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
Reports today that the Conservatives are wargaming end-of-Coalition scenarios in the event of the Lib Dems leaving early won’t come as a surprise, given the bickering over the past few weeks on snooping, childcare and Europe. But in the interim, ministers are also trying to work out how both parties can practise a sensible differentiation
From our UK edition
Who is to blame for last night’s Tory uprising on Europe? It’s more entertaining to pin the blame on everyone, rather than one person, and in this case, it’s wrong to insist that the leadership is entirely to blame for the confusing fiasco of the past week. So here are the many, many different options
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It’s not often you see Tory MPs celebrating anything, but on Monday a bunch of them were packed into an office high in Portcullis House to toast the rehabilitation of Nadine Dorries. Last autumn the Mid-Bedfordshire MP was suspended from the party after appearing on the reality TV show I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out
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So 130 MPs have backed the Baron/Bone amendment to the Queen’s Speech. There will be Labour and other parties in this group, but reasonable estimates suggest that 100 Tories went through the ‘aye’ lobbies. This isn’t a rebellion, because the whips have given backbenchers and PPSs a free vote, and to that extent things could
From our UK edition
MPs are storming their way through the Queen’s Speech debate this afternoon, with a vote on that troublesome EU referendum bill amendment expected around 7pm. But for all their talk in the past few days, those in the pro-amendment camp are noticing a fading away in support. One source tells me: ‘Given all the whips’
From our UK edition
Nadine Dorries has given an interview to The Spectator this week in which she reveals that she will be holding talks with her constituency association about a joint Tory/Ukip endorsement for the 2015 election. She tells the magazine ‘I will be having that kind of conversation with my association’, and adds: ‘There are members in my
From our UK edition
Believe it or not, while voters might be unimpressed by the ferrets fighting in a sack over Tory Europe strategy, what will interest them far more is the possibility that they may have been paying over the odds for their petrol for a decade. Yesterday’s raids on BP, Shell, Platts and Statoil suggest that finally
From our UK edition
Even those who like to specialise in the inner workings of the mind of a Tory backbencher are rather baffled by the twists and turns of the party this week. But amid all the turmoil, there has been one very important change. Backbenchers are no longer just angry with the leadership. They’re also angry with
From our UK edition
Diane Abbott has been thinking long and hard of late about how Labour responds to the family. She offers the next instalment of her ideas in a speech to think tank Demos on Thursday, and will argue that rapid social and economic change has caused a ‘crisis of masculinity’ in Britain which manifests itself. Coffee
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Jonathan Stephens, permanent secretary at the Culture, Media and Sport department, has today announced he is moving on, after a cross-Whitehall effort to shift him, I have learned. Stephens, who James reported at the weekend was looking ripe for a move, announced his departure in an internal email to staff this afternoon. I understand he
From our UK edition
The Tory MPs who are unhappy with Number 10’s offer of a draft EU referendum bill have been making the most noise this morning, but there have been some interesting shifts in position from some hardline eurosceptics in the past few hours. Douglas Carswell, who is about as independently-minded as you can get, has come
From our UK edition
The dizzy behaviour of the Tory party on Europe is allowing its opponents to develop an incredibly strong message discipline. This is ironic because the Labour party has its own European fault lines running through it, its own backbenchers calling for a referendum, and even some calling for a referendum bill before Cameron gets in.
From our UK edition
David Cameron was trying to work out how on earth to deal with the latest Europe row in his party. He heard them demanding legislation in this parliament for a referendum in the next, and this evening, after nearly a year of letter-writing and speeches, he announced that the Tory party will publish a draft
From our UK edition
President Obama took care this afternoon when asked about an EU referendum to give as nuanced an answer as possible. He emphasised repeatedly that this was a matter for the British people. He also affirmed Cameron’s ‘basic point that you probably want to see if you can fix what’s broken in a very important relationship’.
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Nigel Farage says his party is in talks with a number of Conservative associations about a joint endorsement with UKIP. He told the Daily Politics today that ‘there is no doubt that there are Tory associations, and one Labour that I know of, who are saying “look, the law was changed two years ago, there
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Last winter, the surest way to get a Lib Dem to ring you back was to mention the words ‘boundary changes’. Better still to write a piece criticising the party’s decision to scupper the reforms as a revenge for the collapse of Lords reform, and no matter whether it was late at night or early
From our UK edition
‘I’m a man with a plan,’ David Cameron told the Conservative party conference in 2008. Now the Prime Minister is struggling to give the impression he does have a plan for dealing with the Europe problem in his party: and he needs one, because things are going to get a lot stickier. The furore around
From our UK edition
If the Tory leadership had hoped that a few weeks of reconciliation between David Cameron and his backbenchers would lead to a new, serene phase in party management, they couldn’t be more wrong. Things seem to be getting worse on Europe: today two Cabinet ministers have felt emboldened by the Queen’s Speech vote this week
From our UK edition
Michael Gove is right about almost everything, but like most know-it-alls, he has a habit of putting people’s backs up when telling them he’s right. That’s the theme of a piece I’ve written for the Telegraph today about the Education Secretary’s desire to meddle not just with what goes on in the classroom but also
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Flicking through my diary this morning, I came across something I’d scrawled as ‘All the Tory ladies’ without further explanation. It turned out to be one of those drinks events for people in Parliament who happen to be women, presumably where we all stand around and talk about how great/terrible it is to be a
