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.
David Cameron spoke to Barack Obama yesterday about the situation in Syria. A Number 10 spokesman gave the following read-out of the call: ‘They are both gravely concerned by the attack that took place in Damascus on Wednesday and the increasing signs that this was a significant chemical weapons attack carried out by the Syrian
Labour could use HS2 as an opportunity to show voters that it is fiscally responsible by announcing that as the project’s costs have spiralled out of control, it cannot back it. So runs the argument in favour of Ed Miliband dropping his party’s support for the project. The party’s transport shadow Maria Eagle has insisted
There is now so much advice coming in for Ed Miliband that it needs classifying. There’s the Miliband-must-behave-like-this advice from all and sundry: he should talk more about the economy, talk less about the economy, shout a lot about things, talk more about policy, complain more about this and that and so on. The advice
MPs are currently in hiding in their constituencies from the silly season. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t encountering some rather silly behaviour themselves as they hold surgeries. Constituency surgeries are normally quite doleful affairs, with local people in dire straits turning to their MP for help with an impossible housing situation, a tangled immigration
After the noisy protests over oil drilling in Balcombe, you might be forgiven for thinking that there are just two groups in the fracking debate: the Caroline Lucases, who oppose the technique outright, and then those who think shale gas is the best thing we ever discovered, better even than sliced bread. But there is
Opposition is underrated. You can spend your whole time pointing at Expensive Things and complaining that the Government Should Do Something about their cost, and grumbling about other things you don’t like either, like a mother-in-law wearing a party rosette. What’s not to like about being a professional complainer? The problem is that at some
It can hardly be a coincidence that one of the few Labour figures to bother giving a speech on policy in the middle of Tumbleweed Time is a shadow minister who looks increasingly likely to get the chop. Liam Byrne’s speech today was partly his attempt to get a good last-minute appraisal from the media
The political fallout from the detention of David Miranda is as interesting as the rights and wrongs of the case itself, as it exposes a fault line in the Conservative party between civil libertarians who are instinctively wary of state power, and those on the other side who think the state did exactly the right
If David Blunkett fancies being a kindly older mentor for the current Labour shadow cabinet, perhaps he could start by getting them all on television a little more, if only to say how great they think Ed Miliband is as party leader. As the summer has worn on and the Labour leader’s troubles have thickened
listen to ‘Blunkett on Miliband’ on Audioboo David Blunkett gave an odd interview on the Today programme this morning. It rather mirrored the problem with Labour: he clearly knew what he really thought, but wasn’t sure whether he should say all of it, so ended up letting really interesting little snippets out in dribs and
Caroline Lucas’ arrest this afternoon at the Balcombe fracking protest might be quite useful for the Green MP, but it’s hardly going to give ministers a sleepless night. Lucas’ presence is actually rather distracting from a real problem that ministers do need to address: ensuring that communities feel they have a stake in the shale gas
Certain Labour types like to argue that this summer season of discontent for Ed Miliband is just a media mirage, made up mostly of journalists talking to each other. That might have a grain of truth: the corridors of Parliament are dusty and echoey at this time of year, and the only people found wandering
The latest tranche of advice for Ed Miliband contains pleas for the Labour leader to think the unthinkable and hire Frank Field as his welfare adviser to how that Labour was ‘serious’ about reforming the welfare system. This would represent quite a change of direction for the party, and would be what commentators like to
William Hague’s interview on the Today programme this morning included the gloomy warning the the turmoil in Egypt is unlikely to end soon. He said that ‘there may be years of turbulence in Egypt and other countries going through this profound debate about the nature of democracy and the role of religion in their society,
Ed Miliband has already managed to steal a big pile of clothing from the Tories by pinching the One Nation tagline for his own party. But this weekend Chuka Umunna offered the beleaguered Labour leader another Tory tag that he might not be quite so keen on. Trying to defend the party, the Shadow Business
Decca Aitkenhead has a history of producing revelatory August interviews that make tricky reading for the Labour leadership. Her 2008 interview with Alistair Darling involved the journalist following him around during the August recess and unleashed the ‘forces of hell’ against the then Chancellor when it was published. Her interview with Tom Watson in today’s
Unless you’re as optimistic as Jon Ashworth, it’s pretty clear that messaging-wise, Labour have had a pretty bad summer. There are many reasons for this that many wise people have examined in quite some detail and at quite some length, but one of the major strategic errors is that the party appears to have made
This is how the Downing Street spin machine works: a Bad Story that may make your core vote very upset appears in the papers. You brief that you are doing something Very Serious in response to said Bad Story and hope that when it comes to the meeting where you have to raise said Very
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
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
