many will warn that grief can erupt at strange times and that memories of those who have died spring upon you in unusual places. But few mention the fact that loss can put you in situations where the only real solution is to laugh. My father died at the end of last month. He was much loved and is much missed.
Andy Burnham resembled an extreme train enthusiast at PMQs
Today was Andy Burnham’s second Prime Minister’s Questions and also his last one for five weeks. The mini-recess for the extended exercise in masochism that is party conference season means Burnham will have gone a little over three months in the job while only answering questions twice. It’s quite hard to think of the last senior advisor to the crown to have faced so little direct Parliamentary scrutiny: the Munshi? The courtier in charge of wiping Henry VIII’s bottom? Merlin?
Why has John Healey started speaking like Confucius?
John Healey had been sent to Coventry, something he will have to get used to after his budget next month, at least if he ever intends to use any form of business again. He was visiting ‘The Manufacturing Technology Centre’ which is the sort of vague, ‘Universal Exports’ style name for a company that might have, in past years, made people think Healey was a double agent.
Masters of War: From Napoleon to Churchill
Overview Join us as our panel discuss the legacy of some of modern history's greatest and most controversial leaders. Venue: Westminster (To be confirmed) From Napoleon’s conquests across Europe to Lord Salisbury’s diplomacy during the height of the British Empire and Churchill’s wartime strategy, our panel will explore how history is shaped disproportionately by great figures making crucial decisions at moments of crisis.
Andy Burnham is about to face a hard lesson
There was a cautious cheer for Andy Burnham as he stood up for his first PMQs. MPs were perhaps cautious of a repeat of the day before when Burnham delivered the longest opening statement of modern times. Or maybe the PM’s summer of lying low just meant that some of the more intellectually challenged members had forgotten who he was.
Andy Burnham’s ‘triple helix’ is bizarre, meaningless guff
Andy Burnham was at the government despatch box for the first time in nearly 17 years, having had the sort of carefree summer that one would normally associate with an Enid Blyton story rather than a premiership. His grand entrance was somewhat overshadowed by one final act of petty vindictiveness by Sir Keir Starmer who announced he was resigning his seat – despite repeatedly promising not to do so – just a couple of hours before Burnham was due to speak.
The Victorian moralising of the Home Office’s migrant rape advice
The legacy of the Victorians is everywhere; we depend on them for our sewage disposal, our railway networks, much of our infrastructure and housing stock. Even the hooded eyelids of our Royal Family mark them out as descendants of Victoria herself.
Bond’s identity crisis mirrors Britain’s
Sometimes I wake up in the night disturbed by dreams of James Bond. Surely, you might say, that’s the point of him; a man of such raw sex appeal that he can break the somnial boundary of women all over the world. But these aren’t sexy dreams about Bond’s past; they’re nightmarish visions of his future – Bond in the modern British public sector. Picture it, 007 walks in for his briefing with M.
Kehinde Andrews is the Hiroo Onoda of the Jason Arday saga
Summer is a time for fleeting joys. Be it friendships, romances or hilarious stories about charlatan academics at the University of Cambridge: these fragile bringers of summer happiness cannot be expected to last much longer than the lifecycle of the butterfly. So it is that the Jason Arday saga is grinding to a halt.
Why is the C of E still devoted to woke?
The Church of England can always be relied upon to walk into a room just as everybody else is leaving. The question of whether we have reached ‘peak woke’ – the high watermark of Americanised racial politics dictating every aspect of public life – remains open. However, those post-Black Lives Matter efforts, which saw mass demonstrations and acts of self-abasement by companies and institutions, are undeniably more muted and more disputed than they were in 2020.
The end of life bill is back
This article is taken from the 2026 double summer issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Find our subscription offers here. There was a certain irony when, at the end of the last parliamentary session, the assisted suicide bill was put out of its misery. The Labour MP Kim Leadbeater’s attempt to legalise medically-assisted suicide eventually ran out of time in the House of Lords. Reactions were, to say the least, mixed.
It’s the ideology, stupid
What do Nigel Farage, gender-critical feminism, masculinity, generalised homophobia and GB News have in common? All have been blamed in the past week or so for the pair of terror attacks in Berlin and Paris which left one dead and dozens wounded. Labour MPs (including the cabinet minister Chris Bryant), left-wing commentators and journalists have rushed to point the finger at a variety of bizarre targets. It must be hard being an Islamist.
It’s amazing how far Burnham has got by not being Keir Starmer
It’s amazing how far a prime minister can get just by not being Keir Starmer. There’s considerable political success to be had in simply reversing his stupidest policies, from digital ID to scrapping jury trials, and today, for now at least – assisted suicide – which Mr Burnham announced he wouldn’t be taking forward until social care is in better shape. The most kamikaze-shaped policy of the Starmer government, the Chagos surrender, still technically remains on the books.
I’m so glad that Big Ange is back
Big Ange is back. From a sketchwriter’s point of view I have to say that this is marvellous news. Rayner is actually an exceptionally old-fashioned politician. She’s akin to the union barons of the past, or perhaps even more accurately, to the Democrat mob bosses who ran Chicago or New York from the middle of the 19th century. I can picture her turning No. 10 North into a sort of Tammany Hall operation where she dishes out service contracts to choice clients with gay abandon.
What is the point of the Lib Dems?
The Liberal Democrat party of Russia and the Liberal Democrat party of the United Kingdom are not, on the face of it, natural bedfellows. Google declares that the latter’s main policies are ‘healthcare reform, the replacement of Ofwat and closer integration with Europe’. The former’s main policies are the shooting of political opponents, the deportation of all Chechens and something they ominously term ‘imperial reconquest’.
Put on a suit and tie, Prime Minister
A brass fanfare; a wide establishing shot of five men in three-piece suits, seated in a library of leather-bound tomes – this is Harold Macmillan doing informal. The scene is from a 1959 party political broadcast, which purports to show a ‘relaxed chat’ between Macmillan and four of his ministers, all of whom he refers to by their cabinet titles. Almost everything about it is artificial (including quite possibly the claim that it took place the day after the parliamentary recess).
Burnham’s coronation speech was sub-Disney schmaltz
As coronations go, this was a particularly flat one. Instead of Zadok the Priest we were treated to New Order. To nobody’s surprise Andy Burnham was unveiled this afternoon as Leader of the Labour party to a select audience of lanyard-wearing goons, cronies and Neil Kinnock. First we were subjected to Lucy Powell, who had the distinction of being sacked by Keir Starmer for being too incompetent. In a cabinet which includes Rachel Reeves that’s no mean feat.
Keir Starmer’s biggest problem was always right behind him at PMQs
‘You’ll miss him when he’s gone!’ Lots of people have said this to me. It’s true I have had the dubious privilege of sketching Sir Keir Starmer for almost the whole of his career as leader of the opposition and Prime Minister. He has grown to be a constant feature of my life, a sort of perma-presence in the background, the person round which my week necessarily has to gravitate. And now, the moment for his departure has finally arrived: today was the final PMQs for Sir Keir Rodney Starmer.
The terminally mediocre were on full display at DPMQs
Sir Keir Starmer was away this week. Nothing new there of course; indeed, it seems the thing which will change least when he finally leaves No 10 will be his presence in Parliament. So today we had what might well be David Lammy’s final outing as Deputy Prime Minister. The Tories had done their customary rummage down the back of the sofa for someone to face him and pulled out James Cleverly.
Farage versus the world
He probably won’t want to hear this but there is an air of General De Gaulle about Nigel Farage. De Gaulle came to define French politics through a mix of deliberate play-acting as being anti-establishment, a narrative of his own sacrifice and a series of exceptionally well-coordinated tantrums. Now, if that doesn’t sound familiar, I don’t know what does. Nobody could ever accuse Mr Farage of being under-dramatic Farage possibly hoped today was a ‘De Gaulle’s style moment.
Did anyone vet Big Ange’s LBC love-in?
‘What’s Big Ange up to?’ was a question Sir Keir Starmer had to ask himself basically every day of his premiership. The fact that the bigger threat came from a totally different Mancunian doesn’t mean that tracking Ange’s manoeuvres was a bad idea. Inevitably, having helped defenestrate her former boss, she’s now angling to work out the next job she’s going to be sacked from. In aid of this, she’d taken to the airwaves, standing in for the cursed James O’Brien slot on LBC.
Starmer’s Wile E Coyote defence spin
The Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by wishing a ‘happy 78th birthday’ to the NHS. This is the sort of weird, abstract and inanimate thing he is comfortable showing affection for. What next? Happy Birthday to the Nuclear Deterrent, to the Protestant Succession? How will everyone be celebrating? Being left on a trolley for 48 hours? Perhaps by the time the NHS has turned 80, you’ll be able to get an appointment.
Will Starmer’s last defender please turn out the lights
There are still people out there – with access to the full gamut of unblunted cutlery – who maintain that Sir Keir Starmer is one of the great public servants of our time, cruelly brought down by unfair events. One easy way to disprove this, in the unlikely event that this theory’s proponents are susceptible to appeals to reason, is by pointing to his government’s defence record.
Andy Burnham’s tragic Blairite tribute act
‘What a fitting venue to be sat in – The People’s History Museum’. So began the introduction to Andy Burnham’s great descent from Mount Sinai to declare his programme for government. It was delivered by Bev Craig, Labour’s candidate to replace him as Manchester mayor. She delivered it in a tone and nasal burr which suggested she was announcing that a rail replacement bus service had been delayed.
Parliament has become dangerously mawkish
Parliament always has an otherworldly feel; it’s a world of gothic crenelations, of specialised language, of deliberate artifice. But something even less real has crept in recently. A deliberate indulgence by the governing class of mawkishness and sentimentality, just as the reality of the country they’re supposed to be governing turns grimmer and more violent. The two – the rise of violence and the dominance of mawkishness – are not unrelated.
Labour MPs couldn’t handle the truth from Kemi Badenoch at PMQs
The end of Sir Keir’s premiership, and especially his last few PMQs, was always going to be less of a swansong and more a prolonged squeal. The Prime Minister makes no secret of his hatred of even being in parliament, let alone answering questions there – if ‘answering’ is the right word for the mix of slogans, bluff and anger which make up his Wednesday lunchtime offerings. Who knows when his last will be, but it now won’t be long. I suspect he will not miss it.
The truth about Keir Starmer’s legacy
; ; ; Continue reading More for You ; ; ; ; Continue reading More for You
The truth about Keir Starmer’s legacy
It was when Keir Starmer claimed never to have had a dream that I knew we were dealing with potentially one of the funniest prime ministers the nation had ever seen.
The perfect two words to describe this zombie parliament
With Sir Keir in Evian busy taking what must surely be his last opportunity to stuff Lady Victoria’s hand luggage with G7 branded bathrobes and slippers, we had the great treat of a Lammy PMQs today. Except it isn’t really a treat any more. This parliament still has, potentially, three whole years to run, and yet it already feels zombified. Each week it goes through the motions, the same lame jokes, the same pointless questions, the same lingering sense of exhaustion and decay.
Keir Starmer can’t keep deluding himself about two-tier policing
The House of Commons these days is hardly an inspiring place. There can be little denying that it is a shadow of the debating arena it was in the days of Gladstone and Disraeli. It’s not even what it was from the days of Cameron and Corbyn.
The desperate sycophancy of Mandy’s campaign for the Oxford chancellorship
After months of back and forth, today the government finally released the latest tranche of the Mandy documents, which have become their own spin-off version of the original incriminating releases – a sort of Holby City to the Epstein Files’ Casualty.
Is Nicola Sturgeon the least curious woman on the planet?
Peter Murrell is a strangely shiny man. He has the air of an undertaker who’s been siphoning off the corpse lacquer to use on his own face. The erstwhile self-proclaimed ‘money man’ for the SNP arrived at court yesterday carrying a burglar’s hold-all, which for someone who was arriving to plead guilty to being on the rob was a fun touch.
Andy Burnham’s faux insurgent act fools no one
Today, in what will doubtless be just the first of many irritations inflicted on the unfortunate people of Makerfield, Labour launched their by-election campaign. The latest movement in what already feels like the 118th Brumaire of Andy Burnham. The location he had chosen for the launch was a patch of irradiated tarmac; the sort of place criminals might take a mini fridge for an unceremonious fly-tipping.
Keir Starmer is resigned to resigning
Has Sir Keir Starmer already checked out? There was a strange atmosphere in the House of Commons today. A sort of calm in the eye of the storm pervaded. The Prime Minister seemed more relaxed than he’d been for ages, perhaps finally resigned to, well, resigning. There are asthmatic sloths which could produce more fulsome cheers than Labour managed in the Commons Maybe he’s preparing himself for his future; as an avuncular guest on The Rest is Politics or on Arsenal fan podcasts?
Labour has bequeathed us a summer of nonsense
The Great North summit sounds like it should have been a peace conference attended by Peter the Great. Instead, it is actually a talking shop attended by Andy Burnham. Its logo is, appropriately, an arrow in the act of a U-turn. It was there that Burnham had come today to fire the starting pistol on his campaign to march on London. It happened on the same day that it was announced that Josh Simons had officially resigned the seat of Makerfield, thus paving the way for Burnham’s return.
Starmer is finally enjoying being Prime Minister
One of the traditions of the state opening of Parliament is that the Yeomen of the Guard search the cellars of the Palace of Westminster for evidence of plots to blow up the government. Frankly they could have looked anywhere in SW1 and found that. Just about the only person who seemed to be enjoying it at all was, bizarrely, Starmer Other traditions were maintained as opposition and government MPs made their awkward shuffle to the Lords.
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