A sceptical old Tory inspects the Green party’s promises, visits a house with no boiler and comes home having lost one argument out of four A Green Leaflet, a Heat Pump and the Day My Nephew Was Unbearably Right A young man with a beard and a lanyard came to…

Margaret on the first conference speech as Prime Minister, a triple lock to be changed after the next election and the difference between a promise and a payment Saturday 10 October, 3.30pm, a sofa with a rug that smells faintly of dog, a laptop open to a long article and…

A retired headmistress writing under a false name takes thirty-eight years of marking to a party’s sums, and is made to do the other lot as well Show Your Working: I Marked a Socialist Manifesto With a Red Pen and It Got a D The name over this diary is…

Back at school for an evening, a Conservative of the old sort hears the next generation of socialists and has to award them the cup This House Would Abolish Billionaires: I Judged a Sixth-Form Debate and Lost It to a Girl of Seventeen I was asked back to school on…

Margaret on the 2026 Labour leadership crisis, a Makerfield by-election won with 54.8 percent, a Prime Minister who entered the Commons on 22 June and a party that discovered it had a plan B Saturday 10 October, 1.00pm, a table at the back of a pub that serves a roast…

A former headmistress writes up a Labour cabinet as she would a difficult class, and adds a report for the opposition and one for herself End-of-Term Reports for the Government Front Bench, With No Names, Because I Cannot Keep Up It is the last week of what would have been…

A Tory aunt from the provinces is taken to supper among the comfortable left, takes notes under the table and is caught out over pudding Dinner in Islington, Where Everyone Is a Socialist and the Wine Is Thirty Pounds a Bottle I came up to London on Friday to see…

Margaret on John Healey’s career change, a pledge on three taxes, a list of rumours labelled unconfirmed and a homework assignment for anyone who paid attention in maths Saturday 10 October, 6.30pm, a kitchen table with a calculator, a ruler for no reason I can explain and a notebook headed…

Margaret on a by-election in Keir Starmer’s old seat, a majority of 3,364, a swing of 13 points and the great British tradition of declaring victory in second place Saturday 10 October, 7.45am, a kitchen in a house that votes the way the weather behaves, a pot of tea strong…

A headline about the government’s difficulty with its own voters cheered me up over the marmalade, until I remembered what the same thing did to my lot Monday, the Kitchen, Radio Off I had better declare my colours, since everything that follows is tinted by them. I am sixty-seven. I…