“The prime minister recently said, ‘I feel like I pull these levers and nothing happens,’ and you think: wrench the lever off and whack someone over the head with it, Keir!”

‘In The Room’, a podcast from Cleo Watson, former deputy chief of staff to Boris Johnson, and Helen MacNamara, deputy cabinet secretary, launches this Friday exclusively from The Independent. Here they explain why it’s a must-listen for those who want to cut through the noise in SW1

While much of the country enjoys a long Easter weekend, it’s far harder for MPs to switch off. And when they do, they might just end up getting lampooned for it.

“How can you miss something like that?”

After a crushing by-election defeat last week, Keir Starmer might have been hoping for a quiet week to recalibrate. Instead, he got a new war.

The headaches for Keir Starmer just keep coming. As the fallout from Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein continues, two more Labour peers who were recently appointed to the House of Lords have been embroiled in their own scandals.

Sir Keir Starmer is under pressure to resign after the humiliating defeat in Gorton and Denton

Labour backbenchers say Starmer’s departure ‘a question of when, not if’ after catastrophic defeat in Gorton and Denton

This corner of Greater Manchester, a key brick in the red wall, felt abandoned by Labour. Its voters tell Dan Haygarth why they’ve ditched Starmer’s party, leaving it with nowhere to turn

The deal, worth up to £1 billion, had faced uncertainty just days before a 1 March deadline