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.
Labour’s Shadow Transport Secretary Maria Eagle has the unenviable task this morning of standing up in front of the conference and trying to espouse Ed Balls’ new We-don’t-know-to-HS2 strategy. The Shadow Chancellor didn’t say he was dropping Labour’s support for it yesterday, but neither did he say that this new North/South railway is going to
Far be it from anyone to criticise a party that wants to build more homes, but Ed Miliband’s plan to announce in his speech that Labour would build 200,000 new homes a year by 2020 isn’t a particularly interesting one. It’s not that it’s not a good idea to fix our broken housing market, but
So far the tensions in the Labour party over Ed Miliband’s plan to reform the link with the trade unions have stayed below the surface at this conference. The closest it came was, unsurprisingly, when Len McCluskey took to the stage. The Unite leader made another plea for the unions to ‘set our vision of
Ed Balls is currently addressing the Labour conference, and we’ll post full analysis of his speech once he’s done. But as he continues, it’s worth highlighting that the Shadow Chancellor has just given his strongest indication yet that Labour will drop its support for HS2. He said: ‘David Cameron and George Osborne have made clear they
When Ed Miliband dropped his support for the government’s motion on military intervention in Syria, it was seen as a convenient way of the Labour leader avoiding the thorny question of what his party really thinks about the principle of intervention. He and his team were astonished when David Cameron said ‘I get that’ and
listen to ‘Ed Balls on Today: ‘This recovery is not working for working families’’ on Audioboo
Congratulations to Jon Cruddas, Labour’s policy review chief, for managing to produce a front page headline. Cruddas is famed for holding lengthy fringe events and interviews where he manages either to say nothing of interest or else says something that needs translating several times before it makes sense – one special adviser recently told me
The cost of living may well appear to be a rich seam for the Labour party to mine, but it isn’t entirely risk-free. As shadow ministers talk about Expensive Things in their speeches and fringe discussions this week in Brighton, they will be aware that voters might sympathise with their theme without fully trusting that
‘Your day will come,’ said Godfrey Bloom rather threateningly to David Cameron by way of ending his speech to the Ukip conference. Unfortunately for Bloom, his day came a lot sooner. Just a couple of hours later, in fact. Nigel Farage has announced that the Ukip whip has been removed from the outspoken MEP: listen
Debate the relative merits of the two speeches from Nigel Farage and Paul Nuttall all you like, but the headline from today’s Ukip conference won’t give voters any impression that the party has grown up at all. Godfrey Bloom (who I’ve had my own run-in with before) decided to turn up to a fringe on
Even if Nigel Farage’s speech was, as Fraser blogged earlier, a wasted opportunity for the Ukip leader to impress the voters that he really needs to attract, it still pleased the members in the hall. In fact, there was more of an excited, energetic atmosphere at this conference than at any party political conference I’ve
Damian McBride’s memoirs will naturally make uncomfortable reading for the Labour party, but the current occupants of Downing Street will also be feasting on his lesson in the dark arts, and wondering if there is anything they can take from it too. This sounds like an odd thing to say when so much condemnation for
Ever since the publication date of Damian McBride’s book was set for the week of the Labour autumn conference, it was clear that the party would find itself lugging a bit of the past around as it tries to talk about what it wants to do in the future. But perhaps it wasn’t clear quite
1. The Lib Dems think they will be in power again after 2015 This whole conference was aimed at making that easy by encouraging activists to back grown-up policies rather than argue about goldfish. The Lib Dem leader placed great emphasis in his speech on his party’s ability to work with any party, arguing that
Nick Clegg’s speech was supposed to be about how the Lib Dems are the modifying party. They stop the nasty Tories doing lots of nasty things, and under different circumstances, they’d stop Labour being incompetent. The text of the speech suggests that Clegg is trying to say that what the Lib Dems stand for more
Why did Nick Clegg choose to give ‘his most personal speech so far’ at this year’s autumn conference? Ed Miliband, after all, has been giving these speeches for three years now, each apparently more personal than the last. And Clegg doesn’t really have any more compelling a story than anyone else in Westminster: like Miliband,
There’s plenty of fun to be had with the Lib Dems’ decision to give all infant school children free school meals. Firstly there are the letters from MPs like Simon Hughes slating the policy (the Southwark MP told constituents that his local council was ‘spending £15 million giving free school meals, some of this going
Nick Clegg will be closing the Lib Dem conference today with what is being billed as one of his most personal speeches yet. It has echoes of a Miliband ‘this is who I am’ offering, with the Lib Dem leader trying to explain the personal experiences that shape his thinking today. He will say: ‘My
Nick Clegg has had a good party conference, and wants to round it off with an announcement that will leave a warm glow in delegates’ tummies. So he’s announcing free school meals for all children in infant school from next September. This will be a key feature in the Deputy Prime Minister’s speech tomorrow afternoon,
What do the Tories make of Vince Cable’s crackdown on zero hours contracts? The Business Secretary’s review has been long-known, but yesterday he announced that he would ‘act against abusive practices in zero hours contracts, like exclusivity arrangements which prevent workers seeking alternatives’. Some read this as an overture to Labour, but from conversations that