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.
One of the ways that Number 10 likes to signal to Westminster that it is taking a situation seriously is to hold a meeting in Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. Calling COBRA is a sign that this is a Crisis, and that the Government has got it under control, simply by meeting in a rather
The Commons may have rather big legislation to debate at the moment, but the government itself seems to have tuned out until after the referendum is over. There was no Cabinet meeting this morning, and ministers are busy fighting one another at campaign events, rather than bustling about in their departments. Even departmental question sessions
Scottish Labour is in a pretty bleak place at the moment. It is recovering from its second drubbing in an election in two years, and its leadership is naturally scratching its head about how on earth to recover. So the consultation that the party has launched this week that includes questions of whether it should
Time was when the main argument between the two campaigns in the EU referendum was about who was running the most negative show (not, of course, about the matter in hand). The Remain campaign were talking down Britain, pro-Brexiteers such as Boris Johnson complained, while the In side argued that Leave was trying to frighten
What make a good minister? Is it how well they perform at the Dispatch Box in the Commons? Or their ability to field questions on Newsnight? Or even their ability to be a good lunch guest for a member of the lobby? The truth is that often we don’t know whether someone has been a
Boris Johnson took in a car factory as part of his day of campaigning for Vote Leave in Yorkshire. The former Mayor did the usual politician’s thing of touring the workshops of Ginetta, pointing at various pieces of equipment and asking the workers what it was that they were doing, before hopping in one of
Boris Johnson is on the Vote Leave campaign trail in York this morning, and has just addressed a medium-sized crowd in the city centre. Unlike some of the election rallies that we saw last year, there were some real members of the public attending – and a chap who had turned up to egg he
This weekend’s public spat between David Cameron and Penny Mordaunt about whether Britain can stop the accession of new countries such as Turkey into the European Union looks like just another row in the referendum campaign. Every day one figure on one side makes a claim that riles the other side, and a war of
So Number 10 has yielded and decided to stave off the Queen’s Speech rebellion by accepting the rebel amendment to it, thereby stopping the first defeat of a government on its legislative programme since 1924. A spokesman said: ‘As we’ve said all along, there is no threat to the NHS from TTIP. So if this
Tory eurosceptics are threatening to cause the first government defeat on a Queen’s Speech since 1924 by joining forces with Labour MPs over an amendment expressing regret that there is no bill exempting the NHS from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. It’s the second time the eurosceptics have worked with Opposition MPs to try
The quiet Queen’s Speech seems largely to have underwhelmed Tory MPs – though they do predict a number of sticky moments in the Commons over the coming months. Most I have spoken to describe it as ‘pretty bare’, though they also understand why the Prime Minister isn’t trying anything particularly ambitious at this stage ‘Why
What is the point of today’s Queen’s Speech? The government’s legislative programme for the year is being briefed as light and safe, given the ructions in the Tory party over Europe and David Cameron’s tiny majority. But it is also being briefed as a social justice speech, one focused on getting on with the important
When are Jeremy Corbyn’s enemies going to get their act together? Today’s Times poll of the Labour membership shows that they would get a rather cold reception if they tried to remove the Labour leader, with 72 per cent telling YouGov that Corbyn is doing well, up from 66 per cent in November. Members are
One of the big questions about the EU referendum campaign is whether the Tory leadership is running its campaign in such a way as to make it impossible to stitch the party back together again after the result on 23 June. The Prime Minister’s colleagues concerned with party management who work in Number 10 and
You know you’ve not necessarily added a great deal to your argument when Ken Livingstone is telling you off for invoking Hitler. Boris Johnson finds himself in that rather awkward position today, with the former Mayor being scolded by another former Mayor for claiming at the weekend that Hitler was among ‘various people’ who tried
When politicians and tutors talk about underrepresented groups at universities, few expect men to feature on the list. Yet as a report from the Higher Education Policy Institute today shows, men are now an endangered species at university, with women being 35 per cent more likely to go to university than men. Men are also
If the Leave campaign in the EU referendum was resembling Project Grouch a few weeks ago, today it is rather closer to Project Apoplexy. Vote Leave exploded late last night after ITV announced that it would be holding a live referendum event with David Cameron and Nigel Farage. The campaign group first accused the broadcaster
By now, Labour should be rather good at post-defeat inquests. Plenty have been conducted over the years and the drill has become familiar. The party goes into an election promising a certain vision of the future only to find out that it leaves the voters cold. A senior figure is then commissioned to state the
One of the major features of the EU referendum campaign is the suspicion on the part of Tory eurosceptics that their party in government is trying to screw them over. The latest theory centres around the dates when the postal votes are sent out and when the government is forced by official rules governing election
Jeremy Corbyn’s questions at PMQs weren’t so much a dog’s dinner as a miserable casserole of leftovers. The Labour leader didn’t appear to have bothered to craft the lines he delivered from the dispatch box. This meant that the questions he asked the Prime Minister were rambling, and strangely managed to continue long after the actual