Isabel Hardman, Author at The Spectator

Tuesday

7 July 2015

Tories ‘to slow welfare cuts’ in Budget, reports suggest

Tomorrow’s Budget is expected to be brutal, with the Conservatives recognising that now is the time to inflict the maximum pain as the party is the furthest it will ever be from the next election. But Sky News reports tonight that one of the most-reported aspects of that brutal Budget, the £12bn of welfare cuts, will be introduced a little more gently than expected. Faisal Islam writes that this is ‘partly because buoyant tax revenues and new Office of Budget Responsibility projections mean the Chancellor can meet his fiscal mandate without making the welfare cuts within two years’.

Isabel Hardman

Tories nervous of EVEL rebellion

MPs are getting very worked up in this afternoon’s emergency debate on English Votes for English Laws. Depending on which party they’re in, of course, they’re getting worked up about slightly different things. Labour have stick to arguing about the procedure, which is what the debate is supposed to be on, saying that the measure is far to big to be put through using standing orders. The SNP’s objection is primarily that this makes Scottish MPs second class, and secondly that the Tories are trying to create an English parliament in two weeks when they should, as Pete Wishart put it ‘do the work’ in the same way as the Scots did in setting up their parliament.

Isabel Hardman

The Greeks haven’t exactly got negotiations off to a good start

Eurozone leaders are holding a summit later today to discuss the Greeks' proposal for dealing with their debt that was to be put before the Eurogroup this afternoon. But that summit might be a tad short. The Greeks haven’t turned up with any new ideas. They have instead made an oral presentation, and may table a paper tomorrow. If this is true, then it hardly gets the new negotiations off to a good start. It had looked yesterday as though Syriza was keen to give it another shot by removing Yanis Varoufakis as finance minister at the behest of the Eurogroup, but on his first full day in the job, Euclid Tsakalotos looked isolated.

Isabel Hardman

Ministers aim to make Sunday less ‘miserable’ by relaxing Sunday trading laws

The latest pre-Budget trail in the newspapers is that the government plans to confront an issue that caused Margaret Thatcher’s only Commons defeat as Prime Minister and further relax Sunday trading laws. Ministers are keen to allow elected mayors and councils the freedoms to relax the laws in their areas. George Osborne said that there is ‘some evidence that transactions for Sunday shopping are actually growing faster than those for Saturday’, while his colleague Anna Soubry said ‘Sunday was the most miserable day of the week’ before people were allowed to shop.

Monday

6 July 2015

Isabel Hardman

Labour MP: I’m supporting Yvette Cooper because she’s a mother

How, as a seasoned politician, might you decide who to back in the party’s leadership contest? It might be that you’re swayed by the ministerial experience of one candidate, or perhaps the fierce commitment of another candidate to a policy that you hold very dear. Perhaps it’s because you’re from the same faction in the party, because you’ve been friends for years, or maybe it’s because, as a result of various twists of good fortune and circumstances not entirely under their control, they have children. Apparently, that last is the primary reason that Helen Goodman, a Labour MP who served as a minister when her party was in government, selected Yvette Cooper as her star candidate for Labour leader.

Isabel Hardman

How the trade unions make it more difficult for Labour to win back Ukip voters

Do unions like Unite want Labour to win the next election? A fair few people, including a number of Labourites, have been asking this question since the union announced its backing for Jeremy Corbyn at the weekend, but it’s a something that those involved in the election campaign were asking as polling day approached, too, for slightly different reasons. The party found that it had a problem with Ukip during the election campaign - and some wise figures like John Healey had been urging the leadership to get to grips with Nigel Farage’s party long before election chiefs actually did do anything.

Isabel Hardman

How can Labour avoid being a useless Opposition in this week’s Budget?

One of the toughest jobs in politics is responding to a Budget. It’s the job of the leader of the Opposition, and given the Labour Party has still got two months until it elects its chief, that job falls to Harriet Harman as interim leader. Therefore Harman has an even tougher version of one of the toughest jobs in politics, as she has to work out not just how to scrutinise the government’s spending plans, but also how to stop her party having an unpleasant fight over its stances on certain controversial cuts. If a cut is, in Labour’s view, wrong, then it will struggle to make much headway in opposing it if that opposition only starts in a few months’ time once a new leader is in place and they’ve worked out what they want to do.

Isabel Hardman

Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis resigns

If Greece had voted ‘Yes’ to the austerity package proposed by its creditors, then there would have been a round of resignations at the top of Syriza. But this morning, even though the party is celebrating a ‘No’ vote, its finance minister Yanis Varoufakis has resigned. Writing on his blog, he explains that in order for the country to get a good deal that it can accept, he needs to let someone else take over: ‘Soon after the announcement of the referendum results, I was made aware of a certain preference by some Eurogroup participants, and assorted ‘partners’, for my… ‘absence’ from its meetings; an idea that the Prime Minister judged to be potentially helpful to him in reaching an agreement.

Sunday

5 July 2015

Isabel Hardman

Polls suggest narrow ‘No’ vote in Greek referendum

If the final result in the Greek referendum is as close as the polls (not exit polls, so treat with caution) below suggest, then as well as the trauma and drama of Grexit, the country will have to cope with deep divisions. The same would be the case if there is a narrow win for ‘Yes’. In either case, that just over half of the country voted one way, and just a few fewer people went the other way naturally means there will be a lot of voters who are bitterly disappointed. Whatever the result, the future for Greece is going to be difficult and many people will suffer a great deal. For those suffering who voted for the losing side, it will be easy to blame their opponents for causing their misery, and for a narrative about betrayal to spring up.

Isabel Hardman

‘No’ side confident as polls close in Greek referendum

The polls have just closed in the Greek referendum, and the ‘No’ side seems, currently, to be rather more confident of a victory. The Guardian reports a briefing from the EU Commission that those in favour of rejecting the anti-austerity deal from Greece’s creditors could be 8-10 points ahead, while others claim ‘No’ had a late surge. Syriza members have also been talking about what would happen in the event of a ‘No’ vote, with Yanis Varoufakis saying Greece could do a deal with its lenders in 24 hours. If the country has voted 'No', then Grexit is expected, unless the country stays suspended in negotiations for longer.

Friday

3 July 2015

Isabel Hardman

Is Cameron ready for his European opportunity?

Could Greek voters back austerity measures to keep their country in the eurozone this weekend? Today’s papers cover a poll by GPO which put ‘Yes’ on 47.1 per cent and No on 43.2 per cent. This result would see resignations at the top of Syriza, but effectively no Grexit.

Thursday

2 July 2015

Isabel Hardman

Why are politicians trying to boss the BBC around?

One of the most striking things about the debate in the Commons this afternoon on Britain and International Security was that rather than debate the complexities of intervening in Syria, a lot of MPs were very keen to talk about the name of the terror group the government might take action against. MP after MP from all sides of the House rose to complain about the BBC’s decision not to call the group ‘Daesh’, and started to hatch a powerful plan to gang up on the broadcaster and use ‘Daesh’ anyway, until the corporation relents. Alex Salmond even went so far as to say that ‘we could actually achieve something together’ - not in combating the terror group per se, but at least in getting the BBC to rebrand it. Same difference.

Isabel Hardman

Labour sets out conditions for supporting intervention against Isis in Syria

Michael Fallon was very careful indeed to push the issue of military action against Isis in Syria in as gentle a fashion as possible when he came to the Chamber this afternoon. The Defence Secretary told MPs the government knew that Isis is running its operations from North Syria, and he again made the argument about the illogicality of sticking to borders that the terror group doesn’t recognise. His attempts not to further agitate those Tory MPs sitting behind him were interesting, but what was more interesting was the Labour response to the statement, in which Vernon Coaker made it clear that his party would be regarding potential action in Syria with a great degree more sympathy than it did for the previous proposal of potential action in Syria.

Isabel Hardman

Michael Fallon to urge MPs to think again on strikes in Syria

Michael Fallon is making the case to MPs today for British airstrikes against Isis in Syria. The Defence Secretary yesterday told the World at One that ‘It is a new parliament and I think Members of Parliament will want to think very carefully about how we best deal with Isil and illogicality of Isil not respecting the borderlines’. He is expected to make a statement at some point today urging MPs to do this thinking, either in the scheduled Commons debate on Britain and International Security, or separately.

Tuesday

9 June 2015

Isabel Hardman

Tory concern about ‘bedroom tax’ grows

David Cameron’s former speech writer Clare Foges isn’t the only Tory worried about the impact of the so-called 'bedroom tax'. In a column in The Times today, Foges argues that the Conservatives should ‘move on from the bedroom tax. It is not working as had been hoped and will remain a fly in the one-nation ointment. Have a principled mea culpa moment and move on’. I’ve written before that it’s nigh-on impossible to find a Tory who privately thinks that the policy has worked out well, either politically or in terms of the impact it has had on the very vulnerable people it hits. The Tories have said nothing about changing it since returning to government, yet as Foges argues, a ‘principled mea culpa moment’ would allow the party to move on.

Isabel Hardman

Zac Goldsmith to run for Mayor of London

Finally the Conservatives could have a decent and recognisable candidate for Mayor of London. Zac Goldsmith has told the Standard that he wants to put himself forward for the Tory nomination - after a string of senior Conservatives tried to persuade him to do it. So far those interested were either known only within the Tory hierarchy, or keen not to mention that they were Conservatives. Goldsmith has a similar independent brand as Boris Johnson: he has rebelled enough times in the last Parliament to suggest that he would be someone prepared to stand up to the Tory leadership in Westminster to get a good deal for London, which is rather the point of a directly-elected mayor.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron on Europe: the anatomy of a U-turn

How did David Cameron get into such a mess on Europe so quickly? For those whose heads are still spinning (and this probably includes the Prime Minister) over what on earth just happened to upset the Tory party so much and force Downing Street into a frenzied climbdown, here’s the anatomy of David Cameron’s European U-turn. 4 January 2015 David Cameron says there will not be a free vote on the referendum during an interview with Andrew Marr. Here is the transcript of the Prime Minister’s answers: ANDREW MARR: Would you give cabinet ministers and other Conservatives who want to campaign for an out, the freedom to do so in such a referendum? DAVID CAMERON: Well, there are Conservative Members of Parliament who want the leave the European Union...

Monday

8 June 2015

Isabel Hardman

Wikipedia reprimands editor who accused Grant Shapps of ‘sock puppet’ edits

It is probably reasonably cold comfort to him, given he’s already lost his Cabinet job, but Grant Shapps has today seen a Wikipedia administrator who accused him of editing his own page and those of other ministers reprimanded. Wikipedia conducted an investigation, which concluded there was no evidence Shapps was connected to an account called Contribsx which made edits to his profile. It said the administrator in question, who operated under the name ‘Chase me ladies, I’m the Cavalry’ (but whose real name was Richard Symonds), ‘struggled to provide an accurate timeline’ on blocking the account and coverage of the account in the Guardian.

Isabel Hardman

Miliband’s policy chief: the party is making the same mistake as it did in 2010

Everyone in Labour is having their say about where the party went wrong in the run-up to the election. But what if it’s still making the same mistakes as it tries to elect a new leader? At a seminar on Friday on Labour’s defeat, Ed Miliband’s policy chief Jon Cruddas fretted that the way the party was running its leadership contest was giving the Tories the same advantage they were handed by the same sort of contest in 2010 He said: ‘Last time round we embarked on… a leadership election which worked through the summer and allowed our opponents to redefine the terms of debate that were locked in for the next five years, and we’re repeating exactly that now.

Isabel Hardman

‘Careless talk costs lives’: Cameron angers MPs as he insists he was ‘misinterpreted’ on EU vote

It’s not clear who David Cameron is trying to annoy more: his party or the press pack following him at the G7 summit in Bavaria. But what is clear, at least in the Prime Minister’s mind, is that he has been misinterpreted on the issue of a free vote in the EU referendum. Not over-interpreted, as Number 10 said this morning. ‘It’s clear to me that what I said yesterday was misinterpreted,’ he said, explaining that he was referring to the renegotiation: ‘I was clearly referring to the process of renegotiation. But the point is this. I have always said what I want is an outcome for Britain that keeps us in a reformed EU. But I have also said we don’t know the outcome of these negotiations, which is why I have always said I rule nothing out.