Shapps has spotted a once-in-a-lifetime chance to give Britain world-class railways

The Transport Secretary has set up a reform committee which is getting ready to use the pandemic to rout the Luddites in the rail unions.

Cardwell is loyal to May and Brokenshire, but does not tell us much about the Prime Minister’s people

This account of three and a half years as a special adviser confirms how trivial and transitory the role can be.

Andrew Gimson’s Commons sketch: The Chancellor brings a mysterious poetry to his numbers

He sought to unite the nation in a moral mission, “a common endeavour”, and to leave Labour with nothing to say.

Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: The Commons has lost its power to hold the absent Johnson to account

Today’s proceedings were about as watchable as a game of cricket where the batsman does not actually have to face the bowling in person.

Profile: Carrie Symonds, experienced Tory adviser turned Prime Ministerial consort – loyal to her friends, detested by her enemies

She may appear to present a softer target than he does, but she has never been afraid of fighting her corner.

The fullest account yet written of Sunak the rising star

Tories will read the story of his ascent to high office with enormous pleasure – for it amounts to a vindication of the United Kingdom.

Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Johnson the heavyweight champion parades his new boxing gloves

Starmer could not lay a glove on an opponent who felt emboldened by the discovery of fresh ways to fight the pandemic.

Biden is a conservative – succeeding not because he is old, but because he is old-fashioned

In his speech, he quoted from the Bible, in its best and most traditional version: yet more evidence of his own conservatism.

Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Johnson seduces the House, and talks away his mistakes, by promising a rosy future

There were moments when the PM made everyone from the Speaker down laugh, and most of his listeners were grateful for light relief from the crisis.

From Disraeli to Johnson, the Left has never understood the Right, and Fawcett shows us why

A magisterial survey of conservatism since the French Revolution brings home how various it is, and how impossible to reduce to an ideology.

Profile: Liz Truss, Perky promoter of free trade with Japan – and, like Johnson, a disruptor

With her odd mixture of indiscretion and obedience, her contempt for liberal groupthink and love of freedom, she in many ways a useful ally.

Normal relations between the Conservative leader and Conservative MPs are breaking down

Johnson’s troops are issuing declarations of intent in public. His success will depend on his ability to learn from mistakes.

Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Johnson may have no right to feel confident, but for some reason he does

In this battle between optimism and pessimism, hope and fear, faith and scepticism, Starmer found it hard to sow seeds of negativity.

Interview: Goodhart says Johnson understands better than Starmer that a graduate meritocracy alienates manual workers

The author warns we are sending far too many people to university and creating “a whole great bloated cognitive bureaucratic class”.

This hatchet man in a hurry casts no new light on Johnson, except to show him as a vulnerable child

An excellent book about the Prime Minister has just been published. Unfortunately it is in German.