Miranda Green

From private schools to academies, here are some of the groups Labour faces alienating or allying with in 2025

Experiments by academy schools — and without Treasury money — are key to solving problems for deprived families

Weird, private interpretations of pop lyrics are like the humble, non-showbiz person’s cover versions

Early polls give clues about whether support for Nigel Farage’s party has peaked; plus, Tory leadership contenders jostle

A senior barrister makes the case for fixing the ‘sense of decay’ affecting Westminster and offers detailed and robust reforms

When people ask “How’s it going?”, I sometimes have to stop and think. The expected response is either “great” on a good day or “fine thanks” on the others. (Some Brits still favour the old-fashioned reply, “fair to middling” or even “fair to crap” as a useful blanket summary of life’s vicissitudes.) But rather than finding the right tone, what makes me pause is working out which “me” is being asked the question. Some elements either at work or at home are probably going very well. Others are m…

I can’t be alone in ruminating during my crowded and often late journey to work in London that if we each have an average of 4,000 weeks on this blessed Earth, as the writer Oliver Burkeman has so profitably pointed out, then this is a bad way to spend a high proportion of that time. But, of course, if I was alone, the problem wouldn’t arise. I’d be back at home where I can earn my crust with no distractions and no one else’s odours — or videos — to intrude. I used to love the Central Line. It…

There are some moments in political history when the tides change and there’s nothing anyone can do to hold it back. This observation may be pertinent to our own times, with a mammoth year of elections across the democratic world upon us, but it was made by James Callaghan, UK prime minister, in 1979, the year he was defeated by Margaret Thatcher. It’s included in Iain Dale’s forthcoming new book British General Election Campaigns 1830-2019 (Biteback £25). The book is a history of the 50 genera…

How would you fight off an attack from an XL bully, the newly banned dog breed still causing havoc? Helpful advice from experts published this week in response to the latest case suggests covering the beast with your coat, offering it just one leg to chomp, or throwing a decoy bag of food to divert it. That way the attacker might consume something other than your own flesh. Watching this week’s launch of yet another Tory grouping — this time Liz Truss’s “Popular Conservatives” — it was hard no…

The Conservatives are languishing in the polls, while Labour is riding high – but beneath the headline figures, how does the voter appeal of the main parties break down by sex, age and other factors? The FT’s Lucy Fisher is joined by Political Fix regulars Stephen Bush and Miranda Green to hear from chief data reporter John Burn-Murdoch. John also delves into the glaring ideological gap that has opened up between men and women under 30 and the team considers what his findings mean for the genera…