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

Why Alex Salmond’s help could hinder Labour

Anyone surprised by Alex Salmond’s comments in the Independent about SNP MPs possibly voting on English matters if it helped Labour is clearly missing out on the wealth of wisdom that comes from reading James Forsyth’s pieces, given our political editor’s interview with the former first minister revealed the very same thing last week: The SNP surge has delighted many Tories, because it could cost Labour as many as 30 seats. Given SNP MPs’ self-denying ordinance about voting on devolved matters (such as health, education and policing), the more seats they win, the easier it should be for Cameron to govern in a hung parliament. But Salmond has some bad news for the Prime Minister: not voting on devolved matters, he said, is ‘my choice.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Labour’s ‘quick and dirty’ briefing

More fallout from the Labour Ukip leak reaches me. Some sources in the party remain amazed that it apparently never crossed the desk of Yvette Cooper, given her role in the Ukip strategy group. But there is also considerable amusement about an email, passed to Coffee House, that Lucy Powell sent out describing the briefing pack as 'quick and dirty'. Some might be wishing material produced by HQ wouldn't fit such a racy description. The row over the report is fading, but it seems to have increased some tensions between party frontbenchers. And those who produced the report itself aren't in the best of moods either...

Isabel Hardman

Labour tries to deal with dysfunctional campaign machine after Ukip leak

After spending all week stamping all over their own report about how to approach Ukip, Labour is now trying to work out what on earth led to the row. It’s not so much a leak inquiry as a cock-up inquiry, as the MPs who are supposed to be in charge of Ukip strategy in the party say they hadn’t seen the report at all - though those involved in writing it claim they did. One HQ source tells me that Yvette Cooper signed off on the report, which was compiled by experts on polling and constituency data, including the man the party recently hired as the ‘Nate Silver of Bolton’, Ian Warren, other members of the field team and some MPs. But the official Ukip Strategy Group did not know about the contents of the report.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Meet Libby Lane – the first interview with the first woman bishop

Why is Libby Lane the first woman bishop appointed by the Church of England? She was one of the first to be ordained as a vicar 20 years ago when the Church approved women priests, and today she was unveiled as the Bishop of Stockport. But she was not one of the favourites, and so Bishop Libby was as much of a surprise as her appointment, which the Church kept under wraps until late last night. When we meet in the Crewe YMCA, she has just been touring the building surrounded by a small cloud of cameras and journalists and is preparing to say goodbye to her congregation at a party this evening. They only found out this morning that she would be leaving them to become a bishop.

Isabel Hardman

John Bercow loses his battle to appoint Carol Mills as Commons clerk

John Bercow has lost his biggest attempt at a power grab after MPs recommended that the appointment process for the Commons clerk be terminated. The governance committee set up after the row over the Speaker's desire to appoint Carol Mills became too big to handle has called for a new director general job to be created and that and the Clerk job should be readvertised. Now Mills can notionally re-apply for the job but would struggle to meet the new criteria set out by the committee. It says the Clerk is 'adviser to the House of Commons on the procedure and practice of Parliament, including parliamentary privilege'. The row about Mills being considered for the role was sparked by her lack of experience in this area.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Is this the best speech given by a minister in this government?

Here’s a challenge for Coffee Housers. Find a speech that beats this one by Culture Secretary Sajid Javid. It is one of the finest speeches from a government minister I have ever read. The field of fine speeches from government ministers is admittedly not particularly crowded, given ministers often have to give speeches on subjects that are rather technical to audiences who are less interested in wide-ranging or passionate and more interested in the technical details or how long the minister will detain them before the coffee break at the industry conference they are attending.

Isabel Hardman

Ministers to crackdown on food waste in summit with supermarkets

Ministers are to hold the first of a series of meetings aimed at helping food banks after pressure from MPs to address hunger in the UK, Coffee House understands. Early in the New Year, the Cabinet Office and the department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs will host a summit for all the big supermarkets where they will demand retailers reduce the amount of food that they throw away, and work out how to redistribute food that hasn’t been bought so that food banks and other charities can make sure it goes to people who are hungry. Rob Wilson is the minister notionally responsible for food banks (after quite an impressive row within the government about who should have to deal with them), and will jointly chair the summit with Environment Secretary Liz Truss.

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs prepare mischief for EVEL statement

William Hague is unveiling his EVEL plans in the Commons at 12.30 today. Just in case you were trying to work out what sort of atmosphere will greet this discussion of English votes for English laws and how far to in introducing that principle to Parliament, Coffee House can give you a quick taste. I understand that the ‘Q-team’, a group of Tory backbenchers who indulge in co-ordinated goading of the Opposition during very political sessions, is meeting currently to discuss tactics for making Hague’s statement very difficult indeed for Labour. I wrote last year about the formation of this team - or rather its resurrection as George Osborne used to do the photocopying for the original one to support John Major when the now Chancellor was just starting out in politics.

Isabel Hardman

Tory EVEL plotting to annoy many different camps

William Hague is today setting out the Government’s EVEL plan - which includes options for English votes for English laws that some Labourites see as an evil plan to deprive their party of a majority to pass budgets and so on. Those EVEL plans have three options: 1. A ban on Scottish MPs voting on any stage of laws only applying to England. 2. A veto for English MPs on English-only laws before they take effect. 3. Committee stage of an England-only bill’s progress through the Commons to consist solely of English MPs. Tory backbenchers want option one. Downing Street is believed to prefer option two. Labour feels option three is the least evil. And the Lib Dems have their own fourth option, which is a grand committee grand committee of English and Welsh MPs.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Is David Cameron telling porkies on the deficit? His spokesman explains

As Fraser points out, David Cameron has gone from saying the deficit has been brought down by a third to claiming it has been halved, but with the often unspoken caveat that this is as a share of GDP. After the Prime Minister dropped this claim into his speech today without that very important small print, journalists grilled his official spokesman on whether Cameron was misleading voters at the afternoon lobby briefing. I’ve written up the transcript of our attempts to ask the same question many different ways. Journalist: When the Prime Minister said in his speech this afternoon the government had halved the deficit, did he qualify that in any way? Spokesman: How do you mean?

Isabel Hardman

Labour accuses Government of ‘U-turn’ on Budget charter

The government has published its Charter on Budget Responsibility, which at one stage was supposed to be a Labour trap but which now appears to be something that Labour can have a bit of fun with. In his ‘black cloud’ economy speech this afternoon, David Cameron announced that the Charter ‘would have the structural current budget into balance’ in 2017/18, which appears to enshrine into law the Labour plan that he is attacking in the same speech. The Prime Minister said: ‘We must finish the job we have started. That is why today, the Government is publishing a new Charter for Budget Responsibility.

Isabel Hardman

It’s beginning to feel a lot like a General Election

David Cameron is talking about the ‘great, black, ominous cloud’ that Labour’s economic plans would put over the British economy. Labour is talking about its immigration policies while trying not to talk about a document that suggests it shouldn’t talk for too long about them. The Lib Dems are complaining that the Tories would damage children’s futures. It’s beginning to feel a lot like a general election, even though we’re still quite a way away from it. This is one of the benefits for political parties of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act that is sucking all the life out of Parliament itself. They are now permanently on the campaign trail, even when they’re at Prime Minister’s Questions.

Isabel Hardman

Theresa May’s moral mission: Home Secretary to stop sick children being locked up

Theresa May will announce changes the Mental Health Act this week that mean mentally ill teenagers are never held in police cells when they should be in a hospital bed. As I reveal in The Times this morning, the Home Secretary will on Thursday publish a review of sections 135 and 136 of the Act which allow police to ‘section’ someone in mental distress in public or private places so that sick children cannot be taken to a cell, and adults are only detained there if their extreme behaviour cannot be managed elsewhere. It may come as a surprise that this happens at all, but last year 236 under-18s ended up in cells when they should have been in hospital.

Isabel Hardman

Sydney hostage situation: what we know so far

At least one armed gunman has taken 'fewer than 30' people hostage in a Sydney café. Here is what we know so far. Five people have escaped the café in the past couple of hours, with one male hostage in hospital in a 'satisfactory' condition. Reports are that between eight and 50 people are being held, with the deputy NSW commissioner Catherine Burn saying it is fewer than 30. The police have confirmed they are treating this as a terrorist incident, saying they are 'operating according to our counter terrorism protocols' and they are working towards a peaceful resolution. They have had contact with the person who has taken the people hostage. A black flag has been been put up in the café but it is not clear which terror group it signifies membership of.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Why Russell Brand isn’t wrong to fear entering Parliament

Oh look, Russell Brand doesn’t want to stand for Parliament even though he moans about it! You can watch the clip of the man who was introduced as a ‘comedian and campaigner’ on Question Time last night saying he would ‘be scared I’d become one of them’ here. Now, it’s easy to mock this ‘comedian and campaigner’ for not following through with his ‘campaigning’ and doing something about the issues he cares so deeply about by going into politics, or at least bothering to understand it (he also moaned about pictures of poor attendances in Parliament when MPs are talking about issues that people care about and high attendances when talking about their pay. On which note, here’s something that might interest you, Russell).

Isabel Hardman

Labour briefs MPs on the Ukip threat in their constituencies

Unfortunately for Labour, it cannot dismiss Nigel Farage as a ‘pound shop Enoch Powell’ quite so easily as Russell Brand did last night. The party knows that Ukip can take the voters that have already deserted it - voters that it thought still belonged to the party - and there have been increasing calls for the Labour leadership to take Ukip seriously. I understand that MPs have been receiving a series of briefings at the party’s HQ recently examining voters who are vulnerable to Ukip. The briefings, which have been produced by a number of party figures including John Healey, who has long worried about the Ukip threat, include details of the demographic of voters in each Labour constituency who are susceptible to voting for Nigel Farage’s party.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

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

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

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

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?

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.