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.
Well, when Nigel Farage said he might come back as Ukip leader, we didn’t expect it would be quite so soon. Today the party’s NEC unanimously rejected Farage’s resignation, on the basis that the Ukip membership did not want him to go. Steve Crowther, Chairman of UKIP, said: ‘The NEC also concluded that UKIP’s general
Most of the new SNP MPs celebrated their party’s amazing result in the general election today with a photo call outside Parliament. They certainly looked an impressive bloc of parliamentarians, illustrating just how different this Parliament will look and feel from the last. But one of the interesting questions is how much freedom will these
A very chipper David Cameron has just given an impromptu press conference to journalists outside the 1922 Committee. He joked that there were more government jobs to go round than he was expecting, and didn’t seem that sad about the demise of the Lib Dems. His priority, he said, was implanting the manifesto, a copy
Lord Mandelson and his protégé Chuka Umunna ended up sitting next to one another on the Marr sofa at the end of the programme. Both had spent their interviews setting out what Labour had been doing wrong for the past five years, though Mandelson was markedly more savage than Umunna. The Labour peeer was particularly
Inevitably, the Sunday papers are full of pieces by Labour leadership hopefuls dissecting why their party did so badly and offering their initial prescriptions. They are actually all rather slow out of the blocks as David Lammy said this morning that ‘certainly for people like me it’s absolutely time to step up into a leadership
So there could be a Labour leadership contest coming up. Who might have a pop? Chuka Umunna: Some members of staff in Ed Miliband’s team had concluded Chuka Umunna was worth giving serious assistance to, having concluded that their current boss was a goner a while ago. The smooth Blairite Shadow Business Secretary has also been
So now the wait for results begins. Talking to Tories who have been on the ground today, I’ve been struck by how dissatisfied so many of them were with the get out the vote operation that their party ran. The VoteSource database crashed for an hour, which would have been fine on any other day,
How will Ed Miliband manage tomorrow if Labour does end up the second largest party but with a viable ‘anti-Tory alliance’ in the House of Commons? The Tories are trying to craft a narrative that such a government would be illegitimate, and David Cameron will give a statement early on Friday. But there is a
Which party is the most negative in this election campaign? All of them have spent a great deal of time being negative about their opponents’ apparent negativity, claiming that only their own party is running a positive campaign about the future for this country, and so on. But it’s easy to make grand claims, and
Tonight’s a nervous night if you’re an candidate for re-election in a marginal seat (or in Scotland). You might have an impressive get-out-the-vote operation, or you might have spent the past five years wheeling and dealing in Westminster on behalf of your constituents so that you have a strong personal brand, but it might be
If you want an idea of how exhausting this election has been for some voters in marginals, just watch this video of a Green supporter in Bristol West: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7y5PN6-nMI8 I profiled the seat, where the Lib Dems are trying to hold off a ‘Green surge’ among middle-class voters, here and I was rather impressed with quite
All three party leaders are in the middle of their last-minute campaigning efforts, travelling across the country with little sleep. But what are they actually doing during these last few hours before polls open? David Cameron underlined that this isn’t just about meeting voters but about the photo opportunities by deciding to have a cosy
Is David Cameron talking up the SNP as a naughty campaign tactic to hurt Labour? This morning the Prime Minister denied that charge in his Today programme interview, saying: ‘I don’t accept that; I’m fighting the nationalists in Scotland. Indeed, I’ll be there later today standing up for Conservative candidates who want a strong United
As well as trying to prepare voters for what may happen after 8 May, David Cameron needs to make sure he has his party on board for the ride after the election, too. The 1922 Committee will need to approve a second coalition, but the hope in the Cameron camp is that this will be
Well, Labour has started on its own mission of framing the post-election legitimacy debate. Responding to the Tory operation to prepare the public for what might happen from 8 May onwards, Ed Miliband’s party is now claiming that David Cameron is determined to stay in Downing Street even if his coalition loses its majority. A
Ed Miliband spent a lot of his Today programme interview refusing to answer questions about how a minority Labour government would work because he is focusing both on the ‘big issues’ and on ‘winning a majority’. Both are good things to focus on when the polling stations haven’t yet opened, though of course how a
One of Britain’s great traditions is the open garden afternoon: an opportunity for folk revelling in being both middle-aged and nosy (like me) to wander around other people’s plots and peer at what they’ve planted while scoffing large slices of cake. The National Gardens Scheme and Open Squares are two of the most popular, and
Nicky Morgan’s record as Education Secretary is coming under fierce attack in the Loughborough market place where she’s campaigning. A furious man is telling activists that he will never vote for the Tory candidate because of ‘what she’s done’. The campaigners brace themselves for a diatribe about Tory education policies. Instead, it turns out that
Tory MPs will plot their party’s response to the election result and any likely coalition partnerships in a meeting next Friday, 8 May at 4pm, Coffee House has learned. The powerful executive of the 1922 Committee will meet that afternoon in order to prepare their demands for the Prime Minister and discuss any initial outlines
Tonight’s ‘Question Time’-style TV debates will be followed by what has become probably the most hated aspect of this rather uninspiring general election campaign: the spin room. This spectacle of journalists interviewing journalists as they listen to frontbenchers from all the parties parroting lines about how their leader was the best (or, in the Tory
