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.
From our UK edition
So David Cameron has made his ‘final offer’, his final condition on which he will or won’t sign up to the TV debates. And it is a clever way of appearing to care about the TV debates while ensuring that they don’t happen at all. In a letter to the BBC tonight, the Prime Minister’s
From our UK edition
The broadcasters have now said they could be willing to host a TV debate between David Cameron and Ed Miliband on another date if that means the programmes will actually take place. Though this shows willing on the part of the broadcasters, who have messed up the debates with proposals that would inevitably end up
From our UK edition
Thank goodness there aren’t that many Prime Minister’s Questions left before the election. As James said, there was a rather end-of-term feeling to today’s session: indeed, it felt a bit like an end-of-term lunch where all the pupils are hopelessly overexcited and the teacher has given up. It wasn’t just that David Cameron decided he
From our UK edition
It was a bit rich of George Osborne to tease Nigel Farage for ‘a novel approach to policymaking’ for dumping Ukip’s previous commitment to a 50,000 cap on the number of migrants arriving in the UK each year live on the Today programme. George Osborne found this rather funny, even though he and his colleagues
From our UK edition
Why is Theresa May doggedly sticking to the Tory net migration target, even when it has failed so badly in this Parliament? Her Tory colleagues might be asking why she’s even talking about it when immigration is not one of the key campaign priorities for her party. It is supposed to be talking about housing
From our UK edition
Given the Tories are the party of Macmillan, it seems quite right that they’ve picked housing as one of their six key election priorities. David Cameron gave a speech on it today, promising 200,000 ‘starter homes’ – properties sold to first-time buyers at a discount – by 2020. There have been some complaints today, notably
From our UK edition
The Conservatives believe they have fixed their beleaguered campaign database, VoteSource, after increasing complaints from MPs. Coffee House understands that a number of MPs in marginal seats complained to party co-chair Lord Feldman after they started to tire both of finding that their data wasn’t being saved properly and of being told that everything was
From our UK edition
It’s supposed to be the Tory housing week, with David Cameron setting out plans to double the number of discounted starter homes to 200,000. It’s an important, salient issue to make election promises on. But more salient is immigration, and somehow the Tories are having to talk about that again today. Today’s Times contains a plea
From our UK edition
Day two of the Ukip conference, and the placid mood continues. Delegates seem very content with the speeches that they’ve heard from Douglas Carswell, Patricia Culligan, Janice Atkinson and Diane James. They wee particularly entertained by Atkinson, who spent a great deal of her speech talking about Harriet Harman, and criticising the other parties’ policies
From our UK edition
Nigel Farage’s speech to the Ukip conference was fine. Not a bad speech, but not his best speech, either. It was just fine. Activists seemed happy, ecstatic, even when he came on, and were joyful chanting when he left the stage too. But Farage clearly wanted to answer a number of questions about his own
From our UK edition
Nigel Farage has now arrived at the Ukip conference. He strode through the bar area, followed by an entourage larger than the one that accompanies the Prime Minister. Delegates clapped as he passed them. He will be speaking shortly, and it does feel as though he’s got rather a task. The mood of the conference
From our UK edition
You might think that Ukip’s immigration spokesman Steven Woolfe had the easiest portfolio in the party. After all, as the ComRes/ITV poll showed yesterday, Ukip is already the most trusted party on immigration. It doesn’t sound like much hard work, does it? But Woolfe sees his job as being to articulate what the party doesn’t
From our UK edition
The Ukip spring conference is underway in Margate today, with the party starting the two days of speeches and fringes with a pledge that it will match the Tory plan to eliminate the deficit by 2017/18. Nigel Farage has said that this support is conditional on the Tories keeping their promises, but it will be
From our UK edition
Ukip has put all the journalists in a special balcony above the main auditorium at its spring conference. It’s quite thoughtful of the party, as the gallery is right next to the press room where hacks can file, but it also means that they’re a little apart from the delegates. Sitting on the floor of
From our UK edition
Have you heard of galanthomania? It’s an affliction that can rob people of their money – and, it seems, their senses. They’re so desperate to get hold of some small white stuff that they’ll part with hundreds of pounds at a time – or even resort to theft. Galanthomaniacs are people who collect snowdrops, often
From our UK edition
Nick Clegg is to hold an hour-long phone-in next week on mental health. The Deputy Prime Minister will host the session himself on LBC on Monday. This is part of the emphasis that the Lib Dems are placing on mental health in their election campaigning. Now, there are lots of good reasons why the Lib
From our UK edition
There are still some unhappy mutterings about the possibility that the Tories won’t commit to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence in the next Strategic Defence and Security Review. Treasury sources have been pouring cold water on the suggestion that George Osborne has told David Cameron that spending will fall below that target,
From our UK edition
Today’s news that lots of people want to come and work in a free, welcoming country with many opportunities and a growing economy is actually very bad news. Not for the economy, or those people, or probably the country, but for the politicians who thought it would be sensible to pledge that by the 2015
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The announcement today that Greater Manchester will receive full control of health spending – worth £6bn – has left Labour in a rather interesting position. On the one hand, it is easy for Andy Burnham to say that this sounds ‘like yet another NHS reorganisation’. But on the other, Greater Manchester includes a number of
From our UK edition
One thing worth noting from today’s PMQs – and indeed from all the sessions since the start if the year – was how many MPs left early. They are now not taking the sessions seriously enough to stay to the bitter end because they tend to involve the two party leaders talking at one another about their pet