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.
John McDonnell has just made his first U-turn as Shadow Chancellor, announcing that Labour will vote against the fiscal charter on Wednesday – having previously told the Guardian that it would support it. Labour’s support for the charter was previously to show that it wants ‘to balance the books, we do want to live within
The cross-party ‘Vote Leave’ campaign launches today, with an impressive list of backers from politics and business. It is run by Matthew Elliot and Dominic Cummings, and has MPs from across the spectrum supporting it. This is what it needs to do next: 1. Get the official designation from the Electoral Commission. Vote Leave is
Jeremy Corbyn is not attending today’s Privy Council meeting, which is being written up as a ‘snub’ in some quarters and dismissed as totally unimportant in others. The Labour leader’s spokesperson has issued this statement: ‘Although Jeremy was unavailable for today’s meeting, he has confirmed he will be joining the Privy Council. ‘As the Prime
David Cameron had the best warm-up act possible today for his speech: before he was speaking, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson had her turn. It’s a bit odd to describe someone who has been Scottish Tory leader since 2011 as a ‘rising star’, but the truth is that Davidson’s profile has been rising over the
David Cameron’s key policy theme in his conference speech was housing, and it included the announcement that the government is accepting housing associations’ offer of a voluntary extension of the right-to-buy to their tenants that allows them to avoid legislation. The Prime Minister said: ‘And in our manifesto, we announced a breakthrough policy: extending the
The Tory revolt on tax credits looks likely to dominate this autumn. Many Tories across the party now regard this as conforming to a similar pattern as the 10p tax row under Gordon Brown, and few expect the cuts, which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate
Clearly, the best thing a Prime Minister can do is announce that he doesn’t want to be Prime Minister for much longer. David Cameron has just delivered the clearest, most passionate and most authentic speech of his premiership to the Tory party conference, and all of it was founded on him not standing again as
David Cameron’s conference speech today will include plans to increase home ownership, which has become a personal mission of both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. The Tories convinced that people are more likely to vote for them if they are homeowners, and are well aware of polling that shows most people want to own
One of the fun jobs that new Tory MPs have to perform at conference is joining the special rota to follow David Cameron around. This isn’t a new rota, but it seems to have especially annoyed a number of the rather impressive 2015 intake, particularly some of the female MPs who think they are being
The Tory conference this year is so stage-managed that not only did the party manage the no mean feat of sending out a check-against-delivery text of Boris Johnson’s speech before he stood up, but the Mayor then stuck to that text almost entirely. That text contained new jokes, rather than recycled ones, and was the
Theresa May will today claim that high levels of immigration make it ‘impossible to build a cohesive society’. The Home Secretary will tell the Tory conference that it’s not just about building more schools and homes to deal with immigration, but about driving those numbers down too: ‘Now I know there are some people who
George Osborne is the man of the moment, the future Tory leadership contender who is riding high right now. So it was rather clever that instead of offering a showy speech to the Tory conference, the Chancellor announced a rather technical but big reform as his speech ‘rabbit’. His refrain throughout the address to conference
The cavernous hall housing the Tory conference speeches is not particularly conducive to a good atmosphere. All of the speakers so far this morning, including rising star Sajid Javid, haven’t raised the roof, and the applause and standing ovations have felt rather polite and perfunctory, rather than excited and inspired. This might also be because
A key theme of this Tory conference will be the party running its tanks all over Labour’s lawn while the party indulges in splendid in-fighting. And George Osborne’s speech tomorrow will contain another big tank rumbling over another part of the party’s lawn. He has persuaded Lord Adonis to resign the party whip in order
Michael Gove is the Justice Secretary, but his speech to the Tory conference this afternoon showed that he is so much more than that – or at least that he’s interested in so much more than just his brief. The most striking thing about it was that it was a challenging speech for those sitting
Lord Feldman’s announcement of a £250,000 bursary scheme for Conservative candidates shows that the Tory party is starting to face up to some of the little-discussed factors behind Parliament containing so few MPs from working class backgrounds. The cost of standing for Parliament in a seat that is considered winnable is obscene: candidates can lose
Justine Greening’s brief as International Development Secretary is really quite specific. It certainly doesn’t require wide-ranging speeches about social mobility or domestic policy. And while Greening didn’t give a wide-ranging speech in her address to the Tory conference today, she did insert little snippets about her own life in a way that suggested she isn’t
There were no announcements in Philip Hammond’s speech to the Tory party conference. He used a chunk of it to contrast the Conservatives with Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, telling the members listening that the Conservatives would this week ‘show the British people what a real party of government looks like’. But what was more interesting
One of the rows that the Tories are starting their conference with is over tax credits. A growing number of MPs, including Boris Johnson, have expressed concern about the changes, which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises. But today on
One evening early in this autumn term in Parliament, Tory MPs crowded excitedly into a parliamentary office for drinks and nibbles. It wasn’t a particularly unusual event: there were many more people than could fit in the room, though MPs surged in and out like the tide as the division bell rang. But in between
