Articles

Unsurprisingly, Guardian readers have been rubbishing my so-called sex scene in today’s paper, where I was one of several writers asked to try to turn on women with words and so further help fuel the incredible Fifty Shades of Grey publicity campaign. As EL James’ S and M trilogy continues to break all records, and [...]

I have been a bit snowed under, and travelling, in the last few days, so apologies to anyone who came on here and found a short and rather tired blog on why David Cameron was avoiding having an inquiry into the banks. However, by popular demand (i.e one person who read it whilst perusing the [...]

I never fully understood why David Cameron fought so hard to resist an inquiry into the practices of the press. As the Leveson Inquiry has unfolded, the hesitation – finally overwhelmed by the tipping point of Millie Dowler – has become apparent. He has been similarly resistant to the idea of an inquiry into the [...]

An edited version of this piece appears in today’s Independent. I have italicised the bigger chunks not in the Indy for any of you who may have read it already, so you can skip to those bits! Also quite interesting for journalism students to see what the sub-editors decided could hit the deck as they [...]

A version of this appears on The Huffington Post site today To the splendidly New Labour King’s Place on Monday, and an onstage interview with Steve Richards of the Independent as part of his ‘Politics Rock and Roll’ series. Steve, one of the less cynical UK commentators, is doing his bit to try to re-engage [...]

I have a new book out, Burden of Power, which is published on Thursday. I know some of you have noticed because I have had a few requests on here, via email, twitter and Facebook, for signed copies. As I tweeted recently, I signed a lot of stock for Waterstone’s a few weeks ago, so their [...]

I can hardly complain at The Guardian’s ‘brilliant but bonkers’ headline on the second part of the extracts they are running from my new book, Burden of Power. Tony Blair said the words, and he said them about Gordon Brown, so even though it is not news that there were sometimes difficulties between them, and [...]

Off to Queen’s for the tennis today, Royal Box hospitality with a few members of the sporting elite and UK Establishment, hoping that perhaps the UKE’s latest recruit, Armando Iannucci OBE, might be there so I can finally get an answer to the question: why did he take it? I see from The Observer that [...]

Just back from Dublin, just home for a quick change before heading out to chair a debate on class in politics, inspired by the West End play based on David Cameron and Co’s Bullingdon Club, POSH. But before I go a quick word of thanks for Tory MP Charles Walker and Labour MP Kevan Jones [...]

First things first, and a quick line the producers of POSH can use in any publicity should they wish to … ‘topical, relevant, well-written, well-cast, well-acted and very thought-provoking.’ As to what I really think about it, even a good night’s sleep has not settled the answer. Perhaps that is the sign of a good [...]