Tim Shipman

Throughout another historic year for British politics, Tim Shipman was the essential political writer, delivering the first draft of history every weekend on the disintegration of the Sunak government and the early tribulations of the Starmer regime. In Westminster 6pm on a Saturday means one thing: it is time to turn to the Sunday Times website for the political long read, which Tim has made his calling card. At the key turning points in the political year it is Shipman to whom readers (and even politicians) turn to find out what has really been going on behind the scenes. This is appointment-to-read journalism.

Shipman is not just an elegant writer and an accomplished storyteller, these pieces are jam-packed with real news, as well as considered analysis, eyebrow-raising anecdotes and telling quotes.

The first entry here is Shipman’s New Year long read which dissected the political and psychological decline of Sunak, revealing that he had twice met Dominic Cummings for strategic advice. These revelations caused uproar inside the Tory party, raised questions about Sunak’s judgment and were a shock even to senior members of the prime minister’s own inner circle. You know a journalist is well plugged in when he is the one revealing who the PM had dinner with to Sunak’s own communications director.

Having made his name through the years of Tory turmoil, Shipman’s 3,000 word read two months into the Labour government, chronicling the disastrous divisions at the heart of Downing Street, was proof that his contacts at the top of the Labour party were a match for anyone else’s. This was the definitive piece on the Sue Gray v Morgan McSweeney war and the briefing war which it laid bare contributed to the prime minister’s decision to sack Gray shortly afterwards.

When it came to the budget, arguably the biggest set-piece political event of the year, Shipman was first to reveal that Rachel Reeves was planning a £1 billion inheritance tax raid on property, the issue which blew up into the signal issue of the following weeks and contained the seeds of their error – since the Treasury clearly believed they were exempting family farms. In the same month he was first to say that Peter Mandelson was the frontrunner to become Britain’s ambassador to Washington.

It is worth noting that Shipman remained at the top of his game in the newspaper while publishing two doorstop bestselling books, No Way Out in April and Out in November, totalling 1,600 pages, chronicling the inside story of the last seven years in politics. These laid bare numerous untold stories from the Johnson, Truss and Sunak governments and the 2024 election – most eye-catchingly the Queen’s bluntly-stated relief that "that idiot" Johnson would not be presiding over her funeral, just two days before she died. They were described by the Booker-award-winning novelist Roddy Doyle as “Shakespeare rewritten by Wodehouse” – a perfect summary of the drama and farce of British politics of which Shipman has become the country’s leading chronicler.