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.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

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

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?

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

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

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.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn’s Trident comments spark end-of-conference row in Labour

Jeremy Corbyn has really pushed the button on the tensions in his party over Trident renewal. The Labour leader insists that he is just being honest when he says that he would never use nuclear weapons. But what he has done is to put his party in an impossible position. Either it respects his huge mandate and makes scrapping Britain’s nuclear deterrent official policy. Or else it votes to force the resignation of the leader. At first glance, this sounds rather confusing, and Corbyn’s team and John McDonnell have been spinning that Jeremy is just being honest about a long-held personal position. Why is this the implication of a man who has long opposed nuclear weapons saying that he would never use those nuclear weapons?

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn: I wouldn’t use nuclear weapons anyway

Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t want nuclear weapons. We all know that. We also know that because he has a huge mandate (a phrase bandied about so much at this conference that it’s starting to feel like a refrain in Are You Being Served?), he’s keen to turn his views into official party policy on this area at least. But we now also know that if his party determined that it would remain committed to Trident, and if Jeremy Corbyn were Prime Minister, he wouldn’t ever use his weapons anyway. Which makes it entirely pointless to fund them at all. On the Today programme, the new Labour leader was asked if he would approve the use of Trident if he were in Downing Street.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Corbyn’s tougher line on nuclear weapons could become a resigning issue for Shadow Cabinet

Jeremy Corbyn’s aim at this conference has been to keep the Labour party on an even keel. But there was one line in his speech that has unsettled some frontbenchers. He said this about Trident: ‘Today we face very different threats from the time of the Cold War which ended thirty years ago. That’s why I have asked our Shadow Defence Secretary, Maria Eagle, to lead a debate and review about how we deliver that strong, modern effective protection for the people of Britain. I’ve made my own position on one issue clear. And I believe I have a mandate from my election on it. I don’t believe £100 billion on a new generation of nuclear weapons taking up a quarter of our defence budget is the right way forward.

Isabel Hardman

Labour activists loved Jeremy Corbyn’s speech. But will voters?

Jeremy Corbyn’s speech was excellent. It was passionate, full of campaigning zeal, focused on issues that the MP has campaigned on for years, and well-received in the hall. The new Labour leader came across as warm, principled, personable, fun. He was introduced in a lovely, low key fashion by a member of his own constituency party, whose own life story summed up his own values. He opened with jokes about the media claiming that he was keen for an asteroid to destroy the earth (more on this and his opposition to PIGEON BOMBS here), and these went down well - both amongst the activists and the media sitting in the hall.

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn’s conference speech challenge

Jeremy Corbyn has, so far, had a reasonably good conference. Nothing has gone noticeably wrong. There have been no stand-up rows, no fights in the fringes, no heckling in the hall. And the atmosphere has been far better than Labour’s awful autumn conference last year, where everyone was full of gloom when the party was a few points ahead in the polls. But the Labour conference was still going to plan at this point last year, albeit in a moribund way. Ed Miliband hadn’t delivered his speech yet, and he therefore hadn’t forgotten to mention the deficit (the speech was poor, too, but the overall quality was quickly eclipsed by the discovery of his omission).

Isabel Hardman

Maria Eagle: I wouldn’t have resigned over Trident vote

The Labour party may have avoided a divisive vote on Trident this week, but that doesn’t mean that it can always avoid working out whether it should have a new position. Last night Maria Eagle, the Shadow Defence Secretary, told a fringe that though she had made her mind in 2007 that she was in favour of the renewal of the nuclear deterrent, she wouldn’t have resigned had there been a vote that called for Trident to be scrapped at this conference.

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn: I love this country

A set of headlines about a political party leader declaring that he loves his country might, in less unsettled times, be considered a sign that news desks have given up and are going to report all instances of dogs biting men. But in the man-bites-dog-world in which Jeremy Corbyn has just been elected Labour leader and John McDonnell appointed his Shadow Chancellor, it’s news. It’s also the first set of reasonably good headlines for the new leader, which is in part because his media team is working much better with the media now. (though you can't win 'em all) Corbyn is expected to say: ‘These values are what I was elected on: a kinder politics and a more caring society. They are Labour values and our country’s values.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Labour conference is surprisingly even-tempered. Why?

Why does Labour conference feel so even-tempered so far? In previous years the answer would be that it has been stage-managed to the hilt and all frontbenchers programmed with the lines to take. But this year the party’s conference strapline is ‘Straight talking. Honest politics’ and frontbenchers aren’t being sent daily lines to take, so even if they wanted to be on message, they couldn’t be. Of course, those frontbenchers are enjoying telling fringes that they take one view while their leader takes another, but what’s still remarkable about this conference is how good natured all the fringe meetings have been after a vicious leadership contest. Those running were abused endlessly online, as were activists who dared stray from the Corbyn line.

Isabel Hardman

Len McCluskey uses Tory rebel David Davis to attack trade union bill

The Labour conference is currently debating a motion on the Trade Union Bill, which Shadow Business Secretary Angela Eagle made clear in her speech that the party will oppose. It gave Len McCluskey a chance to give his traditional pre-Shadow Chancellor conference speech, though this year the Unite leader didn't need to include any pleas to the Labour leadership to listen to him. Instead, he focused all the fire of his typically impassioned and forceful speech on the Tories. He suggested that the legislation curbing the powers of trade unions and their abilities to strike was more fitting for a fascist government. The Tories will be quite used to his strong rhetoric, but what will really irritate them is that McCluskey quoted David Davis' opposition to many of the measures in the Bill.

Isabel Hardman

McDonnell: I can both oppose and support Heathrow expansion

Is the Labour party right to be so worried that Jeremy Corbyn is its leader and John McDonnell is its Shadow Chancellor? Neither of them seem to be putting much effort into pushing the policies that have upset their colleagues the most. The Labour party will maintain its position on Trident after constituency party delegates decided not to debate the matter this week. Jeremy Corbyn is quite happy for his colleagues to take a different view on this issue, too. Similarly, on Heathrow, both Corbyn and McDonnell are opposed to expansion of the airport, but today the Shadow Chancellor told the Press Association that he might take one position as a constituency MP and another as Shadow Chancellor: ‘As a constituency MP I will be opposed to Heathrow.

Isabel Hardman

Labour conference: John McDonnell sticks to boring

The most remarkable thing about John McDonnell’s Labour conference speech was that he was delivering it at all. The new Shadow Chancellor was clearly trying to assuage fears about him by being as boring (something he'd promised) and mild as possible, announcing reviews headed by big names such as Bob Kerslake of the operation of the Treasury and and an Economic Advisory Committee that includes Thomas Piketty and Joseph Stigltiz. Reviews and committees mean you don’t have to announce as many policies, which is handy if you’re trying not to rock the boat too much early on. But to be fair to McDonnell, it’s also what all mainstream politicians do when they come into the job.

Isabel Hardman

Shadow Cabinet keeps business as usual at Labour conference

So far at this Labour conference, most of the fireworks have been on the Blairite side of the party, with figures such as Chuka Umunna, Ivan Lewis, Liz Kendall and John Woodcock making their displeasure known at events last night. But when it comes to Jeremy Corbyn’s frontbench, and some of the issues on which Corbyn himself has strong and controversial views, the conference has seemed surprisingly well-behaved: so far, at least.

Isabel Hardman

John McDonnell tries to get voters to trust him and his party on the economy

The Shadow Chancellor’s speech at Labour conference has always been the second biggest slot after the leader. But in a sense John McDonnell’s speech today, just before lunch, is the most important slot of the whole conference because he is talking about the policy area that did the most to put voters off Labour in May. A review by Jon Cruddas found that voters were well-aware of Labour’s anti-austerity message, and that they didn’t like it, even though all the retail offers on energy bills and so on were popular. But McDonnell believes that voters need to be told of the dangers of austerity, which they haven’t, and then they will come over to his way of thinking.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

No Trident vote will calm Labour conference tensions

In the past few minutes, the Labour conference arrangements committee has decided not to hold a vote on whether to scrap Trident. This prevents a major split in the party early on into Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. There was insufficient support from constituency party delegates for a debate and vote, and even though Corbyn was making a concerted effort to argue that it didn't matter if there was a difference of opinion in the party, this is one matter that a number of MPs and members feel strongly is a part of the party's identity. It does mean that this conference will have a little less tension around it. But it's still likely to be unpredictable.

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Corbyn’s new look Labour leadership means he’s happy not to lead

Jeremy Corbyn had a very good interview on Marr this morning. For anyone in the wider, non-Westminster world tuning in (and they do), the new Labour leader would have come across as reasonable, mild, and normal. When Marr pressed him on certain issues, Corbyn looked as though he was an academic having a good debate in his study over a glass of port (or marrow juice, maybe), rather than a politician panicking as he tried to remember the next line that he’d memorised from the spin doctor’s briefing. He even managed to get some quips about internal Labour democracy in, joking that the programme should film ‘compositing in action’.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Ukip snubs London Mayoral favourite Suzanne Evans

Ukip has announced its candidate for the 2016 London Mayor elections - and it's a surprise. Peter Whittle, the party's Culture Spokesman, is the candidate, not the favourite, Suzanne Evans. This isn't as much of a surprise to Coffee House readers as it might be to others. In August we reported rumblings that Nigel Farage might be trying to stitch up the race to exclude Evans, who he regards as a threat (she was Ukip leader for a few days in between him resigning and un-resigning). The party's London MEP Gerard Batten also told Coffee House that the process was 'undemocratic' and that he wasn't getting involved in it. Whittle is well-liked in the party, but he does not have the profile that Evans does.