Gordon Brown notoriously sold British gold for $275 an ounce, costing Britain several billion. But has our subsequent decision not to buy gold also cost us dear? The Tory press office has had fun with gold’s rise, tweeting that it means Brown’s disastrous foray into asset management cost £12 billion. But as John Rentoul asked, a more serious question is now emerging. How much ...

The Independent on Sunday's John Rentoul reckons that Ed Miliband 'has to go' if Labour is to win the next general election.

The question at the bottom of this leaflet must surely join John Rentoul’s famous list. Who on earth will stand by the egregious Phil Woolas now? As with the Tower Hamlets debacle, Ed Miliband is taking eons to make what appears to be an easy and obvious statement: the Labour leadership condemns the actions of Phil Woolas and hopes that he will not be selected to stand again. George Eaton gi...

Courtesy of John Rentoul, Tim Bale, professor of politics at the University of Sussex, offers this appraisal of the 2010 election: 'For all the talk in opposition of decontaminating the Tory brand, of making the party more tolerant and inclusive and less ‘nasty’, the key task facing Cameron when he took over in late 2005 was reassuring voters that the Conservatives could be truste...

They really don't know what to make of him. The pundits, that is. So much so that Blairite John Rentoul in the Independent on Sunday basically seems to want to write Cameron's PMQ attack lines for him, while the conservative James Forsyth on the Spectator blog explains why Ed is a far more formidable figure than the Conservatives are allowing.

John Rentoul has already pulled the best passage from this preview of a forthcoming radio series on Gordon Brown. But I reckon that the testimony of Spencer Livermore, the former strategy chief in No.10, deserves a spot in the Westminster scrapbook: "Mr Livermore, who was Downing Street's director of political strategy, regrets not warning about the downside of scrapping the election whe...

As Tony Blair lines up against the ranks of hard-nosed critics, John Rentoul attempts to throw an early sucker punch… What people believe is not that Blair lied, but that he was so desperate to keep in with the Americans that he exaggerated the threat from Saddam Hussein. That has the advantage of fitting with what was the conventional view, that the British interest is best served by a clos...

Crack out the nibbles, David: looks like you’re going to win the Labour leadership. An extensive You Gov poll of Labour members and trade unionists puts David Miliband 8 points clear of his brother in the final run-off. This is the first statistical analysis that supports the general feeling in Westminster that Ed Miliband’s charge has calmed. Courtesy of John Rentoul, the results...

This is an interesting debate, in which Chris Nineham of Stop The War does well to keep his composure in the face of red baiting and personal abuse from the unfailing Blair stooge, John Rentoul.

This was a story which entirely passed me by, but throws up a couple of intriguing questions. I tip my hat to the Independent’s John Rentoul for highlighting Tony Blair’s address to the Institute for Government entitled, How to Be Prime Minister, held at the end of June. In it Mr Blair commented, The British