Arthur writes the main column. He reads the public record so you don't have to, and resents both halves of that sentence.
policing
Somewhere in England this year, a force advertised for a chief constable and received one applicant it considered suitable. Not one outstanding candidate among several — one, full stop. This is not a story about a shortage of ambitious police officers. It is a story about what happens to a leadership
Scottish referendum
At four in the morning on 19 September 2014, Mary Pitcaithly stood in front of the cameras as Chief Counting Officer and delivered the line the whole apparatus of the referendum had been built to earn: "I am satisfied that all counts were conducted properly." Hundreds of independent
Labour
Two years ago this week, Labour won 412 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons, the largest majority any party has assembled since Tony Blair's in 1997, achieved against a Conservative Party in a state of genuine institutional collapse. Two years on, almost to the day,