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.
The government has today announced a drive to get more physics and maths graduates into teaching. It’s a good idea, given the struggle that many headteachers report in recruiting teachers with those backgrounds. The package includes £15,000 for students to help with their university costs in return for them teaching for three years post-graduation; fast-track
There are many quite understandable reasons for not promising to protect the defence budget. Some are pragmatic: there’s not much room in Whitehall for more budgets to be protected once you take into account those that already are. Some are theoretical, including the argument Clare Short advanced on Newsnight yesterday, which is that if your
Justine Miliband has given an interview to the BBC, a sort of ‘back my husband, my hero’ contribution to the Labour election campaign. She starts by talking about the pressures on the family and how ‘being a working mother’, she hasn’t really had a chance to think about what it would be like for the
It’s not just David Cameron who is unhappy with the way the Tory manifesto is looking at the moment. James reported at the weekend that the Prime Minister had demanded a re-write, and I have picked up some considerable dissatisfaction in the party at the way the document is being put together. Some departments feel
One of the really striking claims that Ed Balls made in his speech today was that the Tories would end up cutting more from the defence budget than Labour. This is not the sort of thing that you’d expect to hear: Labour saying it would end up spending more on defence than the traditional party
The three main parties are in an aggressive mood today. TheTories have a new attack poster warning voters about the dangers of a Labour-SNP deal, while Labour is warning voters of the danger of ‘1930s’ Tory spending plans, and the Lib Dems are launching their own plans to grow the economy. For Labour, today’s speech
Two politicians put in very assured and impressive performances on Marr this morning – if you can include nimbly dodging questions that you don’t want to answer ‘impressive’. of course, within the parameters of the way politicians are expected to behave, Caroline Flint and Philip Hammond did very well because they didn’t give anything away
This story was first published in tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political events. Sign up here. Over the past few weeks, Coalition ministers have been fighting over plans favoured by the Lib Dems to force companies with more than 250 workers to publish details of their gender pay
Natalie Bennett needed to give a good solid speech to the Green Party conference after a difficult few weeks, and she managed that today. The Green leader hadn’t undergone a personality transplant though, so she still wasn’t the most stirring speaker ever. listen to ‘Natalie Bennett speaking at the Green Party Conference’ on audioBoom
Labour has found Sir John Major rather useful in this Parliament, with his criticisms of government policy and praise of Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze. But his op-ed in today’s Telegraph in which he demands that Ed Miliband rule out a coalition with the Scottish National Party is rather less helpful. What makes this call
Tory MPs are becoming increasingly agitated about defence spending and whether or not Britain will maintain its defence spending at 2 per cent of GDP. They do understand the pressures that protected spending for other areas puts on budgets such as defence, but as I explain in the Times today, they are unhappy that certain
So David Cameron won’t debate anyone unless the broadcasters agree to his exact specifications, Ed Miliband won’t debate Clegg in Cameron’s place and has instead offered Harriet Harman, and the broadcasters are threatening to empty chair anyone who refuses to turn up to any of their debates. It’s fair to say that the TV debates
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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