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.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

We get few answers from the Work and Pensions grudge match

From our UK edition

Departmental questions have, by this stage of the parliament, all developed their own characters. There is the colourful combat of Treasury questions, often involving one Tory minister deploying a lengthy analogy involving handing over the keys to a car or arson to describe Ed Balls. Then there's Michael Gove and Tristram Hunt's lesson in rhetoric at Education questions. And then there's the hour-long grudge match that enlightens no-one at Work and Pensions questions. Today's session was a typical example. Labour had plenty to attack on, from the implementation of universal credit to the cost of the employment and support allowance. And the party did attack.

Isabel Hardman

Even Nick Clegg likes George Osborne’s HS3 rail commitment

From our UK edition

George Osborne's commitment to a third high speed rail link in the future has gone down well this morning with a nice spread of business groups, northern MPs and Conservatives worried about the Tory appeal (or lack thereof) in the North. It has even gone down well with Nick Clegg, who has released a statement welcoming the Chancellor's commitment, while of course arguing that the Lib Dems got there first. Clegg's spokesman said: 'Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats have led the charge in government to rebalance our economy so that it benefits 100,000 square miles of the country, rather than just one square mile in the City of London.

Isabel Hardman

George Osborne: I want to create a Northern powerhouse

From our UK edition

Ever since George Osborne took on Neil O'Brien as one of his advisers in the Treasury the Chancellor has shown a growing interest in the need to heal the North/South divide and the difference between Planet London and the rest of the UK. Today Osborne will underline that concern about the way the country's economy is lopsided by announcing his intention for a third high-speed rail link to connect Leeds and Manchester. At a speech in Manchester, Osborne will say: 'We need a northern powerhouse too. Not one city, but a collection of northern cities - sufficiently close to each other than combined they can take on the world. Able to provide jobs and opportunities and security to the many, many people who live here, and for whom this is all about.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Liam Fox warns on security spending and on avoiding Iraq

From our UK edition

The Cabinet is split between doves and hawks on whether Britain should back US involvement in Iraq, but this morning Liam Fox argued on the Andrew Marr Show that whether or not the Uk avoids military action, it will not be able to avoid the threat from jihadists. he said: 'Remember, the West is seen as a single entity. There are those who say if we don't get involved, if we hunker down, then we'll be fine, there'll be no backlash. That is utterly, utterly wrong because the jihadists don't hate us because of what we do; they hate us because of who we are and we can't change that. It's our values and our history that they detest more than anything else.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Is Ed Miliband’s Welsh tour wise?

From our UK edition

Ed Miliband is in Wales with the Shadow Cabinet today, and they've been busy praising the Labour government there for 'leading the whole of the United Kingdom into economic recovery'. It's interesting that the Westminster Labour party is so keen to hang out with Welsh Labour, as doing so simply allows the Tories to attack Miliband again for admiring a party with a rather mixed record in government. The Welsh government has presided over a 16 per cent drop in the number of affordable homes being built from 2011/12 to 2012/13. One house builder, Persimmon, has stopped building in parts of Wales because the planning regulations there are so burdensome.

Isabel Hardman

Government borrowing is up – the economic picture isn’t as rosy as the Tories say

From our UK edition

It's tempting given the optimistic mood on the Conservative benches at the moment to think that everything is just great with the economy. Not so, according to today's borrowing figures from the ONS, which show that government borrowing was higher than expected: George Osborne borrowed £13.3bn in May, up £0.7bn from the same month last year, and much higher than the £9.35bn forecast. Tax receipts have been weaker than expected, which has contributed to higher net borrowing. [datawrapper chart="http://static.spectator.co.uk/L158N/index.html"] Labour is saying that Osborne is now set to break his promise to balance the books by next year, while also arguing that it will balance the books but 'in a fairer way'.

Isabel Hardman

All not well with welfare cap

From our UK edition

A tough message on welfare is one of the ways that both Labour and the Tories think they can win in 2015. Ed Miliband upset some on the left yesterday with his plans to freeze child benefit and dock jobseekers' allowance from under-21s not in employment or training, while the Tories constantly trumpet the gains they've already seen in people coming off benefits as a sign that their reforms are working. But the suggestion today, in a leak to the BBC, that the Employment and Support Allowance is getting so expensive that the government could break its shiny new welfare cap, threatens to undermine the Conservative narrative on welfare.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Mike Hancock: I crossed the line

From our UK edition

Mike Hancock has settled the civil case brought against him by a constituent alleging that he sexually assaulted her (Julie Bindel outlined the case for the magazine here). In a statement released today, the MP, currently suspended as a Liberal Democrat, apologises for his behaviour. He says: 'In October 2009 you first came to me as a constituent to seek my assistance as your MP and councillor. Subsequently and over several months I came to your home on several occasions, sometimes unannounced and conducted a friendship with you that was inappropriate and unprofessional. 'I understand that you felt degraded. I did not treat you with sufficient respect. I made you feel deeply uncomfortable and discriminated against, and I crossed the line...

Isabel Hardman

Shock as select committee backs minister

From our UK edition

Like all good select committees, the Education Select Committee is rarely a helpful chum of Michael Gove. Its warnings on the reform of GCSEs, for instance, played a part in one of Gove's biggest volte-faces. But its report this morning on 'underachievements of white working class children' (a group it then narrows to 'poor white British boys and girls' who are on free school meals) recommends a course of action not dissimilar to that which Gove is already taking, set in motion by the Blairites. It says: 'This problem [of underachievement] must be tackled by ensuring that the best teachers and leader are incentivised to work in the schools and areas that need them the most, and by providing better advice and guidance to young people.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Tories win knife fight using devious and confusing methods

From our UK edition

As expected, Nick de Bois' amendment to the Criminal Courts and Justice Bill passed 404 votes to 53. It owes nothing to the Conservative frontbench, which abstained for reasons I've tried my best to outline here (it's difficult to explain something that doesn't make a grab deal of sense, especially when both parties have voted in different ways before, as on the boundary changes). And it owes nothing to the Liberal Democrats, who opposed the measure in Cabinet and in this vote. The result this evening is an example of the way the Coalition has reshaped the workings of government. Can't get the Cabinet agreement you need on a policy? Let it rise up from the backbenches instead and hope for an unholy alliance with the Opposition.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron adjusts language on Juncker: ‘I’ll go on opposing that right up to the end’

From our UK edition

As I reported earlier, Number 10 is adjusting its commentary on Jean-Claude Juncker's bid to become president of the European Commission to include plenty of conditional verbs. David Cameron appears to be giving up the fight, too. At his press conference in Downing Street with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the Prime Minister said: 'There is an important principle at stake here which is that the accountable elected members of the European Council, the elected heads of state, the elected heads of government, should be the ones who propose who runs the European Commission.

Isabel Hardman

Chairman Vaz’s passport checks

From our UK edition

Keith Vaz has a better nose for a story than a lot of journalists: this afternoon he's organised Home Affairs Select Committee hearings on the passport backlog and on extremism in schools. Passport Office chief Paul Pugh faced a good old headline-worthy grilling on whether or not he would resign as a result of the current backlog, which he confirmed to the committee was 'just under 480,000'. He said he had considered whether he should resign, but had decided against it. Later Paul Flynn had another go, asking why Pugh had decided to stay. 'I'm not sure my resignation… how it would help people in any way.

Isabel Hardman

Govt sources: die is not yet cast for Juncker

From our UK edition

Funnily enough, the government seems a little less bullish about blocking Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission than it did a fortnight ago. The Prime Minister's official spokesman was asked about the reports that the die is now cast for Juncker, and whether his appointment could bring forward the UK referendum on the matter. He said: 'In terms of the referendum, the Prime Minister's approach for a referendum and the 2017 timetable, that is entirely unchanged, and will not change.

Isabel Hardman

Tory ministers will abstain on a knife crime amendment they support

From our UK edition

The Commons will host another odd coalition situation this afternoon, as MPs vote on Nick de Bois' amendment to the Criminal Courts and Justice Bill which introduces mandatory minimum sentences for repeat knife offences. Nick Clegg and David Cameron have agreed to waive collective responsibility for this vote. The Lib Dems who have publicly opposed this policy, will vote against. Tory backbenchers will be free to do as they please, as will PPSs, but ministers will abstain on the amendment. This looks a bit poor: David Cameron has made clear that he supports the de Bois amendment, which is a means of bypassing the Lib Dems to get this policy onto the statute books.

Isabel Hardman

Cameron needn’t worry too much about Juncker fallout – for now

From our UK edition

What happens if, as reports suggest today, David Cameron fails in his bid to block Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission? It will make the Prime Minister look weak. It will make his renegotiation of Britain's relationship with Europe and his call for reform of the European Union as a whole much more difficult. These are serious wounds. But the Prime Minister may at least relax that he's not going to face an uprising in Westminster. Eurosceptic MPs have appreciated his stand on this issue, and are - by and large - committed to fighting for general election victory. They'll think about other fights after that general election.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove is being helped by Labour’s poor discipline and weak attacks

From our UK edition

It doesn't really matter whether Dominic Cummings' Times interview was unhelpful to Michael Gove. Labour has just been about as helpful to the Education Secretary as it possibly could be without announcing that it supports everything he does, right down to the detail of the history curriculum. Education questions this afternoon was the perfect opportunity to exploit the gift of an interview in which Gove's trusted former adviser attacked David Cameron and the Number 10 operation. But the attack never really came. Kevin Brennan asked about Cummings' line that he signed into government departments and Number 10 as 'Osama bin Laden'. Gove's reply was, as predicted, ornate and beautifully defensive.

Isabel Hardman

How will Gove deal with Dominic Cummings’ attack on Number 10?

From our UK edition

One of these days, former Gove adviser Dominic Cummings is going to tell us what he really thinks. He's followed up his interview with the Times (£) in which he describes David Cameron as 'bumbling' and attacks the team around the Prime Minister with a blog examining the gap between politicians and the electorate and the failure of successive governments to learn from mistakes. The main problem for Number 10 in Cummings' analysis of the way it works is that he's not the only one who holds that opinion. He argues that Number 10, like MPs, has 'no real knowledge of how to function other than via gimmick and briefings' and that it avoids 'solving very hard problems'.

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg is setting out what the Lib Dems stand for

From our UK edition

What is Nick Clegg up to? He held a press conference today to tell us that his party's manifesto will be a Lib Dem manifesto, not a manifesto aimed at a partnership with Labour or the Tories. And he announced that his party will ring-fence education spending for two-to-19-year-olds in the next Parliament. The Liberal Democrat leader told the assembled hacks that Britain needed to move from 'austerity to ambition', another fortune cookie phrase presumably cooked up by whoever thought 'Alarm Clock Britain' made sense. Clegg said: 'As we look towards 2015, it's clear to me that Britain doesn't want or need simply more of the same. The Conservative party will tell you everything is fine, let's just carry on down the tramlines of permanent austerity.

Isabel Hardman

Blair haunts foreign policy debate

From our UK edition

Whether or not the Iraq war was wise, it's fair to say that it is now unwise for Tony Blair to intervene in the ongoing foreign policy debate. The former Prime Minister was under fire last week as the country British and US forces invaded in 2003 was rent asunder by ISIS, and naturally the debate about whether these developments show the intervention was the wrong decision has put further pressure on Blair. He rarely needs much pressure to justify his actions, though: he gives the impression of a man who protests too much. In his column today, Boris Johnson makes quite clear that these protests do not come without a cost to the wider debate about intervention.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Ex-Tory minister: free schools will let extremists in

From our UK edition

The row about extremism in schools has over the past week widened out to the role of faith in education in general. This morning I interviewed Crispin Blunt, a former Conservative Justice Minister and Duncan Hames, a Lib Dem MP, for Radio 4's The Week in Westminster. Blunt told me he fears that the Coalition's own flagship free schools programme will sow division in England and allow extremist sects to educate children at the taxpayer's expense.