Jobs Gloom for Ed Miliband

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Wednesday, 2 July 2014 at 10:57 am I have a comment at Independent Voices on news of a skills shortage emerging in the jobs market. In this case, Ed Miliband’s difficulty in filling a vacancy for a “Head of the Leader’s Broadcasting”. Increasingly, that is where my comments will appear. I …

The Rentoul Media Empire

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Friday, 4 July 2014 at 12:21 pm Further to my post yesterday about more of my stuff appearing on Independent Voices, The Independent and The Independent on Sunday’s online and print comment section, and less of it appearing on the blog, the boffins have told me that there is an RSS feed on my author page, which …

Iraq’s WMD and the Test of Reasonableness

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Tuesday, 8 July 2014 at 3:06 pm Cross-post by Mugwump. This 9,000-word article looks at why intelligence services around the world were so sure that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in 2003. I re-post it here because it is an impressive piece of work, bringing together evidence from …

What Harriet Said And What Harriet Meant

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Wednesday, 16 July 2014 at 1:39 pm Labour was embarrassed at PMQs by David Cameron reading out something Harriet Harman had said on LBC yesterday. But if you read the full transcript, helpfully provided by the Conservatives, it would seem that she was trying to explain why middle-income people pay …

Poll alert

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 10:33 am We have a ComRes opinion poll in The Independent on Sunday tomorrow, shared with the Sunday Mirror. In addition to asking people how they intend to vote, we asked if people agree or disagreed with the following statements: Politicians have probably covered up child sex …

Voters say women promoted for “presentational reasons”

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Saturday, 19 July 2014 at 7:30 pm Voters are sceptical about the Government reshuffle, according to a ComRes poll for The Independent on Sunday and the Sunday Mirror. Most people, 56 per cent, said women were promoted for “presentational reasons” and only 24 per cent said women were promoted “on merit”. Overall, …

Ed Miliband’s unwise speech

By John Rentoul Eagle Eye Last updated: Saturday, 26 July 2014 at 11:35 am Esteemed colleague Andrew Grice said: “Rarely in 30 years of reporting national politics have I seen such a candid, self-aware and self-deprecating speech.” Fellow Blairite zombie Daniel Hodges, on the other hand, thought it was “one of most breathtakingly cynical and hypocritical speeches I’ve ever …