Tom Harris

Tom Harris

Tom Harris is a former Labour MP and sometime spinner who survived the heights and depths of the Blair-Brown era. After serving as a minister in the Department for Transport he led the Scottish Brexit campaign and founded his own lobbying company, Third Avenue Public Affairs. He now delivers his independent, no-nonsense insight every weekday in the Telegraph. His latest book, 'Ten Years in the Death of the Labour Party', is available from Biteback.

You can’t put a price on the safety of our public servants

Former prime ministers are important for the simple reason that democracy is important

Tom Harris 10 Dec 2024, 3:21pm

Britain is dangerously divided – but don’t blame the Right

If we are to start with an honest analysis of the real and damaging divisions within our society, we cannot simply point the finger

Tom Harris 9 Dec 2024, 2:06pm
I’m starting to think Keir Starmer will not survive

Backed only by a loveless landslide, the Prime Minister is lacking the leadership qualities needed to go the distance

Tom Harris 6 Dec 2024, 11:30am
A thought for Sir Keir: If you haven’t got anything new to say, don’t bother making a speech

The Prime Minister appears to be playing for time

Tom Harris 5 Dec 2024, 1:57pm

Starmer is doing his best to upset both the EU and America

At the heart of the Labour government – at least on international relations – is an absence of any sort of strategy or even goal

Tom Harris 3 Dec 2024, 12:49pm
Now he’s pardoned his son, will Biden show Trump mercy?

The prize for an unprecedented and magnanimous gesture from the president would be the start of reconstruction of the political environment

Tom Harris 2 Dec 2024, 3:13pm
Why did Starmer appoint someone he knew to be a convicted criminal to his Cabinet?

The Prime Minister revels in his toughness on political wrongdoing – yet he seemingly turned a blind eye to Louise Haigh’s indiscretions

Tom Harris 29 Nov 2024, 9:37am
Oxford grads were smart enough to see through Mandelson and Grieve

Faced with a choice between one Right-wing candidate and four from the progressive Left, electors chose the lone conservative

Tom Harris 28 Nov 2024, 7:00am
People do not have a human right to receive benefits paid for by others

Inaction will mean a chronic and permanent imbalance in the relationship between what the state pays out and what it receives in tax revenue

Tom Harris 27 Nov 2024, 9:00am
Starmer’s pledge to govern Britain like Wales is beginning to sound like a threat

Devolution has left the region vulnerable to the worst impulses of Left-wing policymaking

Tom Harris 25 Nov 2024, 4:03pm

We need zero tolerance towards foreign influence on our MPs

The case of a Labour MP failing to declare donations of thousands of pounds from Indian organisations should be a wake-up call

Tom Harris 22 Nov 2024, 1:47pm
Prescott knew what it took to keep Labour in power

Angela Rayner could learn a lesson or two from the plain-speaking, pugnacious former deputy PM

Tom Harris 21 Nov 2024, 2:00pm
Stagflation is back, but this time there’s no Thatcher to save us

While our situation is nowhere near as bad as the 1970s, Keir Starmer has plenty to worry about over the next five years

Tom Harris 20 Nov 2024, 2:05pm
If Labour thinks they can continue to sideline illegal migration, they are gravely mistaken

The Government must reckon with the reality that the old international treaties are no longer fit for purpose

Tom Harris 18 Nov 2024, 1:12pm
Scotland’s high tax failure is Britain’s future

Despite squeezing workers more than ever before, the Scottish government is seeing lower returns on tax revenues

Tom Harris 15 Nov 2024, 12:14pm
Labour must back down from their war against farmers, or risk disaster

Dismissing the concerns of small family farmers will facilitate a backlash far wider than the agricultural industry

Tom Harris 14 Nov 2024, 12:14pm
JK Rowling might finally talk some sense into Alastair Campbell

An appearance on The Rest Is Politics podcast might finally speak some sense into centrist men with an naive view on transgenderism

Tom Harris 13 Nov 2024, 2:19pm
Keir Starmer’s delusions of a climate utopia have fallen on deaf ears

The Prime Minister’s COP29 boosterism is hard to believe when China and the US didn’t bother to turn up

Tom Harris 12 Nov 2024, 12:48pm
Remainers will use any excuse to drag us back into Europe

Democracy is all well and good, but progressives like Ed Davey would much prefer results that are less ‘triggering’

Tom Harris 8 Nov 2024, 11:45am
The Left have failed miserably in labelling everyone they disagree with as fascists

Accusing evidently mainstream politicians like Donald Trump of being the second coming of Hitler is baseless hysteria

Tom Harris 7 Nov 2024, 3:34pm
A Trump victory is awful for Starmer – and a nightmare for David Lammy

Labour’s hubris may have irreparably destroyed our relationship with the only pro-British US president in decades

Tom Harris 6 Nov 2024, 6:56am
How Labour’s race problem has been laid bare by Kemi Badenoch’s leadership victory

Despite Labour benefitting from the majority of support from ethnic minorities, they have been led by an uninterrupted line of white men

Tom Harris 5 Nov 2024, 8:00pm