Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman is joined by Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth to discuss the ruling: In the past few minutes, the Supreme Court has delivered its ruling in the Article 50 case on taking Britain out of the European Union. The Government has lost. It had argued that it did not need an Act of Parliament before triggering the mechanism. The Court ruled by eight judges to three that the Government did need the authority of Parliament in order to start the process. You can read the full judgement here. But the Court also ruled unanimously that Brexit is a matter for the Westminster parliament and not the devolved assemblies. This means that the government will have to put a bill through Parliament on triggering Article 50 to take the UK out of the European Union.

Theresa May’s industrial strategy, launched today at a special Cabinet meeting just outside Warrington, is part of the Prime Minister’s efforts to show that she is doing interesting and original things on the domestic front while also working on the Brexit negotiations. It is also part of her attempt to show that she is different from her predecessors in government. But how different? The 132-page consultation document, Building Our Industrial Strategy, focuses on ‘creating the right conditions for new and growing enterprises to thrive, not protecting the position of incumbents,’ according to Business Secretary Greg Clark. But this is a contrast with the ‘fatally flawed’ plans of the 1970s, rather than the approach of the previous government.

Jeremy Corbyn is a famous rebel, so famous that when he was elected, many in his party wondered how he might tell MPs to vote the way he wanted them to when he himself had refused to listen to the whips throughout his backbench career. When he was still a backbencher, he enjoyed telling a tale about Sadiq Khan, then his whip, ringing him up to check he would definitely be rebelling on a certain vote, and not bothering to waste his energy trying to get him to abstain instead. Now the Labour leader is faced with one of those awkward moments that involve him telling his MPs to vote a certain way on a controversial issue, and those MPs rightly being a bit miffed.

Jeremy Corbyn’s attack line on Theresa May at Prime Minister’s Questions today might have been more effective had the Labour leader not appeared confused about what he was asking. He had no option but to talk about Brexit, something he has tried to avoid in his year and a half in the job because of his own ambivalence over Europe and his disagreements with his party about what is particularly bad about the European Union. May teased the Labour leader about his apparent confusion yesterday over whether membership of the single market was the same as access to the single market, telling him that ‘I’ve got a plan, he doesn’t have a clue’.

Theresa May was at pains in her Brexit speech and in the question-and-answer session from journalists afterwards to appear as friendly as possible to European leaders. She pointedly took questions from members of the European press who were present. She told the room that ‘we are leaving the European Union, but we are not leaving Europe’, and addressed ‘our friends across Europe directly’, promising that Britain would continue to be ‘reliable partners, willing allies and close friends’. But she also took a very strong negotiating line, threatening what David Cameron either couldn’t or wouldn’t, which was to walk away if the deal offered wasn’t good enough, particularly if EU leaders sought to punish Britain for its decision.

‘I’m really interested about the similarities between me and Donald Trump,’ joked Jeremy Corbyn this morning on Marr. ‘Is it the hair or something?’ When the Labour leader expounded upon his Trump-esque analysis of the system that is rigged against the people, it turned out that the main difference between him and the American president was that he wants a series of constitutional reforms including overhaul of the House of Lords and more political representation of the North. Which doesn’t sound like the kind of thing you can shout at a rally, whether or not you have ludicrous hair.

How much detail does Theresa May need to give in her much-anticipated Brexit speech on Tuesday? The Prime Minister will presumably have to say more than ‘Brexit means Brexit’, and odd phrases about what colour Brexit should be (red, white and blue) won’t pass muster either. But remember that the original big Brexit speech at the start of a year was the Bloomberg speech that David Cameron gave in 2013 - and he gave so much detail about what he wanted from a renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the European Union that he was inevitably going to disappoint, which he then did, taking Britain out of the EU as a result. May will not want to fall into the same trap. Neither will she want to be the one who gets blamed for Britain not getting certain things.

For a man prepared to stick to his principles over decades, no matter how unpopular they make him, Jeremy Corbyn has changed his mind a remarkable number of times today. His latest stance on freedom of movement is as follows: ‘Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle, but I don’t want that to be misinterpreted, nor do we rule it out.’ This makes the party’s infamous ‘controls on immigration’ mug from the 2015 election look like such a simple, wholesome proposition. Here is the evolution of Corbyn’s stance: Last night: Labour is not wedded to freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle. This morning: Labour isn’t going to restrict the rights of people to move to the UK.

While getting the Tory leadership contest out of the way quickly was good for the country following the EU referendum, it did mean that Britain gained a new Prime Minister without much idea of what she believed or wanted to do with her time in office. Theresa May did set out some principles for her government when she stood on the steps of Downing Street on her first day in the job, and in her autumn conference speech, but how she plans to help the ‘just managing’ and how much she really intends to do by way of domestic reform when Brexit is such a big distraction - and potentially a convenient excuse. But as I say in the magazine this week,  the Tory leader is keen that Brexit isn't the only thing by which her premiership is judged.

It is the fate of all new prime ministers to be compared with their recent predecessors. Theresa May has already been accused of being the heir to the micro-managing Gordon Brown. Her allies, meanwhile, see a new Margaret Thatcher, an uncompromising Boadicea destined to retrieve sovereignty from Europe. But perhaps a more fitting model for May would be a less recent Labour prime minister: Clement Attlee. When Labourites reminisce about Attlee, it isn’t so much the man himself who makes them misty-eyed. It is the achievements of those who worked for him — Nye Bevan, Ernest Bevin and the rest. Attlee’s government created the welfare state and the National Health Service, and built a million houses. It had lots of excuses not do any of these things.

Every year closes with ‘fury’ as the press reacts to yet another honour for a ‘mandarin’ who has been doing something they disagree with, and 2016 is no exception. This year’s villainous recipient of a gong is Sir Mark Lowcock, Permanent Secretary of the Department for International Development. Much of the anger directed as Lowcock’s gong is really frustration with the government’s policy on aid spending, which is that 0.7 per cent of national income is spent on development projects around the world every year. That’s not Lowcock’s decision, but something that the Coalition Government introduced and that this majority Conservative Government under David Cameron and then Theresa May has remained committed to.

Jamie Reed, the Labour MP for Copeland, has announced he is stepping down from Parliament from the end of January 2017. He is leaving to work at Sellafield, which is in his constituency. Reed is a well known critic of Jeremy Corbyn, and though his resignation letter is warm and polite, it makes frequent and pointed references to the need for a Labour government. It closes with Reed wishing Corbyn well in his endeavours to become the next Labour Prime Minister, something the MP has made pretty clear in previous statements that he thinks is impossible. [caption id="attachment_9717962" align="alignnone" width="702"] Jamie Reed's resignation letter[/caption] So why is he leaving? Reed's constituency is now a marginal seat, with a majority of just 2,564.