John Rentoul

Rentoul was born in India, where his father was a minister of the Church of South India. Educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School,[2] he studied History and English at King's College, Cambridge, and worked on an oil rig before becoming a journalist on Accountancy Age.[3] He is related to Sir Gervais Rentoul, the Conservative MP who was the founding chairman of the 1922 Committee.[3]

Rentoul was a journalist on the New Statesman between January 1983 and May 1988, latterly as Deputy Editor, and a political reporter for the BBC's On the Record between 1988 and 1995. He became a political correspondent of The Independent in 1995 and that newspaper's chief leader writer from January 1997, before becoming chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday in 2004.[4][5] His biography of Tony Blair has passed through several editions. He was visiting professor at Queen Mary, University of London,[6] until 2015, and is now visiting professor at King's College, London.

Fellow journalist Martin Bright wrote in 2009 that Rentoul "remains one of the most incisive political columnists writing today, even though he has lost his access to the highest levels of power".[7]

In 2011, Total Politics said that 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".[8][4]

In November 2015, Rentoul issued a public apology for tweeting that "Jeremy Corbyn might say that France had brought the Paris attacks on itself". The journalist acknowledged it was a "stupid and offensive" thing to say.[9] Rentoul did not deny that he used his position in the Independent to actively undermine Jeremy Corbyn's leadership of the Labour party through the persistent suggestion that Corbyn was an anti-semite- in a Twitter conversation when asked to provide any evidence of Corbyn's anti-semitism, he did not do so, but instead said "So glad you lot failed".[10]

Rentoul was critical of Ed Miliband's leadership of the Labour Party,[1][11][12] and voted for Boris Johnson in the 2008 and 2012 London Mayoral elections.[13]

Rentoul fears the USA will force price rises for USA manufactured drugs. He wrote, "The NHS buys a lot of drugs from US companies, and it is able to use its huge buying power to secure low prices. But it is also protected by the even greater leverage of being inside the EU. Some US drugs companies are looking at the prospect of negotiating with Britain in a weaker position outside the EU. (...) the US chamber of commerce last month noted the problem of opening up the healthcare market in Europe and said: 'It should prove easier to overcome these challenges with the UK as an individual negotiating partner.' The danger is not that the Conservatives are ideologically opposed to the NHS and want to undermine it, but that they are in favour of Brexit, and that puts the UK in a weaker negotiating position. Not only will the UK government lack the clout of being part of the EU’s giant market, but it will be desperate to strike a trade deal with the US because otherwise what was the point of leaving?"[14]

• 'One man's war on clichés (does what it says on the tin)', John Rentoul, The Independent, 14 June 2001
• John Rentoul tells Ethos his top public service innovators, Ethos June 2012