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.
After the panic in Westminster over the weekend about the Sunday Times‘ poll putting ‘Yes’ in the lead came the something-must-be-dones. David Cameron said he would ‘strain every sinew’ to fight for a ‘No’ vote. But today his official spokesman was quizzed on the suggestion that he might have pulled out of a planned visit
Alistair Darling continues to insist that he’s confident of victory in the Scottish independence campaign, telling the Today programme this morning that ‘I am confident that we will win, because we do have a very strong positive vision of what Scotland can be’. But he didn’t strengthen that vision either with further promises about powers
Tomorrow’s Sunday Times poll by YouGov puts the Yes campaign ahead at 51 per cent, with No on 49 per cent when undecided voters are excluded (even when they’re included, ‘yes’ are still ahead by two points: 47-45). In the space of four weeks, ‘No’ has blown a 22-point lead. It was only recently that the
The government has just lost a vote in the House of Commons on the ‘bedroom tax’/removal of the spare-room subsidy/underoccupancy penalty/Size Criteria for People Renting in the Social Rented Sector (the correct, if rather clunky, name). There was a three-line whip from the Tories on the vote, but the Lib Dems had decided they would
In the past two days, both David Cameron and Alex Salmond have denied that they will step down if their side loses the Scottish independence vote. The Scotsman reports Salmond saying: ‘No. We will continue to serve out the mandate we have been given and that applies to the SNP always. It applies to me
Ukip have been approaching potential defectors and offering to pay for a poll in their constituency that shows how well they’d do as a Ukip candidate, Coffee House has learned. Since boasting last week that they had a few more MPs who might defect to the party, Ukip have been trying again with some Conservatives
MPs are continuing to chip away at John Bercow as best they can. At questions following the Business Statement in the Commons this morning, Simon Burns repeated his question about that ‘floating’ letter that he mentioned after Prime Minister’s Questions and which the Prime Minister has been joking about to Tory MPs. Hague pointed out
If there is a strategy buried under the ‘no strategy’ response by the US and the UK to Isis, it seems to be that David Cameron and Barack Obama have preferred to make the case for greater military involvement by waiting for everyone else to get frustrated that nothing is happening. Where a few weeks
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_4_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Isabel Hardman, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth discuss the Tory civil war” startat=60] Listen [/audioplayer]Tory backbenchers, who have been happy for months, are once more sunk in gloom, sitting in dejected huddles in the Commons tearoom. William Hague went to gauge the morale of the troops there this week and was told by
This story ran first in tonight’s Evening Blend. Get more scoops, analysis and insight into the day’s political news by signing up for free here. Speaker Bercow has been accused of misleading the House of Commons over his plan to appoint Carol Mills as Clerk of the House. In a letter to the Speaker, seen
John Bercow, the self-styled champion of Parliament, is now being scrutinised by MPs via a series of increasingly hostile points of order. The Speaker’s response to today’s barrage of points was so poor that he has put himself in jeopardy. First Simon Burns asked him about a letter to the Prime Minister recommending the appointment
Ed Miliband would never have seen it coming, but he’s starting his first PMQs of the autumn term in a jolly good place. Labour MPs that I’ve spoken to over the past few days are now panicking not about how they can convince voters to back them but what on earth they’re actually going to
A second beheading of an American hostage – with warnings that a British hostage could be next – brings a fresh round of condemnations of the barbarity of Isis. Steven Sotloff appears to have been killed by Isis, with his British-accented killer accusing Barack Obama of an ‘arrogant foreign policy’ and citing his ‘insistence on
How do the Conservatives make the Clacton by-election more difficult for Douglas Carswell? I hear from two extremely well-placed sources that the selection for the Tory candidate will be an open primary. Carswell himself bemoaned the demise of this selection method when he announced he was leaving the party to join Ukip, and party sources
If the Tories did want to really fight Douglas Carswell in the Clacton by-election, then Boris Johnson would have been a jolly good way of driving a steamroller over Ukip’s chances of doing well. James explained at the weekend that when David Cameron reached the same conclusion and put the feelers out to the Mayor,
Nick Clegg had a stab at being René Magritte on the Today programme this morning, telling us that a disagreement between the two coalition parties over anti-terror measures that were sort-of announced yesterday was ‘not some argument between two political parties’. It was clear from the way the Deputy Prime Minister described the additional measures
So, after the horsetrading of the past few days, the Conservatives appear to have won their battle to add relocation powers to the terrorism prevention and investigation measures. In his statement in the Commons this afternoon, David Cameron said: ‘We will introduce new powers to add to our existing terrorism prevention and investigation measures, including
Even though he decided to call the delay in the appointment of a new Clerk ‘modest’, John Bercow has just suffered a humiliating climb down in the Commons. The Speaker was heckled as he tried to justify his decision to appoint Carol Mills. When he said ‘a number of colleagues have since expressed disquiet’, Michael
The talks between the Lib Dems and the Conservatives on the anti-terror measures that David Cameron will unveil this afternoon have finally finished. There are a few more details to be thrashed out – crossing of Ts and dotting of Is rather than major policy decisions – but the two parties are basically there. That
What should worry David Cameron more, Douglas Carswell’s defection to Ukip or reports that as many as 100 Tory MPs could go into the general election pledging to leave the European Union? The former is certainly more dramatic and promises plenty of humiliation over the next few months. But the latter could show the Prime
