Madeline Grant

England, London

Parliamentary Sketchwriter and Columnist at The Telegraph

Special envoy to the Nations and Regions

Articles

Leave our period dramas alone!

2 days ago | spectator.co.uk | Madeline Grant

It is a truth universally acknowledged that any article about Jane Austen must begin with a mangled, platitudinous variation on her most famous line. Irritating though this is, it’s rather a good metaphor for the state of the wider treatment of Austen – and her near contemporaries – by popular culture. When it comes to adaptations of novels from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian periods, and even longer ago, we find ourselves in a deep trough.
It didn't take Starmer long to morph into Brezhnev

2 days ago | spectator.co.uk | Madeline Grant

It has taken Sir Keir Starmer just under 11 months to enter his Brezhnev era. Portly, autocratic and reliant on past glories, the Prime Minister began today’s PMQs by reading a list that would make Borat proud of the infrastructural benevolences to make benefit glorious region of Red Wall. In Sir Keir’s world, there is no decay or decline: the economy is booming, pensioners and children are well cared for and the streets are safe. The praesidium – sorry, Front Bench – lapped this up.
The Foreign Office is now a national embarrassment

1 week ago | yahoo.com | Madeline Grant

Which institution has fallen furthest in the recent decades of British history? That they have fallen is indisputable: where once the pillars of our public life were the envy of the globe, they are now riddled with a very particular type of rot. We might call this lanyardism. What is lanyardism? Well, to paraphrase Kenneth Clark in Civilisation, I know it when I see it. It means cutting front-line services in favour of indolent clipboard-people with impenetrable job titles.
The Foreign Office is now a national embarrassment

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | Madeline Grant
House of Commons? More like the house of horrors

2 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Madeline Grant

The Prime Minister simply ignored the question in favour of further boasting about his deal with the EU. "I went immediately to Lidl and spoke to the staff there", Oinky informed us. "They love it!" Just imagine, one minute you're restocking the discount yogurts and the next you're confronted with The Living Adenoid. He was lucky someone didn't mistake him for a self-service checkout. The Labour backbenches took further poundings from both Reform and the Lib Dems.
Who are Labour’s people? It is alienating all voters

2 weeks ago | yahoo.com | Madeline Grant

Keir Starmer is bad at maths. I’m not talking about the state of the economy or Lord Alli’s expenses, egregious proof of the statement though these may be. No; I’m referring to the basic number-totting that his Government must do to keep their electoral coalition together. All governments make calculations about people they feel they can, essentially, afford to lose. Sometimes this is quite a sizable quotient; consider Mrs Thatcher in the North of England or Tony Blair’s assault on the countryside.
Who are Labour's people? It is alienating all voters

2 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Madeline Grant
Starmer is a walking deterrent for Albanians coming to Britain

3 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Madeline Grant

Much of the substance of the meeting, if you can call it that, was delivered in classic Starmerite form. A list of quangos, taskforces and the latest, "return hubs", all designed to convince the nation that he's tough on immigration. This was about being "practical, sleeves rolled up, getting on with the job" said Sir Keir, mercifully keeping his jacket on. Normally he prefers his visual metaphors as clunky as a bunker from the days of Enver Hoxha, Albania's Communist leader in the 1980s.
Starmer's comic turn will end in tears of a clown

3 weeks ago | telegraph.co.uk | Madeline Grant

Representatives of the British Overseas Territories were in Parliament for Questions to the Prime Minister on Wednesday. Once this would have been a statement of great imperial pride, the colonies come to see the mother parliament in action; now it's probably the case that they've been summoned to learn which of them is next to be raffled off to a nearby banana republic. First we came to the MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, Lorraine Beavers, who appears to go to the same barber as Jedward.
In the name of progress: eugenics then, euthanasia now

3 weeks ago | yahoo.com | Madeline Grant

Progress may be the most dangerous two-syllable word in politics. Slapped on to all sorts of monstrosities it has become a means of justifying inadequate arguments and evading scrutiny. To the unthinking politician, if an issue constitutes progress it is inevitably part of a wider move towards enlightenment, is an inherently good step and, crucially, must happen sooner or later. The belief means identifying barriers to progress; and, by extension, viewing their removal as a social good.