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.
There are strict rules governing the language that MPs can use in the House of Commons. Words like ‘guttersnipe’, ‘stoolpigeon’ and ‘hypocrite’ are considered unparliamentary, and MPs can be chucked out of the Chamber for the rest of the day if they do not withdraw their comments. Sadly, though, they can get away with behaviour
Sadiq Khan starts his first day as Mayor today, and has spent more of his weekend distancing himself from Jeremy Corbyn than he has been talking about London. He made a series of pointed references to the need for his party to win elections and that ‘we only do that by speaking to those people
It’s a good day for the Conservatives to bury bad news, when all attention is on Labour and the SNP’s election performances. So that must be why in the past few minutes Nicky Morgan has announced she is U-turning on the government’s plans to force all schools in England to become academies. The Education Secretary
The election results that we’ve had through so far are a pretty potent combination for the Labour party. Diane Abbott said this morning that they show that Labour is on course to win the 2020 general election, while Jeremy Corbyn skirted around what they actually meant for the party in the long-term when he gave
This morning the Labour party is waking up to both disaster and relief. Disaster because the party is falling into third place in the Scottish Parliament – and third to the Conservatives, a party it has long teased for being unpopular and unacceptable north of the border. And relief because so far in English council
Why is the government preparing for a U-turn on accepting more unaccompanied child refugees? George Osborne was speaking this morning on television about the ‘discussions’ that the government is having on this matter, which underlined that ministers are indeed going to announce concessions before MPs force them into accepting the Lord Dubs amendment to the
Jeremy Corbyn’s critics may well be setting the Labour leader impossible challenges by demanding that the party wins 400 seats in this week’s local elections. But Corbyn himself isn’t exactly making things easier either, telling reporters today that his party won’t lose seats on Thursday. Independent experts such as Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher are
Monday mornings are miserable enough as it is, but this morning the Leave campaign decided to treat us to the double whammy of a furious column from Boris Johnson in the Telegraph and an irritable Iain Duncan Smith on the Today programme. The Mayor is angry about Obama and the way the Remain campaign has
David Cameron and Barack Obama arrived at the Foreign Office for their press conference today with two clear aims. The first was to impress upon everyone how well they get on, and in a rather cringeworthy manner. Cameron in particular was desperate to mention in almost every sentence the jolly good friendship that he had
Tory MPs remain confident that they will force the government into a U-turn over forced academisation. Though departmental sources are pushing back against reports in today’s Financial Times that ministers are putting the brakes on the reforms, they cannot answer the question of how the changes would actually get through the House of Commons. And
It’s perhaps not a surprise that Scottish Labour will oppose Trident renewal in the party’s manifesto for the Holyrood elections. The party did hold a symbolic vote on the matter at its conference last autumn, and delegates voted against renewal of the nuclear deterrent, despite Kezia Dugdale’s own preference for multilateral disarmament. And it’s not
If the number of foreign politicians and international organisations that the government is enlisting in the campaign to stay in the EU is anything to go by, David Cameron and George Osborne are a bit nervous about the outcome of the referendum. This week in particular has seen the Chancellor using not just the might
‘The Commons at its best’ is a bit of a pompous phrase that people apply to all sorts of sessions in Parliament that aren’t really the Commons at its best at all. But the Commons at its worst is surely easy to find: it’s when MPs meet on a Friday to discuss Private Members’ Bills.
Today’s Treasury questions was a pretty tame affair. Labour produced a pretty mild set of questions on tax avoidance and solar energy, while Tory eurosceptics only caused trouble in the opening questions by complaining about the Treasury’s analysis of the economic consequences of Brexit – and at the very end when Sir Edward Leigh and
Although the weekly meeting of the parliamentary Labour party is a private affair, Jeremy Corbyn’s spokesman offers journalists lurking in the committee corridor outside a briefing as soon as it has concluded. Today he had to take questions from hacks on whether or not his boss goes to McDonald’s – prompted by the news that the
Departmental questions in the House of Commons are generally an opportunity for backbenchers of all parties to hold the government to account. But a strange pattern is emerging at Defence Questions, whereby the backbenchers of each of the two main parties pour their efforts into making life uncomfortable for their own frontbenchers, even though Labour’s
Another interesting change of tack in the EU referendum campaign comes from the Leave camp today, with Priti Patel warning about school places. The employment minister warns that EU migration is putting ‘unsustainable pressure’ on schools, saying: ‘The shortage of primary school places is yet another example of how uncontrolled migration is putting unsustainable pressures
George Osborne harnesses the might of the Treasury machine today in the EU referendum campaign, publishing a weighty tome that tweaks 200 pages to warn of the consequences of Britain leaving the EU. He also warns of a ‘profound consequences for our economy, for the living standards of every family, and for Britain’s role in
Rather like the 2015 General Election campaign, the EU referendum campaign feels as though it has been going on rather a long time. And yet today is in fact only the start of the official ten-week campaign. There may be some in Westminster who are filled with great excitement at the thought of another ten
Tory MPs are increasingly convinced that the government may back down on some of its plans for forced academisation of all schools, I understand. The Commons is currently holding an Opposition Day debate on the plans, confirmed in last month’s Budget. They have upset a good number of Conservative MPs and councillors, not least because
