TUC president and POA leader STEVE GILLAN speaks to Ben Chacko on the eve of Congress 2026
THE decision by Theresa May to award a knighthood to veteran Tory MP and free marketeer John Redwood is of course nothing whatsoever to do with recognising what he has added to national life over the decades.
His most notable contribution in that respect was to fail to remember the words of the Welsh National Anthem when he was required to sing it during the period he was Tory Welsh Secretary in the 1990s. There is a clip online and it is funny but not I think worthy of a knighthood in itself.
Rather the Prime Minister has in mind the narrow political calculations of the Tory Party in 2018 as she attempts to push her Brexit deal through Parliament.
Some thinkers and authors on the right are openly discussing the possibility that the historically successful party of the British ruling class may be exhausted
DIANE WATT argues that while evidence of sex is not there, a 16th‑century lesbian poet could be Scotland’s answer to Gentleman Jack
DYLAN MURPHY reports that far from helping people back into work, the sanctions regime is inflicting unnecessary trauma on working-class families
The Tory conference was a pseudo-sacred affair, with devotees paying homage in front of Thatcher’s old shrouds — and your reporter, initially barred, only need mention he’d once met her to gain access. But would she consider what was on offer a worthy legacy, asks ANDREW MURRAY


