John Rentoul

John Rentoul

Born India
Nationality British
Education King's College, Cambridge
Occupation Journalist

John Rentoul (born 1958) is a British journalist. He is the chief political commentator for The Independent,[1] and is seen as a "Labour-leaning journalist".[2]

Biography

Rentoul was born in India, where his father was a minister of the Church of South India. Educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School,[3] he studied History and English at King's College, Cambridge, and worked on an oil rig before becoming a journalist on Accountancy Age.[4]

Rentoul was a journalist on the New Statesman between January 1983 and May 1988, latterly as Deputy Editor, and a political reporter for BBC's On The Record between 1988 and 1995. He became a political correspondent of The Independent in 1995 and the chief leader writer at The Independent from January 1997 before becoming chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday in 2004. His biography of Tony Blair has passed through several editions. He is a visiting professor in Contemporary History at Queen Mary, University of London.[5]

Fellow journalist Martin Bright has said Rentoul "remains one of the most incisive political columnists writing today, even though he has lost his access to the highest levels of power".[6] In 2011, Total Politics said Rentoul "is probably the most high-profile defender of Tony Blair’s record in the British media, in a year when the mere mention of the former PM’s name provoked boos at the Labour Party conference. His column in The Independent on Sunday has become one of the last bastions of pure, unadulterated Blairism".[7] Rentoul was critical of Ed Miliband's leadership of the Labour Party.[2][8][9]

He also maintains a daily blog.[10] He is related to Sir Gervais Rentoul, the Conservative MP who was the founding Chairman of the 1922 Committee.[4]

Notes

  1. ↑ "John Rentoul".
  2. 1 2 "John Rentoul, Chuka Ummuna and Lord Falconer on Ed Miliband". BBC. 17 January 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  3. ↑ Guardian, 25 June 1980, p. 7.
  4. 1 2 "The normblog profile 373: John Rentoul (interview)". nornblog. 19 November 2010. Retrieved 15 June 2017.
  5. ↑ "Leading journalists appointed as visiting professors". www.qmul.ac.uk.
  6. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 12 October 2009. Retrieved 2010-06-28.
  7. ↑ "Top 100 political journalists 2011". Total Politics. Archived from the original on 1 March 2014.
  8. ↑ "John Rentoul: Ed Miliband 'has to go' for Labour to win". BBC. 17 January 2011. Retrieved 20 July 2015.
  9. ↑ John Rentoul (3 May 2015). "General Election 2015: Win or lose, Ed Miliband is not ready to govern". The Independent. Retrieved 20 July 2015. I stand by my view of five years ago that he was the wrong choice, and will take his defeat as a vindication of the eternal New Labour verities: elections are won on the centre ground; a party of government must understand wealth creation; voters are suspicious of tax, spend and borrow.
  10. ↑ "Voices". The Independent.
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