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.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

In defence of the smug Cereal Café owners – and the mugs who eat there

From our UK edition

There is a great deal of excitement around today about an interview that Channel 4 News did yesterday with some quite smug chaps who have set up something called a ‘Cereal Café’ in Brick Lane and are charging customers £3.20 for a bowl of Lucky Charms. To be honest, if I’d worked out a similar method of persuading mugs to give me their money, I’d be pretty smug, too. In fact, I suspect this is how the founders of Pret feel every time a fool like me spends £2.35 on a pot of porridge on the way into work, as I did this morning. Baroness Jenkin would be so disappointed. The interview focused on why the Cereal Killer Café was charging so much for cereal when the surrounding borough is the poorest in London.

Isabel Hardman

What we learnt from Miliband’s Big Speech, with no Big Announcement

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband’s speech on reducing the deficit has attracted a fair bit of criticism for not telling us very much that’s new. It was supposed to be a Big Speech, and Big Speech normally means Big Announcement, but there wasn’t one. There wasn’t even really any bigger attempt to tell us what Labour would do after the General Election. The Labour leader spent a fair chunk of the question-and-answer session afterwards telling the audience that he had been ‘clear’, which is what politicians end up having to say when they haven’t been clear, often deliberately. But it’s unfair to say that this was a useless speech as it did articulate better than previously the Labour leader’s basic vision for the economy.

Isabel Hardman

Labour now thinks it is safe to reject the Tory narrative on the economy

From our UK edition

Labour has returned to a bit more of an even keel in the past few wintry weeks after a torrid autumn. Plotters are resigned to letting Ed Miliband fight the General Election on his terms, and given the closeness of the two parties in the opinion polls, most are concluding that a disorganised Labour party could still throw the General Election away. Of course, everyone’s still anxious, but that’s not limited to Labour. When all MPs in both parties are anxiously looking at the opinion polls every day, it’s clear that no-one’s very confident. Miliband’s team have been trying to reassure nervy MPs by pointing out, quite obviously, that this election isn’t like the others.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Who privatised Hinchingbrooke hospital? And does it matter?

From our UK edition

When it comes to rows about the NHS, these days it doesn’t rain, it pours. In fact, fights between the parties about who cares more/privatised the most are turning into a weather bomb, such is their frequency. Today Nick Clegg turned up to Prime Minister’s Questions determined to highlight Labour hypocrisy on the health service, and he managed to shoehorn it in to an answer to Harriet Harman’s question about people trusting the Lib Dems (or not). The Lib Dem leader said: ‘In fact, the Shadow Health Secretary, sitting there demurely, is the only man in England who has ever privatised an NHS hospital, and they dare to lecture us. Hinchingbrooke hospital - the only NHS hospital to be privatised, and by the Labour party.

Isabel Hardman

Ministers plan informal review of lessons learned from Afghanistan

From our UK edition

British troops have now left Afghanistan, but the debate about the conflict itself and what happens next rumbles on. There have been a number of calls for a review of the conflict so that the government can learn lessons about what did and didn’t work - as well as what might happen next in the country, given there isn’t a great deal of confidence that the handover definitely heralds a new era of peace. I now understand that while there is currently no plan for a formal review or inquiry, ministers plan to hold discussions about lessons learned from the conflict as part of the regular National Security Council meetings and that there will be some kind of public conclusion to these discussions, whether it be a statement in the House of Commons or something published.

Isabel Hardman

Are poor people really having to bury their loved ones in the back garden?

From our UK edition

One of the most striking stories in today’s papers - and on the front of one of them - is the claim made by Labour’s Emma Lewell-Buck that people on low-incomes are struggling so much with the cost of funerals that they are having to resort to burying them in their back gardens. Lewell-Buck was introducing a well-intentioned bill on the cost of funerals, which has been rising above inflation for a good long while. She told MPs: ‘People are also turning to alternatives to the traditional funeral. Some are holding do-it-yourself funerals, and even having to bury relatives in their back garden. A number of companies are offering cut-price funerals, including “direct” cremations that have no formal service attached to them.

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg’s PMQs challenge

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg is taking Prime Minister’s Questions today, which will at least force the Lib Dem leader to turn up to a major Commons session, rather than bunking off to Cornwall. It’s not just good timing in terms of sorting out Clegg’s truancy rate, but also because Coalition ministers have been taking public pot shots at one another for the past week. Labour will want to exploit those divisions, but Clegg is unlikely to find many Tory backbenchers rallying to his cause, either. The behaviour of the Lib Dems has reminded a lot of Conservatives of their desire to sack the Lib Dems from the Coalition - a desire they still haven’t worked out how to fulfil and that won’t be fulfilled either.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

The tricks being played over a VAT rise

From our UK edition

Today’s Treasury Questions was a bit odd, not least because neither George Osborne nor Ed Balls were there, so everyone seemed to be quite keen to get the thing over with. Labour’s latest line of attack is to force Treasury ministers into ruling out or obfuscating over whether or not a Tory government would put up VAT after the General Election. Here is the first exchange, between Shabana Mahmood and David Gauke: Shabana Mahmood: 'The Minister has failed to rule out another tax cut for the richest 1% of earners in our country. As he signalled in his answer, the Prime Minister has made £7 billion-worth of unfunded tax promises for the next Parliament.

Isabel Hardman

The Tory voters who are still vulnerable to Ukip

From our UK edition

Today’s conclusion from the British Election Study that Ukip will hurt the Tories far more than it will damage Labour at the General Election is unsurprising, but still important as its warning that the Conservative party could lose nearly two million voters to Nigel Farage’s party underlines the need for the Tories to find a decent solution to Ukip. Thus far the Tories have tended to capitulate to Ukip on policies, with Nigel Farage becoming a think tank for policy development by applying pressure on nervous MPs who eventually secure concessions from David Cameron in the form of policies he didn’t really want to announce.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham’s NHS battle heats up

From our UK edition

Two politicians unashamedly and eternally at one another’s throats are Jeremy Hunt and Andy Burnham, scrapping over who cares more about ‘Our NHS’. Today Hunt has written to Burnham complaining about a story in the Sunday People this weekend that 1,800 nurses have left the NHS in two months. Hunt is accusing Burnham of dodgy figures, writing: ‘As you will know as a former Secretary of State for Health, nursing numbers are subject to seasonal variation, which means there is always a temporary dip in the summer months - including when you were in office.

Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves goes for tribal politics over hard questioning on food banks

From our UK edition

Most people went into Work and Pensions Questions expecting Iain Duncan Smith to be in a tetchy fame of mind following this morning’s report on food banks. As a matter of fact, the Work and Pensions Secretary was very, very keen to tell us as often as he possibly could how ‘seriously’ he was taking that report. And the Opposition, which claims to care a lot more about these matters, completely failed to make productive use of its time grilling him. Some Tory ministers were worried that an impending Labour reshuffle at some point this term might see Rachel Reeves moved on to their patch, as she’s deemed very good in the Chamber.

Isabel Hardman

How long will the fragile consensus on food banks last?

From our UK edition

Frank Field just about managed to hold together a cross-party consensus on the need to tackle hunger in this country at the launch of the ‘Feeding Britain’ report. At the end of the launch, at which Justin Welby and all the politicians involved spoke, the Labour co-chair of the inquiry said brightly ‘there you have it, a range of views and yet we have a united report!’ It was a tricky job though. Baroness Jenkin didn’t help herself by telling the room in a rather garbled response that ‘poor people can’t cook’. Here, for the avoidance of misunderstanding, is her full quote: ‘There is some amazing best practice out there which we want to build on.

Isabel Hardman

Will Nick Clegg’s PMQs session highlight the tensions in the Coalition?

From our UK edition

After being too busy talking to ‘normal people’ in Cornwall last Wednesday and missing previous PMQs presumably to do the same, Nick Clegg will not only be attending this Wednesday’s session, he’ll be taking it. David Cameron won’t be around because he’s visiting Turkey this week, and so the Deputy Prime Minister will step into his shoes. Today sees another rather tedious round of Coalition infighting in which the two parties remind everyone else that they’re separate. The Tory line seems to be that their partners are ‘all over the place’, with both George Osborne and Cameron using that phrase over the past couple of days. The Lib Dems want to talk about their different spending plans for the next parliament.

Isabel Hardman

Food bank report is a chance to end the toxic political stand-off

From our UK edition

It has been quite difficult for anyone following the growth food banks over the past few years to avoid growing dispirited. The debate in Parliament runs along the lines of the Tories pretending food banks and food bank demand don’t exist and Labour claiming that food banks and rising food bank demands are all the Tories’ fault. This makes for the unedifying spectacle of both parties throwing mud at one another about people going hungry in this country without appearing to make any progress on addressing the many different factors driving families to food banks.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Coalition wars: What are George Osborne and Nick Clegg up to?

From our UK edition

If the Coalition started cohabiting earlier this year, it has now moved into the phase where the two parties are posting mean things about each other on Facebook and trying to get the kids to take sides. George Osborne has a grump in today’s Sunday Times about the emphasis that the Lib Dems want to place on tax rises to plug the gap after the 2015 election. He writes: ‘The Liberal Democrats are now arguing with themselves, so it’s hard to work out exactly what they think. While they sign up to deficit reduction, they want more tax rises rather than spending cuts. But they shouldn’t pretend to people that the sums required can be achieved by their homes tax alone.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Should politicians grumble about awkward stories?

From our UK edition

A lot of political types are very cross with the ‘biased media’ today. Ukip is currently the most aerated because some journalists ‘fabricated’ (which is today synonymous with ‘transcribed’) some remarks Nigel Farage made about whether or not restaurants are right to tell women to put napkins over themselves when breastfeeding. Number 10 is very angry with the BBC’s Norman Smith because he talked about the Road to Wigan Pier which is not an OK way of describing the public spending cuts still to come (but the IFS describing them as ‘grotesque’ and ‘colossal’ apparently is). Labour has been annoyed for months that journalists keep pointing out mistakes that Ed Miliband makes.

Isabel Hardman

Nigel Farage: Women should avoid ‘ostentatious’ breastfeeding

From our UK edition

Nigel Farage has waded into the row about a mother being asked to cover up while breastfeeding her baby by suggesting that women should avoid ‘openly ostentatious’ behaviour. The Ukip leader told LBC: ‘I’m not particularly bothered by it but I know that a lot of people do feel very uncomfortable and look, this is just a matter of common sense, isn’t it?’ Nick Ferrari then asked what was common sense. Farage replied: ‘Well, I think that given that some people feel very embarrassed by it, it isn’t too difficult to breastfeed a baby in a way that isn’t openly ostentatious.’ He then suggested that breastfeeding women could ‘perhaps sit in the corner’.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The BBC is right to point out failure on debt. Osborne is wrong to complain about it

From our UK edition

George Osborne has in the past year assembled a coterie of advisers to help him become more human, more stylish, thinner and more in touch with voters. But this morning it seemed he’d turned to his Cabinet colleague Iain Duncan Smith for media training before popping up on the Radio 4's Today programme, as the Chancellor quickly became tetchy when asked the ‘wrong’ sort of questions. He gets angry about 7 minutes in...

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg avoids Autumn Statement because ‘he just sits there’

From our UK edition

One notable absence on the government frontbench during the Autumn Statement today was Nick Clegg, who is in Cornwall today. The Deputy Prime Minister is in Cornwall today, visiting a number of different places, all of which seem to be in Lib Dem constituencies. A source close to Clegg points out that he already knew what was in the Statement, that Danny Alexander was there, adding: ‘He just sits there so he would rather get out in the country and talk to people about what the Autumn Statement means for them.’ It’s quite impressive that it has taken Clegg so many years of sitting on the government frontbench and trying to look interested without being able to say anything before concluding that not being there might not be the worst thing.

Isabel Hardman

Ed Balls survives tricky Autumn Statement response under intense heckling

From our UK edition

Labour has had a poor run of Autumn Statement and Budget responses for a couple of years now, and with only today’s statement and the 2015 Budget to go before the General Election, the stakes were pretty high for Ed Balls. The Tories had clearly turned up expecting him to do a terrible job, and their heckling club (which you can read more about here) was out in force. The Shadow Chancellor stood up to a wall of noise. Tory backbenchers had arranged a number of words to shout at him before entering the Chamber. I understand that one of them was ‘apologise’, which they’ve used before on Balls. It was so bad that Speaker Bercow had to tell them off before the frontbencher had even started speaking.