Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.
28 min listen
The Conservative party was once the natural political home for those on the right. No longer. The Tories’ vote share collapsed at the 2024 general election and the party, under new leadership, has since been outflanked by Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. Earlier this week, The Spectator pitted the Conservatives, represented by Nick Timothy and Claire
45 min listen
In this week’s podcast, William Moore is joined by The Spectator’s economics editor Michael Simmons, assistant editor Isabel Hardman and Times columnist and Sky News presenter Trevor Phillips. The panel unpacks Mary Wakefield’s cover story on the rise of shoplifting – and what it reveals about’ shameless Britain’. After a Morrisons manager was reportedly sacked
The final Prime Minister’s Questions of a parliamentary session is often quite a demob-happy affair with a pantomime atmosphere. Today’s, though, was more important for Keir Starmer, who is now in a daily battle to show that he’s still got enough support to keep going a bit longer. He didn’t have a bad session, but
For something that’s apparently only a ‘desperate political stunt’, Keir Starmer is taking the looming vote on whether to refer him to the privileges committee pretty seriously. There is a gargantuan effort tonight underway behind the scenes to persuade Labour MPs not to vote for the referral that the Tories want to make, with Labour
12 min listen
It will come as no surprise that Keir Starmer appears to have heard a very different evidence session from Sir Olly Robbins to the one everyone else thought the ex Foreign Office mandarin gave yesterday. The Prime Minister arrived in the Commons for questions today convinced that Robbins had in fact largely backed him up,
It will come as no surprise that Keir Starmer appears to have heard a very different evidence session from Sir Olly Robbins to the one everyone else thought the ex Foreign Office mandarin gave yesterday. The Prime Minister arrived in the Commons for questions today convinced that Robbins had in fact largely backed him up,
Sir Olly Robbins dropped a series of political bombs throughout his evidence session on Peter Mandelson to the Foreign Affairs Committee. Like all civil servants, he did so in exactly the same calm, polite tone of voice as he would have used when talking about something boring, but the content of that evidence was anything
What a funny pair Lee Anderson and Zarah Sultana are: so vehemently opposed to one another’s politics and yet so similar in the way they operate, right down to getting sent out of the Commons this afternoon for calling the Prime Minister a liar. Anderson was first up with his question: ‘The problem the Prime
20 min listen
The Peter Mandelson scandal just got more scandalous. Last night the story broke that Mandeslon actually failed his enhanced vetting before being made US Ambassador. Number 10 are pleading ignorance. Their defence sits on the suggestion that the Foreign Office’s most senior official unilaterally decided to ignore the findings and – what’s more – that
13 min listen
PMQs is back and – predictably – Lord Robertson’s intervention on the state of the armed forces dominated proceedings. The Prime Minister gave six responses to questions about defence spending, none of which addressed the criticism properly. While it was not a painful session for Starmer, it did show how little he has to say
Keir Starmer gave six responses to questions about Lord Robertson’s defence spending comments today, none of which addressed the criticism properly. Kemi Badenoch rightly chose to focus all her attacks at Prime Minister’s Questions on the speech by the author of Labour’s strategic defence review, opening with the line from Robertson about a ‘corrosive complacency’
Is Prime Minister’s Questions past it? We frequently ask this question in Westminster when the Wednesday lunchtime ding-dong between the two party leaders has ended up being particularly low-rent – and it has definitely fallen into that category over the past few months. Today, Keir Starmer and Kemi Badenoch return for their first post-Easter session,
George Robertson’s critique of the government’s reluctance to commit to proper defence spending is deeply politically inconvenient for Keir Starmer. This is not just because the Prime Minister has tried repeatedly to claim that Labour is the party that is protecting the armed forces – while holding onto Ben Wallace’s ‘hollowed out’ line about the
Why is Wes Streeting launching a report that argues the NHS doesn’t need to change its funding model? The Health Secretary gave a speech this morning at the IPPR to mark a new analysis of whether social insurance systems automatically lead to better health outcomes. The answer, according to the report’s authors at least, is
Mental health provision is totally inadequate in this country: we already know that. But you can only really understand quite how badly broken it is by looking at how much other public services are creaking as a result. Take the report today from patient safety watchdog the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB), which warns
12 min listen
The new cabinet secretary, Antonia Romeo, has published a list of objectives setting out her vision for what the civil service will look like under her. Many have interpreted it as her tightening control over government … especially since Darren Jones stepped back from his Downing Street role. The path is clear for her to
Britain’s response to the conflict in Iran is dominating Westminster – but is Keir Starmer really keeping the country out of war? After a tense Liaison Committee appearance exposed divisions over defence spending, pressure is also mounting on the government’s economic strategy. With energy prices rising, mortgage products disappearing and fears of inflation returning, how
One of the key rites of passage for all modern prime ministers is losing their temper a little during an exchange with Bernard Jenkin at the liaison committee. It happened to David Cameron, who would go rather pink and say ‘the thing is, BERNARD’ while trying to explain why he hadn’t implemented Jenkin’s committee’s plan
The Covid inquiry has published the third of its ten (ten!) modules today, this time focused on how the healthcare systems of the UK coped with the pandemic. Its key finding is that they only just managed to do so, and ‘on a number of occasions, they teetered on the brink of collapse’. That they
11 min listen
Angela Rayner has entered the chat. Last night she gave a speech to Labour members which many are reading as the soft launch of her leadership bid. She told the room that Labour needs to be more ‘bold’ – echoing Gordon Brown as she called for a more left-wing direction. She took aim specifically at
