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.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Steven Woolfe tells us what Ukip doesn’t believe about immigration

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 believe, explaining that it isn’t a party that dislikes immigrants per se, but one that wants to clamp down on mass immigration. He has just finished his speech to the conference, which he broke up with two speeches from Harjit Singh Gill, former Mayor of Gloucester, and Edward Fila. Both spoke about their experiences as immigrants or children of immigrants.

Isabel Hardman

Ukip backs Osborne’s deficit plans – but how would Farage cut spending?

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 interesting, once he has arrived at the conference from the US, to see how he articulates a Ukip vision for cutting the deficit.  Given the party has spent a fair while talking about what it wouldn't cut, for example the 'Bedroom Tax', it may find it less enjoyable to talk about what it would cut.

Isabel Hardman

What Ukip needs from its spring conference

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 the hall, I overheard a party official talking to a delegate. ‘Those people over there,’ he said, pointing to the gallery. ‘Are here to take the piss.’ To be fair, one of the jobs that the press in this country does very well is to take the mick out of politicians whose bloated egos could do with a little needling from time to time. We are like the little brother who teases his siblings, and in doing so, stops them from becoming a self-important twit.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Single snowdrop sells for £1,390: welcome to galanthomania

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 more kindly called galanthophiles. I wrote about this addiction in the magazine recently, but this week the record for the most expensive snowdrop was broken yet again. Someone shelled out £1,390 (plus £4 postage, which seems rather cheap: you’d expect a plant that expensive to turn up with a police escort) on eBay for Galanthus plicatus ‘Golden Fleece’.

Isabel Hardman

Why are the Lib Dems spending so much time talking about mental health?

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 Dems might want to campaign on mental health, including that it jolly well needs campaigning on because it is, as Clegg says, a ‘Cinderella service’ that suffers from long waits, poor research and less funding, yet one in four people will suffer from some kind of mental ill-health. But there are sound political reasons too. The first is that it is very popular with potential Lib Dem voters, as explained here.

Isabel Hardman

The Tory trouble to come on defence spending

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, but that’s because no-one’s making any decisions until they have to, and they only have to make a decision after the election. In any case, we’ve probably seen the full extent of the unhappy mutterings in the past few days anyway - at least, until the election is over.

Isabel Hardman

New figures show Cameron’s net migration target in tatters

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 election, net migration would be in the ‘tens of thousands’. Today the Office for National Statistics reveals that net long-term migration to the UK was estimated to be 298,000 in the year to September 2014, up from 210,000 in the previous 12 months. Overall 624,000 people immigrated to the UK in the year ending September 2014. Net migration of 298,000 is not squeaking close to the target of tens of thousands.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Labour unsure about health policy its own councils support

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 Labour councils who appear pretty happy to sign up to the provisional deal. Indeed, one of those councils is Wigan, which covers Burnham’s own constituency. Now one of the reasons that spending has been devolved to this area is that councils in Greater Manchester are keen, forward-looking and ambitious.

Isabel Hardman

You can tell a lot from watching how MPs act

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 issues rather than actively debating. Even those who remained in the Chamber weren't really paying attention, striking up conversations that rattled on over serious questions such as the one on organ donation from Glyn Davies. As their leaders debated MPs having second part-time jobs, backbenchers were clearly preparing for the end of their part-time stint in Parliament before returning to their constituencies to campaign.

Isabel Hardman

As ‘long-term economic plan’ goes global, will Cameron have an easy PMQs?

How will Prime Minister’s Questions go today? Both party leaders have had to deal with troublesome MPs this week, with Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind both falling prey to the Dispatches/Telegraph sting. But Ed Miliband may feel that he can continue his theme of cracking down on paid directorships and consultancies, which Labour is running an Opposition Day debate on later today. Rifkind’s response to the sting also dug him into a deeper hole than Straw, who decided rather wisely to talk about what a fool he’d been not to take the advice he had so kindly doled out to colleagues who’d been caught by the same sorts of operations in the past.

Isabel Hardman

Do we now know what the Tory strategy for defence is?

For a while the Tories had hoped they could get away with dodging questions on defence spending until after the election. Even as the pressure within their own party for a commitment to the 2 per cent of GDP set by Nato, ministers were either saying they didn't want to 'pre-judge' the Strategic Defence and Security Review, or trying to turn the question round and ask whether Labour was going to match the current level of spending by this government. Neither was a satisfactory answer, but ministers rather have the impression that with just weeks until Parliament dissolves, they needn't worry too much.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Why Natalie Bennett doesn’t need to do the sums on policy

To be fair to Natalie Bennett, she took the rather admirable step of apologising on the Daily Politics for being so woeful in her disastrous interview with Nick Ferrari this morning. But the whole episode tells us a lot about how the Green party views its appeal to voters. Yes, yes, it’s embarrassing that a party leader boasting about a flagship housing policy ended up sitting in the most painful silence imaginable while she tried to think of how that policy would actually, you know, work. But clearly if she thought that knowing the details of the policy would be important, she might have checked the details before walking into the LBC studio with Nick Ferrari. Clearly she did not.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls struggles to land punches in tax showdown with George Osborne

Naturally, when George Osborne and Ed Balls squared up in the Commons this afternoon for a showdown on the HSBC tax row, it wasn’t a particularly pretty affair. There was shouting, heckling, yowling - and the backbenchers were pretty aerated, too. Indeed, the Tories had turned up intending to throw the Shadow Chancellor off pace before he’d even started, shouting ‘ANSWER’ at him every time he tried to say a single word. Balls had clearly turned up thinking that dragging the Chancellor to the Commons to answer his urgent question was victory enough. But an urgent question is only a victory if the minister responding leaves the Chamber thinking that he or she needs to get onto their officials for a more detailed briefing because the row has got bigger.

Isabel Hardman

How long will Tories voice concerns over defence spending?

Can the Tories really avoid any proper discussion of their spending plans for the Ministry of Defence before the election? Though the international situation is so unstable, the party has clearly decided that as defence spending is not an election issue, it won't talk about it. Perhaps they'd get away with this given Labour is hardly more enthusiastic and defence and foreign policy, were it not for Tory backbenchers, particularly those who have served in the MoD at some point. They used Defence Questions today to press Michael Fallon repeatedly on the issue. Former ministers such as Andrew Robathan and Liam Fox, and former defence select committee James Arbuthnot asked for assurances that Britain's defence capability would be improved, rather than depleted.

Isabel Hardman

Labour demands David Cameron commit to TV debate with Ed Miliband

Will any of the General Election TV debates take place? Labour hopes they will, and today Douglas Alexander has written to Grant Shapps demanding that the Tories commit to doing the head-to-head debate with Ed Miliband, even if all the smaller parties are tying themselves up into fights over he seven-way debate. Alexander writes: ‘In the light of the previous comments from yourself and Mr Cameron, I am sure you will agree this is a “credible debate” and an excellent opportunity for the British people to watch the two leaders who stand a realistic chance of being Prime Minister after May 7. ‘I am happy to confirm on Mr Miliband’s behalf that he will turn up to debate Mr Cameron on April 30. Can you today confirm that Mr Cameron will be there too?

Isabel Hardman

Conservative party suspends whip from Sir Malcolm Rifkind

Even if the two MPs caught up in today's sting, Jack Straw and Sir Malcolm Rifkind, are found to have done nothing wrong, their parties cannot be seen to be protecting them. Straw was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party last night and this morning Sir Malcolm Rifkind has had the Tory whip removed. Rifkind says he will not stand down as chair of the Intelligence and Security Committee unless the Committee calls for him to stand aside. It's difficult to see how he can stay in the role while the investigation into his behaviour takes place. There will also be an immediate investigation carried out by the Tory party, given Rifkind is standing again at the election.

Isabel Hardman

The ‘anti-politics’ bunch will benefit most from the ‘cash for access’ allegations

Naturally, the parties set to benefit the most from any allegations of impropriety against MPs are the 'anti-politics' bunch: Ukip, the Greens and the SNP. You can always when the Greens think there are some votes to be snaffled from Labour by how quickly they issue a press release condemning the latest policy or revelations that concern the party. Today Natalie Bennett said: 'The influence of big business in politics is corrosive, and seems to run through the veins of the entire political establishment. That's why we need real change now.' Jack Straw was rather swiftly suspended from the Labour Party following the publication of the joint Telegraph/Channel 4 sting.

Isabel Hardman

Tories and Labour to make pledges knowing they are bad policy

This week, the two main parties plan to make iconic pledges that they hope will appeal to their core vote, but that are pretty poor policy. David Cameron will today pledge to keep ‘pensioner perks’ - universal benefits for older voters such as the free bus pass and the winter fuel payment - while Labour expects to announce its new tuition fees policy. The only thing that gives the Tories any sense of moral high ground in this is that they have at least worked out how to fund their pledge, while Labour is still scrapping over the money for and detail of its plan to cut tuition fees. Why are these bad policies?

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Politicians needn’t be so afraid of saying what they think

Politicians know they need to be more natural, less spun, and more honest about what they think. But most of them carry on sounding unnatural, spin-doctored and cagey because they’re worried about the media will do to them if they speak their minds. They fear being pounced upon by journalists keen to write up their latest ‘gaffe’. But this week we’ve seen two politicians saying what they think without any major repercussions. Example one comes from Boris Johnson in his interview with Tim Shipman. The Mayor was asked whether he watched Coronation Street or Eastenders: ‘Um. What a world we live in where you are felt to be out of touch if you don’t watch these things. Why should I? It’s ridiculous, totally ridiculous. Dirty Den, that was EastEnders.

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s tuition fees moment

Could Labour’s tuition fees policy be its own tuition fees moment, of the same order as the moment it endlessly needles the Lib Dems about? Well, the decision, when it’s made, won’t have the same dramatic effect as the Lib Dem about turn in 2010, because Labour candidates haven’t been posing with signed pledges and smiling students promising that they’ll do one thing while their party slowly realises that it really should do another. In any case, it does look as though the party will, in one way or another, maintain its promise to cap the fees at a lower level than the £9,000 that the Coalition raised them to, even if this is only for technical degrees or, as I reported recently, ‘useful’ subjects. The talks are still going on.