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.
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During silly season, bored journalists often entertain themselves by reading rather than deleting the slew of pointless press releases that land in their inboxes. Today’s winner was going to be a pitch that opened with the dangerous phrase ‘Good Morning, I hope you are well?’ (always a sign the PR is sending this release to
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So both the Lib Dems and the Tories have yielded to the inevitable, and passed on the Joan LB Edwards donation to the Treasury. Their responses were swifter than even critical friends might have expected. The Lib Dems were first out of the starting blocks in the race to the moral high ground by announcing
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An argument over a will is just the sort of thing this slow-moving summer needs. Today’s row isn’t between two factions of a family, but the two parties in the Coalition and the Daily Mail, which reports that a donation from a Mrs Joan LB Edwards was split between the two parties when her will
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Last December, after one of the most brutal PMQs this Parliament has seen, David Cameron was walking through the corridors of the Palace of Westminster to address a 1922 Committee meeting. Ed Miliband had subjected the Prime Minister to a real savaging, and Labour backbenchers had loyally joined in, raising a constituent’s suicide and describing
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The Electoral Commission’s latest release on donations to political parties in the second quarter of 2013 are quite handy for the Tories. Firstly, there’s the caveat that no party really benefits from discussing funding because everyone ends up looking a little bit grubby, and because the only thing grubbier and more unattractive to voters would
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Even if Help to Buy is contributing to a bubble rather than the sensible restructuring of the economy that politicians promised before they started trying to scale that particular mountain, there are still reasons to be cheerful about the economy for the Tories this morning, on top of the delight offered yesterday by Chris Bryant’s
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One of the more significant – but still rather underreported – shifts in Conservative policy in the past few months has been Theresa May’s review of stop and search powers. The Home Secretary told parliament at the start of this month that she could understand why some communities felt stop and search was used unfairly.
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If you think the battle in the Tory party over policies can get bloody, spare a thought for the Lib Dems, who have to listen to their members as well as the differing views of their MPs. I write about how Nick Clegg and his colleagues at the top of the party are trying to
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Justin Welby is a clever man. His comments about payday loan companies in Total Politics have managed to please both the left and right, which is no mean feat on such a controversial issue. How has he managed to do it? Well, the Archbishop has identified a social problem, of people accessing high-cost credit that
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Naturally, today’s first estimate of Q2 GDP figures showing that the economy grew 0.6 per cent makes good news for the Conservatives. They can relax on their sun loungers (sorry, in their desk chairs in their constituencies as they work hard for local people) this summer knowing that though things are only getting better slowly,
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Will Michael Gove’s education reforms really have a lasting impact? It’s a question that perturbs his supporters no end, as the Education Secretary is attempting to do a great deal in five years that a Labour government could still unpick. Perhaps the funding for more free schools, a key dividing line, announced in the 2015/16
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Today’s broadcast from Len McCluskey Land was always going to be fun. For those of us who only lived through the tail end of the 1980s, the Unite General Secretary’s speech was a useful glimpse of that decade and the one before. It was also peppered with some great characters: a chap who Len called
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Ministers have been out in force today to trumpet the many virtues of a bit of market meddling also known as Help to Buy, with the details of the second phase of the scheme launched today by George Osborne. Even Mark Prisk, nicknamed by some Tory colleagues as the Invisible Minister, made it onto the
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After weeks of the Prime Minister and his team dancing on a semantic pinhead over whether they discussed plain cigarette packaging with, or were lobbied by, Lynton Crosby, the man himself has made a rare public intervention. The Press Association reports him denying that he had ‘any conversation or discussion with or lobbied the Prime
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Alan Johnson’s interview with Total Politics highlights one of Ed Miliband’s two big problems for 2015. One is the influence of trade unions over policy, or at least the perceived influence. The second, which Johnson expounds on, is whether it is too much to ask voters to trust Labour again when its top team contains
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Ed Miliband was clear yesterday when he announced that he will run a special party conference next spring to vote through his reforms to Labour’s relationship with the unions that there would be a ‘cost’ to the party. Now we have the first indications of how great that cost might be. Lord Ashcroft has released
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It’s always wise when looking at the European Union to imagine that you’re an alien (it’s the sort of thing MEPs probably do on away days, anyway) coming to the administration for the first time. If a friendly alien had pitched up on earth this afternoon and read the Foreign Office’s first tranche of Balance
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Further evidence of Number 10 finding a hard-headed campaigning zeal reaches this blog, in the form of a campaigning website called Protecting Our Children. It includes a petition ‘to support David Cameron’s call for ISPs to introduce Family Friendly Filters as soon as possible’, and facts about internet safety and what it is that the
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Michael Henderson has written a rather brave piece for this week’s Spectator in which he brands Test Match Special ‘Radio Halfwit’ and argues that it has lost its edge. This is braver even than admitting that you don’t #lovethenhs because TMS is an institution even more beloved and revered the world around. Perhaps Danny Boyle
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If it was front page warmth and approval he was looking for, the Prime Minister’s sudden crackdown on internet firms has been a resounding success. Just the sort of thing to stir up even more good feeling as the Conservative party bounces from one bit of good news to another. He has of course provoked