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.
From our UK edition
Perhaps the Bilderberg conference has had a lasting effect on Parliament, after all. Today we saw what can only be a conspiracy between the Labour left and Michael Gove’s band of reforming right-wingers. As the Education Secretary unveiled his plans to reform GCSEs, he was accosted by Diane Abbott, rarely knowingly in agreement with much
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While dealing with the teaching unions is a simple stand-off for Michael Gove, spare a thought for poor old Stephen Twigg, Labour’s shadow education secretary, who has to work out how on earth to deal with the NUT and NASUWT habit of opposing everything. There is a palpable sense of frustration on the Labour frontbenches
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Critics and fans of Michael Gove alike accept that sometimes the Education Secretary can be a little too pugnacious. He often encourages the pantomime boos that accompany him, and will throw himself into any fight with gusto. But then the representatives of the leading teaching unions pop up to criticise his reforms, and it becomes
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As Fraser reported earlier, Tim Yeo has stepped aside from the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee chairmanship following the Sunday Times’ sting this weekend. What’s astonishing is not his decision this evening, but that he even had the opportunity to chair the committee when he had quite so many declared interests in the sector.
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What an afternoon it has been for conspiracy lovers. First the Speaker summoned Ken Clarke to the Commons to answer an urgent question from arch theorist Michael Meacher about the Bilderberg meeting, and then MPs took it in turns to ask William Hague whether the Prism allegations meant they were under surveillance from the state.
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Lurk around the Palace of Westminster today and you might hear a strange creaking noise. It’s not the Commons air conditioning, which has broken and is making appropriately eerie noises ahead of an urgent question on the Bilderberg meeting. No, that creaking sound is the Tory Whips’ Office finally limbering up to do something about
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William Hague will come to the House of Commons today to offer some answers on the US National Security Agency’s PRISM programme. Here are three key questions MPs will want answered: What can he tell the Commons about how such an exchange of information could work? Douglas Alexander told Today he will be asking for
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Defenders of the status quo in the European Union like to argue that 3 million jobs in this country currently depend on Britain’s membership. Aside from the rather shaky maths behind that figure, it’s striking that today Chris Grayling is making a stand on a Brussels plan that will cost jobs in this country, rather
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Tim Yeo was due to appear on Sky News’ Murnaghan programme, and on the BBC’s Sunday Politics this morning. But he’s just pulled out of both interviews, where he would have been asked about the Sunday Times’ story alleging that he coached a witness to his own select committee on the right answers. Yeo denies that
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The Institute for Fiscal Studies gave one of its cheering presentations today on quite how miserable things are going to be for a good while longer. Today’s event was on the forthcoming spending review, but the IFS and Institute for Government also offered some predictions about the long-term economic picture. In a briefing note, the
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Just because Labour has been taking a big dose of reality this week doesn’t mean the party is now refusing to make the most of any botch job by the Coalition. So we’ve come to the funny situation where the Opposition party famed for its centralised approach to planning which failed to build enough homes
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For months, right-wing politicians and commentators have been licking their lips waiting for the Labour party to face up to reality. We all assumed that the sort of speeches delivered by Ed Balls and Ed Miliband this week, in which the two men abandoned the party’s commitment to universalism and promised to cap welfare spending,
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‘This has done for our pay rise, hasn’t it?’ one MP muttered earlier this week after the lobbying scandal broke. I suggested on Monday that yet another row over politicians behaving badly will make it even more difficult for David Cameron to endorse a pay rise for MPs. This is a row that is just
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It is not an enormous surprise that Nick Clegg has confirmed that he will block the government’s plans to relax ratios for childcare providers. The Tories working on the plans seemed entirely resigned to losing them a month ago. But what is interesting is that this row is becoming the new boundary reforms for the
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What will it take before the UK decides to supply the Syrian rebels with arms? Many are cautious about whether this measure would really make the conflict any better, but William Hague has made it clear that he believes there is a strong case for at least threatening to do so. Further evidence of chemical
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listen to ‘PMQs: David Cameron’s attack on Miliband’s U-turns’ on Audioboo
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That Labour wouldn’t scrap the Coalition’s cuts to child benefit for higher earners isn’t a surprise. It is just one of the many admissions that the party will need to make in the next few years about policies it has bitterly opposed. This week’s admissions that the party couldn’t safeguard winter fuel payment and that
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So peers have backed the second reading of the marriage (same sex couples) bill, and against an amendment from Lord Dear calling for the legislation to be dropped. Dear’s attempt to kill the bill was defeated 390 votes to 148, and the second reading passed without a vote. I’ve blogged before that the House of
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There’s something about taking on a government role that makes even the most sensible man fancy himself as a vicar. It’s easy to get confused: you find yourself lurking around Parliament, which looks a bit like a church, you can give speeches that drone on a bit like sermons, and in the Commons, prayers are
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Today’s row about Accident and Emergency has little to do with the issue itself, and far more about one party trying to prove a point about the other. Those rows are the most vitriolic, the most hard-fought, and to the outside world, the most pointless. The King’s Fund today finds waiting times are at their