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.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Labour U-turn on fiscal charter to ‘underline our position as an anti-austerity party’

From our UK edition

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 our means and we will tackle the deficit’, but in a letter today to MPs, McDonnell says: ‘I believe that we need to underline our position as an anti-austerity party by voting against the charter on Wednesday.’ Labour will publish its own statement on budget responsibility before the debate. The new politics does look rather like the old politics right now, with straight talking still apparently including rapid changes of heart.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

What the Vote Leave campaign needs to do next

From our UK edition

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 the favourite to get the Commission’s funding, free mailing and campaign broadcasts. It is trying to underline that it is the better of the two campaigns - the other being Arron Banks’ Leave EU campaign - by showing off how many people from across the political spectrum it represents. 2. Work out what to do with Nigel Farage. Farage is one of the key figures who managed to make this referendum happen.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Labour justifies Corbyn’s Privy Council ‘snub’

From our UK edition

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 Minister and others did, it is far from unusual to miss the first meeting due to other commitments.’ Corbyn’s non-attendance is neither a snub nor totally unimportant. His spokesperson does make a good point that David Cameron didn’t cancel all other engagements in order to attend his Privy Council meeting and the Labour leader does intend to go.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

What could the Conservative party offer a working class teenager from Moss Side?

From our UK edition

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 past year, and not just because of the Scottish referendum. Her speech was a pretty good demonstration of why this MSP should get an even higher profile in the Tory party across the UK: passionate, insightful, clear and human. Seb explains her key message, which was that the Tories cannot be ‘seen as decent technocrats’, here.

Isabel Hardman

Who really won in the battle over right to buy?

From our UK edition

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 Right to Buy to housing association tenants. Some people said this would be impossible. Housing associations would never stand for it. The legislation would never pass. ‘Let me tell you something. Greg Clark, our brilliant Communities Secretary, has secured a deal with housing associations to give their tenants the Right to Buy their home.

Isabel Hardman

Tories could delay telling tax credit claimants how much money they’ll lose from cuts

From our UK edition

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 of withdrawal as pay rises, to come to fruition in their current form. There are three camps of Conservatives on tax credits. There’s the large group who think the cuts seriously undermine their claim to be the party of working people and are wrong because they take £1,300 off those on low incomes, and will be altered soon enough.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s conference speech shows the essay crisis Prime Minister has finally planned ahead

From our UK edition

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 party leader in 2020. Early on, he said: ‘We’re only halfway through. For me, that has a very literal meaning. I can say something today that perhaps no Prime Minister has ever really been able to say before. I’m starting the second half of my time in this job. As you know, I am not going to fight another election as your leader. So I don’t have the luxury of unlimited time. Let me tell you: I am in just as much of a hurry as five years ago.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron makes home ownership the focus of his ‘turnaround decade’ conference speech

From our UK edition

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 their home in this country. So David Cameron will overhaul planning rules that his advisers believe slow down development - the section 106 requirements that mean developers must include affordable homes for rent in their plans - so that more homes that people can afford to buy are built. This reform will see the Tories trying to rebrand ‘affordable housing’.

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs grumpy about ‘arm candy’ photo rota

From our UK edition

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 used as arm candy. The rota involves walking with the Prime Minister between buildings so that when he is photographed, he has an entourage of supportive MPs with him, and so that they get their chance to have a picture of them walking with the PM in the national media. The photo above, of new Eastbourne MP Caroline Ansell, is one such example.

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson’s bid to get back in the leadership contest

From our UK edition

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 better for it. He made quite clear that he wasn’t giving up on the leadership contest, and that a difficult first term doesn’t mean he’s not a serious option to lead the party in the future. The reason Boris managed to show he was a serious option to lead the Conservative party was that he used those new jokes to show the appeal of Conservatism and the folly of the Left.

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May has ‘quite a lot of explaining to do’ on immigration before the leadership contest

From our UK edition

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 say, yes there are costs of immigration, but the answer is to manage the consequences, not reduce the numbers. But not all of the consequences can be managed, and doing so for many of them comes at a high price. ‘We need to build 210,000 new homes every year to deal with rising demand. We need to find 900,000 new school places by 2024. And there are thousands of people who have been forced out of the labour market, still unable to find a job.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne’s local devolution revolution

From our UK edition

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 was that ‘we are the builders’, and to underline that, he announced his National Infrastructure Commission which was trailed overnight. But he also announced reform to local government funding. This will see the abolition of the local government grant (it will be phased out), and in return councils will be able to keep all the rates they collect, with local authorities getting 100 per cent of their rates by 2020.

Isabel Hardman

Low key atmosphere in Tory conference hall for low key leadership contest

From our UK edition

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 large number of delegates have spent a rather long time stuck in the rain waiting for someone to scan their bags in the security tent. Or it could be because none of the ministers speaking wants to appear too exciting, as too exciting means you are a threat to George Osborne, which tends to leave you in a messy place as a minister.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Major coup for Osborne as Lord Adonis resigns Labour whip to chair infrastructure commission

From our UK edition

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 to become a cross bench peer and chair an independent National Infrastructure Commission. Adonis has issued this statement: ‘Without big improvements to its transport and energy systems, Britain will grind to a halt. I am pleased to accept the Chancellor’s invitation to establish the National Infrastructure Commission as an independent body able to advise Government and Parliament on priorities.

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove sets out the Tory plan to occupy the centre ground

From our UK edition

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 in the hall, rather than one where he repeatedly challenged Labour on the party’s new direction under Jeremy Corbyn. It wasn’t just that he prompted the conference to applaud his line that it was a Conservative, not a Lib Dem, who ensured equal marriage for gay and lesbian people - which they did, with a very small number of delegates either refusing to clap or shaking their heads.

Isabel Hardman

The Tories are finally facing up to what makes Parliament too posh: but will their solution work?

From our UK edition

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 £34,000 of their own money on average (that figure comes from this ConHome survey of 2005 candidates, but my own research which I am conducting currently suggests that it is roughly similar for those who stood in 2015: more on this soon). And this means that it’s impossible for some people to ever consider running.

Isabel Hardman

Justine Greening shows new enthusiasm for her job and her own story

From our UK edition

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 keen to remain International Development Secretary for ever. For instance, she said: ‘Wherever you are in the world, young people tell me they want the same thing, a job and the dignity of work. I know that the toughest year of my childhood in Rotherham was the year my dad was unemployed.

Isabel Hardman

Philip Hammond says Britain will get a deal with the EU. But what sort of deal?

From our UK edition

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 was what he didn't mention in his speech, particularly in the passage on Europe. Hammond did say that Europe is 'seriously in need of reform'. And he did say that 'reform is possible'. But his list of what Britain would say no to as part of that reform didn't include some of the things that Tories have talked about for a while.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron: Tories won’t alter tax credit cuts

From our UK edition

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 the Andrew Marr Show, David Cameron made clear that there wouldn’t be a review of these cuts. He was asked if George Osborne might change the plans in the Autumn Statement: ‘No. We think the changes we put forward are right and they come with higher pay and lower taxes.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Owen Paterson interview: My plan to find the next Tory leader

From our UK edition

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 votes, the host gave a speech that marked this out from all the other drinks events that MPs throw for one another. That host was Owen Paterson, and he told the room, which was made up mainly of right-leaning eurosceptic Conservatives, that he would be writing a set of policy papers for a future leadership contender to take over from David Cameron.