The Daily Mail runs a feature on Fridays called Me and My Books. This week they asked to contribute. Well, it would have been rude not to!   WHAT BOOK…   …are you reading now?   I’ve got two on the go. I haven’t read a novel in years, but a few weeks ago I interviewed the author Jphn O’Farrell for my Iain Dale All Talk podcast and we discussed his new book FAMILY POLITICS. It intrigued me so I thought I’d give it a go. It’s all about two left wing, wokey parents whose son returns home from university and warns them he needs to tell them something. They assume he’s going to come ..read more

I'm delighted to announce that today I'm joining the Lending Standards Board as a non-executive director, alongside Paul Johnson from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and charity leader Caron Bradshaw. The LSB is the self regulatory body for the banking and financial services sectors. I hear first-hand from my listeners the challenges they can encounter when navigating the financial landscape; the LSB’s mission is to tackle those challenges and ensure customers get the right outcomes and support from their bank or lender. I’m looking forward to getting started and supporting the LSB as it set ..read more

This will be the fourth year I have hosted IAIN DALE ALL TALK at the Edinburgh Fringe and I'm delighted to be back! There are so far 13 shows booked, all at the Edinburgh International Conference Centre running from 3-11 August. A few more shows will be added over the next few weeks, and I will announce them here. Saturday 3 August 1.30pm Alex Salmond 4.15pm Ruth Davidson Sunday 4 August 1.30pm Rachel Reeves 4.15pm Gina Miller Monday 5 August 1.30pm Liz Truss 4.15pm Wes Streeting Tuesday 6 August 1.30pm Ben Shephard & Chris Kamara 4.15pm tbc Wednesday 7 August No shows Thursday 8 August 1 ..read more

I can honestly say that last weekend in Dublin was the most enjoyable I have had in many a month. Just about everything went right, and I didn’t even have any travel disasters. On my taxi journey from the airport to the hotel the driver decided to give me a lesson in Irish politics and history and I devoured every word. OK, one thing did go wrong. The hotel didn’t do food or room service so I went out to find a takeaway. The only one I could find was a rather dingy and dirty looking pizza and kebab joint. And what do you know? I had one of the best pizzas I have ever had, and believe me, I am ..read more

Pre-election budgets are normally quite exciting both in their content and in their delivery. But to be exciting a budget needs a few surprises and at least one rabbit. It needs a bit of theatricality in the delivery. This budget had none of that. Virtually every measure had been pre-briefed or announced, and Jeremy Hunt’s somewhat pedestrian delivery made Philip Hammond look like Michael McIntyre. One of Hunt’s problems is that he has become the deputy Chancellor, by which I don’t mean he’s subservient to Rishi Sunak. He is, however, in total hock to the Office for Budget Responsibility. Geor ..read more

  Dear all On a personal level I’ve always found George Galloway to be engaging company. We’ve had our run ins, but always parted as, well, maybe not friends, but… I remember one particularly feisty encounter on his Mother of all Talk Shows programme on a Friday night on talkSport back in the day. He had booked me to talk about Margaret Thatcher on a Thatcher related anniversary. Anyway, off we went and it was all perfectly amicable, until he launched on a five minute monologue on how evil she was. I kept trying to interrupt but I eventually worked out he had faded out my microphone. So w ..read more

Within the next 24 hours it is entirely possible that the House of Commons could be without a Speaker. I’m not predicting it will happen, but it’s not impossible to imagine Sir Lindsay Hoyle standing up at 2.30pm to announce that he feels he has lost the confidence of the House and therefore he feels he has no alternative but to offer his resignation. You could see his logic. Seventy MPs have signed an Early Day Motion calling for a debate on his future, which essentially means they have no confidence in him. Thirty of those seventy are SNP MPs. He may well come to the conclusion that his auth ..read more

This article first appeared on Telegraph Online. Government loses two by-elections. Ordinarily that barely rates a headline. These, however, are not ordinary times. Poll after poll shows Labour heading for victory in the general election, and the results from Wellingborough and Kingswood do nothing to alter my view that the game is up for the Conservatives. In a week when Labour had their backs against the wall over policy U turns and antisemitism, they still romped to victory in both seats. Although eminently predictable results, there are some lessons to be learned. Let’s start with the Cons ..read more

It was just before 5pm. I was interviewing Lord Bilimoria for my ALL TALK podcast when I caught sight of a news alert on my phone. I couldn't believe what I was reading. Steve Wright had died. My brain went in several different directions. But I had to keep interviewing Lord B. So I did, and tried to forget what I had seen. But all I wanted to do was cry. I finished the interview, went back upstairs to the LBC newsroom where everyone was in a state of shock. To all of us, Steve was a broadcasting legend. Even the younger producers. Corey and Chris, my producers did a sterling job. "Who do you ..read more

I’m sitting here on my sitting room sofa, a dog either side of me, watching West Ham take an absolute tonking at home to Arsenal. As I write the score is 0-6. What an utter embarrassment. Sunak out! Sorry, I mean Moyes out! Or do I? Because what I am feeling now is the same feeling that many Conservative supporters may feel after Thursday’s probable by election losses, and the probably catastrophic local elections. Just as West Ham supporters sometimes think everything would be solved by the man who led us to win a European trophy, so might Conservatives think the same about Rishi Sunak ..read more