Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman

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.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Osborne: Tories ‘signalled’ tax credit cuts during election campaign

From our UK edition

The general election was only a few months ago, but according to George Osborne, voters and his own MPs have forgotten what happened during that campaign. Indeed, it seems we have all already forgotten what was said, because apparently the campaign included details of cuts to working tax credits. Today the Chancellor defended these cuts when he appeared before the Treasury Select Committee. John Mann decided that the most effective way of attacking the cuts was by appealing to George Osborne’s own personal ambition.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Listen: BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg confronts President Xi over China’s human rights

From our UK edition

One of the clever things that politicians try to do is to redefine words and concepts that everyone thought they knew the meaning of. Take today’s ‘press conference’ that David Cameron and Chinese President Xi held in Downing Street. That ‘press conference’ consisted of statements followed by two questions, though dozens of journalists had turned up. Fortunately, the question from the British media came from the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg, who asked the Prime Minister how he thought a British steel worker would feel that the Chinese president was being ‘ferried down Whitehall in a golden carriage’ and whether there is ‘any price that’s worth paying in order to further our business interests with China?

Isabel Hardman

Heidi Allen’s criticism of the Commons upsets fellow MPs

From our UK edition

There has been an interesting response in the Tory party to Heidi Allen’s speech in which she criticised the tax credit changes. Many MPs are themselves worried about the changes, and didn’t disagree with what she had to say. But what has really riled them is the way in which she appeared to dismiss the Chamber as largely pointless - and that she spoke against the cuts having supported them once and then went onto vote with the government again on the motion before the House last night (though to be fair, she explained that she wouldn't vote for the Opposition Day motion because she disagreed with its wording). One MP who knows a thing or two about rebelling says ‘I couldn’t care less about her dissing the government: I do that too.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Listen: Tory MP Heidi Allen’s devastating attack on tax credit cuts

From our UK edition

‘I’ve been trying flipping hard to avoid doing it,’ said Heidi Allen today as she started her maiden speech. She hadn’t seen the point of speeches in the Chamber, she explained, because most people in the Commons were already wedded to their side, and there wasn’t much point in her adding to those speeches as they changed no minds. But the reason she had decided to give it during the Opposition Day debate on tax credits ‘because today I can sit on my hands no longer’. She wanted to criticise the tax credit cuts. She wanted to intervene before it was ‘too late’ to stop the changes to tax credits, even though she didn’t want to support today’s motion from Labour because she disagreed with the party’s overall stance.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron tells Cabinet renegotiation will quicken soon

From our UK edition

The Cabinet met this morning, but it didn’t manage to discuss two of the biggest political problems for the Tories at the moment, according to the Downing Street read-out of the meeting. The growing row on tax credits was only referred to when the discussion of parliamentary business touched on the fact that there is an Opposition Day debate on the matter later today, and there was no discussion of the demands from a number of those present at the table for collective responsibility to be suspended during the EU referendum. Not surprising, perhaps, given this was Cabinet rather than political cabinet, but a reflection of the way rows don’t always make their way into the formal discussions between ministers.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Osborne defends tax credit cuts to his MPs as enemies circle

From our UK edition

Tory MPs had a briefing meeting today with George Osborne which a number of them used to press the Chancellor about the tax credit cuts. Peter Aldous raised concerns about the changes, which which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises, and was supported by colleagues. But though it was quite clear to the Chancellor that a large number of MPs from across the party - not just troublemakers - were seriously worried about the changes, he didn’t give anything away about any changes he could make.

Isabel Hardman

Osborne’s enemies use tax credits row to undermine Chancellor’s leadership bid

From our UK edition

Few Conservative MPs are expected to rebel on tomorrow’s Opposition Day motion on tax credits, mainly because defying the whip to vote with Labour on a motion that is non-binding on the government is pretty pointless. But that doesn’t mean that the internal Tory revolt on the matter isn’t building. More and more big names are speaking out on the matter, and the Chancellor opponents now see the cut as an ideal way of undermining his bid to be leader. They want to make it about his personal judgement and awareness of the struggles that 'hardworking people' face.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron expected to give eurosceptics their free EU vote – after letting them put up a fight

From our UK edition

Will David Cameron allow senior ministers to take whatever side they wish in the EU referendum? There are reportedly six Cabinet Ministers pushing for a free vote on the matter, and today Liam Fox added his voice to the calls, telling the Daily Politics that even if the Prime Minister refused an official suspension of collective responsibility, ministers would find other ways of making their views heard. He said: ‘Ultimately the legitimacy of the result will depend on whether the voters think they have heard all the arguments openly and fairly and I think any attempt by any side to restrict people's voice in that debate will limit how people feel the legitimacy of the referendum has gone and I think that’s really important.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon: the SNP would welcome uncomfortable scrutiny

From our UK edition

Nicola Sturgeon spoke at the open and close of the SNP conference, and her speech today transposed the key themes of the short address she gave on Thursday morning. She attacked Jeremy Corbyn for disappointing her 'high hopes', saying 'so far, Jeremy Corbyn isn't changing Labour - he's allowing Labour to change him'. And she talked about independence, though in this speech the First Minister didn't talk about when, but how. Her first speech had acknowledged that the party couldn't commit to another referendum until there was evidence a majority of Scots were now in favour of leaving. Today she argued that 'if we want Scotland to be independent - and we most certainly do - then we've got work to do'. She said the party needed to convince voters that 'independence is the best future'.

Isabel Hardman

The strangest thing about the SNP conference is how normal it is

From our UK edition

The SNP conference has had to get bigger as the party has grown. Those who’ve been coming for years are a tad unsettled by quite how big and slick this event is. The exhibition hall is much bigger and is packed with lobbyists and big corporate stands, including a McDonald’s stall. The hall is bigger, the fringe events organised by lobbyists, too, and at first glance, it looks rather like a mainstream party conference: not one packed with eccentricities like the Ukip or Lib Dem conferences. That’s unsurprising given the SNP is a party of government and given it has a chunk of MPs in Westminster. But all of the party’s MPs, MSPs and activists who I’ve met over the past few days say the same thing: it still feels like a family.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Angus Robertson: Older voters took longer to persuade in the referendum than we predicted

From our UK edition

The SNP didn’t win the independence referendum, but is still talking about the lessons it can learn from what happened a year later. That’s because it wants to win the next one - and everyone at this conference believes that the next referendum only has question marks about when, not if, it will happen. SNP Westminster leader Angus Robertson suggested at a fringe organised by The Times this lunchtime that two major lessons he’d learned from last year’s result were that older voters would not be persuaded to vote ‘Yes’ as easily by younger generations than he had imagined they would be, and that the ‘Yes’ campaign failed to communicate effectively with those voters who came from the rest of the UK.

Isabel Hardman

Labour whips persuade Corbyn to keep them

From our UK edition

The Labour leadership has abandoned plans to effectively neuter the party’s whips office after realising it is quite useful, Coffee House has learned. I understand that John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn had considered making the whips’ office more of an administrative entity which didn’t try to herd MPs into the right lobby. There had also been plans afoot to get rid of Rosie Winterton, the party’s chief whip, as she had initially been identified as someone hostile to a Corbyn leadership who represented the old way of doing things. But the vote on the fiscal charter this week was much less troublesome than the Labour leadership had anticipated, thanks to Winterton’s efforts.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

SNP toys with Labour by announcing troublesome Trident vote

From our UK edition

The SNP are very, very happy that they now have 56 MPs in Westminster. But to listen to their conference in Aberdeen today, you’d think they were happiest that Labour is having a miserable time in the House of Commons. It wasn’t just Nicola Sturgeon’s speech, covered here, that showed their joy. It was also the ‘Westminster Hour’ session that the party ran later in the day, featuring a number of newly elected MPs, and the party’s Westminster group leader Angus Robertson and finance spokesman Stewart Hosie. Angus Robertson in particular gave the impression that he was enjoying the misery of the Labour party and the SNP’s hand in that as much as a cat enjoys toying with a mouse over several days.

Isabel Hardman

Sturgeon tries to calm nerves about another referendum

From our UK edition

One of the key aims of this SNP conference in Aberdeen is for the party to reach out to those who are worried that voting for the party in the Holyrood elections will raise the spectre of a second referendum that many voters are wary of, given how divisive the first one was in some families and communities. To that end, Nicola Sturgeon was careful to use her speech to reassure nervous listeners that the SNP wasn’t planning another referendum any time soon: ‘To propose another referendum in the next parliament without strong evidence that a significant number of those who voted No have changed their minds would be wrong and we won’t do it.

Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon taunts ‘divided’ Labour party

From our UK edition

Remember those Tory posters that put a tiny Ed Miliband in Alex Salmond’s coat pocket? Well, it’s only five months since the general election, but Nicola Sturgeon doesn’t seem all that keen to put Jeremy Corbyn in her handbag. She seemed to suggest that she had given up on being able to work with the new Labour leader, saying: ‘You know, there is much that I hoped the SNP and Jeremy Corbyn could work together on. But over these last few weeks, it has become glaringly obvious that he is unable to unite his party on any of the big issues of our day.

Isabel Hardman

Nicola Sturgeon: SNP needs to talk about governing

From our UK edition

SNP members are gathering for the first day of their party’s autumn conference in Aberdeen. The party is keen to trumpet quite how much has changed in a year, and it’s not just proud of its 56 MPs. Last night it released ‘figures showing the scale of its growth since the referendum’. These include the conference hall having four times as many seats as it did last year (from 1,200 to 4,765), the exhibition space is three times the size, there are three times as many fringe meetings and a media centre six times the size ‘to accommodate over 500 members of the media’. (The press room is a rather outdoorsy tent, incidentally). But the party has changed so much since its last conference.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Jean-Claude Juncker accused of saying that the UK doesn’t need the EU

From our UK edition

The 'Out' campaign in the EU referendum has seized on comments made by Jean-Claude Juncker where he appears to say that Britain doesn't need the European Union. He 'appears' to say it in the sense that the key word is rather muffled - and his team are insisting he said Britain does need the EU. You can listen to his comments in the European Parliament below, and it’s worth listening as it’s not clear whether he said ‘personally I don’t think that Britain needs the European Union’ or ‘personally I do think that Britain needs the European Union’. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/jean-claude-juncker-says-that-britain-does-not-need-the-eu His aides are insisting that he meant that Britain does need the EU.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs prepare to rebel for first time against Corbyn: but it won’t change anything

From our UK edition

John McDonnell has tried to explain why he U-turned on the fiscal charter this afternoon, saying that he has only ‘changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics’, not the principles of the matter. He told Sky News: ‘I have changed my mind, but I haven’t changed my mind on the principles of what the charter is standing for which is we need to tackle the deficit and we will tackle the deficit. Labour will tackle the deficit – we are not deficit deniers, I haven’t changed my mind on that. ‘But I have changed my mind on the parliamentary tactics.

Isabel Hardman

Gove wins battle over Saudi prisons contract

From our UK edition

The government is pulling out of the £5.9 million deal to run a prison in Saudi Arabia, Number 10 has announced, after a row between two Cabinet ministers surfaced in the press. Downing Street also said that David Cameron was writing to the Saudi authorities to raise the ‘extremely concerning’ case of Karl Andree, a British pensioner sentenced to 350 lashes after being caught with homemade alcohol. But the Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman said that the Andree case wasn’t linked to the decision on the prison deal, and wouldn’t answer questions on when the decision was made.