A powerful, visceral and political takedown, delivered in verse. Stunning work, as always, by the one and only [Andrew Marr],” said another. Labelling the current Tory part a government "governed by Whatsapp", Marr added that "like the country at the time of the Brexit referendum, he didn't know what was coming next. I spent the first 20 years of my career in newspapers, because I was sure that somebody with my looks would never get to broadcast. I’ve got many vices, but vanity isn’t one of them – I’ve always looked weird, huge ears, not enough hair. When I first became political editor of the BBC I was followed around Waitrose in East Sheen; the man eventually caught up with me and said, “’Ere, ’ere! You look just like that Andrew Marr, you poor bugger.” This book isn't quite a history of British (i.e. English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish) poetry from Caedmon to the present day; it's more a sort of annotated anthology, with poems and excerpts from poems giving a representative sample of each period. As such, it's an excellent introduction for the person who enjoys poetry but isn't well-informed about the history of the craft in the British Isles.

Speaking of the resignation, Marr highlighted that "it's not because he doesn't have enough supporters", as he noted Rishi Sunak's tactic of distancing himself from his predecessors. The comments follow Boris Johnson's resignation as Tory MP with "immediate effect" on Friday, releasing a lengthy statement posted online, just hours after ally and former Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries announced her own resignation. Purchasing a book may earn the NS a commission from Bookshop.org, who support independent bookshops The Forward Book of Poetry 2024 brings together the best poetry from 2023, including great work shortlisted and Highly Commended in the 2023 Forward Prizes. Again and again, she calls out patronising, defensive police chiefs, scientists, corporate bosses or civil servants who do not appear to have the public good at the front of their minds.

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But what of voting reform? This is a more interesting proposition. If Starmer was able to bring together the large but long-separated Liberal and Labour traditions, he could make 2024 not the moment of another, possibly short-lived, Labour interruption in British politics but the beginning of a long, left-liberal hegemony, as long-lasting as the Conservative one has been. Most MPs I have spoken to recently seemed alert to the danger of political unravelling here. Hamas supporters on the streets are doing incalculable damage to Muslim communities across Britain. British political leaders have been reactive – horrified, cautious, unwilling to move beyond glib and nervous verities. But beyond the short term, it is not enough – and it would not have been enough for previous generations of political leadership. Again, I refused. I resisted both of these proposals, not just because of the implications for the role of parliament, but mainly because of my firm belief that it would have been unthinkable to bring the monarch into these matters. By sanctioning the idea of prorogation, the hard-line Brexiteers were taking a sledgehammer to the British constitution.” It begins in the year 657 with the Northumbrian poet Caedmon, and takes us up to the present day, each chapter wisely and wittily guiding the reader through successive poetic movements. Marr’s argument is that the British are peculiarly good at poetry (better than we are at painting, architecture and music). And it’s not just that we have Shakespeare and the war poets—we also have wonderful geographic diversity. Irish, Scottish and Welsh poets are well represented. In the case of the SNP, an assumption of absolute virtue and absolute contempt for unionists led to a suffocating belief that “we can do no wrong”. Civil society and the civil service both twisted to face the New Virtue in Scotland. Those who weren’t compliant enough, externally or inside the party, were deftly elbowed aside. This left a worryingly small, increasingly assured and essentially self-policing core.

Labour have had their own teams flat out in Uxbridge (where Boris Johnson was MP) and Mid Beds – and in Selby and Ainsty, whose Conservative MP Nigel Adams has also stood down. Selby looks almost as safe as any Tory seat could be, and Adams had a 60 per cent share of the vote at the last election. But his seat is being redistributed in a way that helps Labour and it has become one of its less obvious targets: the party will fight very hard here.This early Scottish section, which contains poems about freedom, independence and what became the essence of socialism, remains my favourite part of the book, and, I think, Andrew Marr’s. It has great vigour, and he seems happy to lay before us his deep admiration for these poets. The standard-model memoir has three purposes: to settle scores, to nudge the dial of the historical verdict, and above all to win a publisher’s advance that is unlikely to be earned out. The resulting book is reviewed everywhere and read nowhere. The British public, who voted the author in, barely features, except as comic extras writing cranky letters and making ignorant observations at by-elections.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Brexit argument, Brexiteers such as Jacob Rees-Mogg were approaching May in early 2019 to ask her to get the Queen to prorogue parliament or, if the Remainers won key votes, to refuse royal assent. The amount of factual inaccuracy from British politicians has increased exponentially in recent years, and I do think Boris Johnson is culpable. It’s always gone on, but he’s taken it to a new level. To directly assert things that are so untrue is new, and I think has caused enormous difficulty and pain to the whole political ecosystem. In what might have been an unremittingly bleak account of British public failures, she finds heroes – more often heroines – to admire, from the campaigning Hillsborough families to the medical expert Dr Isabel Gal, who spotted the dangers of Primodos and was persecuted for it; or the youth worker Jayne Senior and the South Yorkshire Police analyst Angie Heal, who tried desperately hard to blow the whistle on the Rotherham child abuse cases, and were threatened for their pains. Rishi Sunak nervously waits to see if more Boris Johnson allies will quit as MPsMPs from both sides of the warring Conservative Party have been writing in the Sunday papers about Boris Johnson's next moves.

u201c'I'm so bored of Boris Johnson I could scream.\u2019 \n\n@AndrewMarr9 delivers an epic takedown of the 'selfish, narcissistic' ex-PM in the form of poetry...\u201d — LBC (@LBC)

Tory MP Jake Berry Gets Rinsed For Claiming 'The Blob' Brought Down Boris JohnsonThe former party chairman is the latest Johnson ally to rush to the defence of the disgraced ex-PM. The Forward Prizes have established themselves as central to the literary landscape of modern Britain.” Andrew Marr Everywhere, good people and bad people. May is not the world’s most eloquent talker, but she’s an attentive listener: it was remarks by Lenny Henry at a Stephen Lawrence commemoration service that first brought home to her the bureaucratic nightmare being faced by the Windrush families. For their treatment generally, she now says: “I am profoundly sorry.”Andrew Marr’s triumphant We British: The Poetry of a People is not just an anthology, but a history of Great Britain seen through the lens of poetry. Marr knows what he likes. He believes—and who can disagree?—that John Donne wrote the greatest poem about love-making ever written: “Licence my roving hands, and let them go/ Before, behind, between, above, below.” My only quibble is the absence of the superb Anglo-Welsh Katherine Philips (1632 -1664) and her poignant poems about miscarriage and stillbirth. Boris Johnson’s constituents react to resignation as Labour eyes by-electionA by-election and a new MP await for the people of Uxbridge and South Ruislip, in West London. PGMcNamara speaks to voters there about Boris Johnson’s resignation. Much of it now resides not above Athens’s most famous war memorial and civic bank but in an echoing, grey chamber in the British Museum. That’s because the Parthenon, after being converted into a mosque under Turkish rule, had been used as a munitions dump and partly blown up in 1687. In 1800, Thomas Bruce, the Earl of Elgin, employed a team of artists to sketch the ruins, and claimed the following year he had instructions from the Turkish authorities to remove them for safekeeping. Eventually Bruce took them to London. It’s not true that this was considered acceptable at the time: among others, Lord Byron protested vociferously at the vandalism and theft. The speech proved divisive among viewers, with some hailing it as “speaking for all of us” while others accused Marr of delivering his criticism too late.