AboutArticles by John Rentoul

Johnson bottles it — again — clearing the way for Sunak

24 Oct 2022

It was all too predictable. Indeed, it was predicted, because Boris Johnson has done it before. In 2016, winded by his betrayal by Michael Gove, he pulled out of the...

Things can only get worse for Liz Truss

09 Oct 2022

Usually, the market in political commentary overshoots. Every other week for Tony Blair was his “worst week ever”, as Alastair Campbell used to say. Gordon Brown was written off and...

Starmer can afford to be polite to Truss for a key reason

18 Sep 2022

What goes on behind the speaker’s chair in the Commons, away from the cameras, tells us a lot about the state of politics. Soon after Buckingham Palace announced that doctors...

Why Truss could be a successful prime minister

21 Aug 2022

My first assumption about Liz Truss was that she would crash and burn as a candidate for the Conservative leadership. My second assumption was that she would crash and burn...

Case for Liz Truss as prime minister of United Kingdom

24 Jul 2022

Sometimes the only way to test an argument is to write the opposite, as Boris Johnson once did. My prejudice is that Rishi Sunak is better qualified to be prime...

The Conservatives face their wrong brother moment

17 Jul 2022

Is this going to be the Conservative Party’s David Miliband moment? It looks as if the final two candidates will be Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, with the main uncertainty...

Tory warnings of a ‘coalition of chaos’ must be real

04 Jul 2022

The last time a minority Labour government was formed after an election was in February 1974. There was no “coalition of chaos” then. There wasn’t even a coalition of stability....

Oliver Dowden aims to make Rishi Sunak prime minister

26 Jun 2022

John Rentoul, The Independent One of Jeremy Hunt’s supporters claimed that Oliver Dowden had resigned from the cabinet to run Rishi Sunak’s leadership campaign, after the Conservative chair quit early...

Johnson may still be PM this time next year

05 Jun 2022

The excitement about the imminent downfall of the prime minister reached such a pitch before the nation paused to celebrate a round number that when Boris Johnson was lightly booed...

Michael Gove could still become prime minister

25 Apr 2022

One Conservative leadership campaign is active in Portcullis House, the annexe to parliament where MPs and journalists mingle, sharing tea, coffee and (in my case) Danish pastries. Jeremy Hunt’s...

John Rentoul

Chief Political Commentator, The Independent; visiting professor, King's College, London.

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