Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman

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.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

David Nicholson’s select committee session: five key points

From our UK edition

Sir David Nicholson didn't deliver the most confident performance before the Health Select Committee this morning, but he didn't leave the session looking fatally wounded. Here are the key points from his evidence: 1. No-one knew what was going on. The NHS is such a big organisation that, as Nicholson admitted, it was perfectly possible for the Strategic Health Authority that he oversaw had no idea that there were concerns about the Mid-Staffordshire Trust. He said: 'We had no idea, the information was never brought to the SHA… we didn't see any of the information that would lead you to believe that this was going on, shocking as it is.' He added that 'there was no culture of sharing information'.

Isabel Hardman

‘Tell the European Commission to sod off!’: MPs press government on migrants

From our UK edition

'Oooh, your statement was so much more partisan than mine!' Iain Duncan Smith almost said to Stephen Timms this afternoon as the pair sparred over Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. The Work and Pensions Secretary was answering an urgent question from Labour's Frank Field on the government's readiness for the end of transitional controls. The debate veered towards the two men accusing the other of making party political points on this issue, but it also offered those in the House of Commons a number of useful opportunities. The first was an opportunity for the Secretary of State to indulge in just a little bit of Labour-bashing.

Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith backs the National Union of Ministers

From our UK edition

It is significant that Iain Duncan Smith wouldn't resist further cuts to the welfare budget in the 2015/16 spending review. This makes him one of the supporters of the National Union of Ministers movement. The Times reports that he has prepared a package of additional cuts, although I understand this doesn't involve new ideas such as a freeze on welfare payments, but ideas trailed extensively pre-Autumn Statement such as the removal of housing benefit for the under-25s, and a limit on child benefit to two children for new families. The question is more whether the Liberal Democrats would look at these cuts again, when they made their opposition very clear in the autumn.

Isabel Hardman

Secret courts bill: the rebels

From our UK edition

The government won all four votes on the report stage of the Justice and Security Bill last night, but there was still a crop of Coalition rebels when each division was called, and a number of abstentions from both parties too. The issue has excited the group of Tory MPs you see listed below, but for the Lib Dems it is an altogether more pressing matter because they will face their party's activists this weekend at the Lib Dem spring conference in Brighton. As I reported last week, activists have prepared an emergency motion on the matter, and if selected, it will be debated before the very final stage of the Bill in Parliament, known as ping-pong.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs lobby David Cameron on the ‘bedroom tax’

From our UK edition

Liam Byrne launched Labour's campaign on the 'bedroom tax' today, while Helen Goodman, who was the Labour minister responsible for the party's own attempt at cutting the housing benefit bill when in government, raised the cut at Education Questions today. Tory MPs groaned a little. Michael Gove pounded the despatch box, and shouted 'this is not a tax!' and Labour MPs groaned back. But behind the scenes, I understand that far from groaning, Conservative MPs have been lobbying the Prime Minister on this particular cut, which comes into effect on 1 April.

Isabel Hardman

Why Ed Balls isn’t being more upfront about his borrowing plans

From our UK edition

No matter how bad the economic news, government ministers can always take heart that an attack from Labour will always be blunted by the simple line that 'Labour would borrow more'. It's why David Cameron managed to sail through Prime Minister's Questions last week relatively unscathed even though Ed Miliband chose to make his attack on the loss of the credit rating. It's a problem for the Labour leadership that Edward Carlsson Browne raises today on LabourList, but his argument is that Labour should be honest that it would borrow more as a government. He writes: We are different from the Tories. We would run the economy better. But if we want to convince people of that, they need to trust us. And if we want their trust, we need to tell them what we’d do. Yes, we’d borrow more.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s lurch to the backbenches

From our UK edition

So the Conservative party's refusal to lurch to the right has, in the past few days, resulted in stories about the European Court of Human Rights, EU referendum legislation, limiting access to benefits for migrants, and NHS tourism. All of these issues preoccupy the right wing of the Conservative party. David Cameron yesterday said the Tories would remain in the Common ground (and Fraser wondered whether the PM had realised that he wasn't taking his own advice on this), but these briefings suggest Cameron is trying to find common ground with his own MPs as much as with the public. If these policies aren't about a lurch to the right, they are certainly about a lurch to the backbenches.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

How to be an anti-politics party in government: make the public sector accountable

From our UK edition

One of the lessons from last week's Eastleigh by-election - and indeed the Italian elections - is that voters don't like politicians at the moment. It's easy for those like Nigel Farage to mop up this anti-politics sentiment in the same way as Nick Clegg could say before the 2010 election 'the more they attack each other, the more they sound the same'. But how does the Conservative party try to appeal to those voters fed up with the Establishment of which it is so clearly a part? David Cameron can hardly start attacking himself, after all. There is one thing that the Tories could do - and which their backbenchers are pushing for - which would at least undermine a sense that the party is tied up in the cosy Establishment.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Eastleigh result: the Tories aren’t panicking, but that doesn’t mean they won’t

From our UK edition

Don't panic, don't panic! But are the Tories actually panicking about the Eastleigh result? Coffee House readers will have seen Stewart Jackson's call on the government to get more robust on Romanian and Bulgarian migrants, and Gavin Barwell's plea to his colleagues to stay calm. But backbenchers aren't really flapping their arms in terror today, other than taking positions we've already heard them take. Even backbenchers who really don't like David Cameron are clear that even though coming third is 'deeply disappointing', it's not a catalyst for disaster right now. But that doesn't mean Cameron's opponents don't have some sort of vision of how the next few months could pan out.

Isabel Hardman

Move to the right? The Tories need to worry about anti-politics voters too

From our UK edition

So in the end Eastleigh went for the 'crisis for Cameron' option by putting the Tories in third behind UKIP. For those opponents of the Prime Minister, last night's result represents a line through another one of their 'five key tests' for his leadership. I understand that those close to Adam Afriyie already expect the backbencher to make a number of interventions over the next few months which they hope will cement him as a serious voice speaking out against the Tory leadership, and even those who aren't are mulling over how the party should change its strategy. The inevitable reaction, and one every commentator and opposition MP is just waiting to happen, is that a rump of backbenchers press the Prime Minister to move the party further to the Right.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Eastleigh: the different results and what they’d mean

From our UK edition

So now that the polls have closed in Eastleigh, here are the likely scenarios for tonight's Eastleigh by-election result, and what each combination will mean: A) 1. Tories 2. Liberal Democrats 3. UKIP It's stating the obvious that this is the best outcome for David Cameron, showing that the Tories can win in those target Lib Dem seats, and that they can beat a confident UKIP, no matter what grumpy backbenchers say. But it's a disaster for Nick Clegg: in fact, any scenario other than victory is a disaster for Nick Clegg. For Nigel Farage, coming third when his party has been so confident, particularly in the last 24 hours, about a surge in support, will be a dampener, but it will also confirm that he was right to not have stood himself and face a second defeat in the same constituency.

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems prepare for conference showdown on secret courts

From our UK edition

Ken Clarke tabled a series of amendments to the Justice and Security Bill last night, aimed at getting the legislation through the Commons when it reaches Report Stage next week. This is the 'secret courts' bill, the one that has upset a group of Tory MPs, the Lib Dem grassroots (and, to a lesser extent, their parliamentarians), the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Daily Mail. The changes are quite technical, but government sources insist that they should be sufficient to satisfy the critics. They are as follows: Claimants can apply for a secret hearing for material they don't hold themselves. The judge in the case must be satisfied that the government has considered whether to make a claim for public interest immunity before applying for a secret hearing.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The ‘bedroom tax’ shows Downing Street does need a Damian McBride character

From our UK edition

MPs are debating that Cut With the Awkward Name, the Under-occupation of Social Housing: Housing Benefit Entitlement, also known by its opponents as the 'bedroom tax', this afternoon. I've already posted about some of the problems that this policy might throw up, however well-intentioned, but there's also an important political point here. When I talk to Tory MPs about this cut, some of them accept that there are problems with specific cases, and with the number of smaller homes that are actually available for people to move into (interestingly, one housing association has reclassified its properties so tenants can avoid being eligible for the cut), but what exercises them more is that the Coalition's spinning machine hasn't really moved at all on this cut.

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg: Lord Rennard allegations were in the background when he stepped down

From our UK edition

Nick Clegg's head is spinning, apparently, now that quite so many media outlets are involved in pursuing the allegations about Lord Rennard. That's what he told 'self-appointed detective' Cathy Newman when she managed to get through to his LBC phone-in this morning. Perhaps it was this dizzy sensation of his party being embroiled in a scandal that led the Lib Dem leader to change his tune rather on the issue of why Rennard left. He said: 'Of course these things were in the background but his health was the immediate reason why he stepped down.' Later, he added: 'Of course the issues of his inappropriate behaviour were in the background, of course they were.

Isabel Hardman

Exclusive: Lord Rennard’s behaviour concerned Lib Dem staff in 2011

From our UK edition

The Lib Dems say Danny Alexander spoke to Lord Rennard when 'indirect and non-specific concerns' about inappropriate behaviour reached Nick Clegg's office in 2008. But the alleged behaviour continued after that, too, I have learned. A well-placed source tells me that long after that 2008 conversation with Alexander in which the then chief executive was told that such behaviour was unacceptable, there was another incident. In late 2011, the peer (who was no longer chief executive by this point) attended a party with Lib Dem staff.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

In praise of self-appointed detectives

From our UK edition

So Nick Clegg is annoyed with those 'self-appointed detectives' who are 'trying to piece together events that happened many years ago' on the Lord Rennard allegations. It's not a surprise, really, that the Lib Dem leader is annoyed with journalists at the moment: after all, if it hadn't been for Cathy Newman's report last week, the Lib Dems wouldn't be in this awkward position of having to piece the allegations together themselves through an inquiry. Which says something interesting about the party's attitude towards the allegations themselves, does it not, given the women involved, irritated by the party's response to the complaints they say they tried to make, decided that only a journalist, not an HR officer or a party colleague, could improve the situation.

Isabel Hardman

Weary Italian voters can teach UK politicians lessons

From our UK edition

Italian voters are clearly cheesed off: with the Establishment, and with the country's austerity programme. The explosion onto the scene of Beppe Grillo - which Freddy examined in his post from Rome on Sunday - shows quite how cheesed off they are, and it also has wider lessons for the eurozone and for UK politics, too. The first is that voters clearly do not share eurozone leaders' unswerving commitment to the euro project: Grillo made much of his party's eurosceptic credentials and won 54 seats in the upper house, with Berlusconi's centre-right on 116, while Mario Monti, the conduit for the EU's austerity measures, won only 18. No alliance gained the 158 seats needed for a majority in the Senate. Though austerity is inevitable for Italy, its voters are wearied of it and of Europe.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

AAA credit rating: George Osborne gives Labour a (revisionist) history lesson

From our UK edition

George Osborne was playing historian today as he responded to Ed Balls' urgent question on the credit rating downgrade, charting Labour's role in the UK's loss of the AAA rating; particularly the deficit it bequeathed the Coalition. But he was in revisionist mood when it came to his own stance. As Ed Balls repeatedly leant across the despatch box and tried to hand the Chancellor a copy of the Tory 2010 manifesto in which the party lists 'we will safeguard Britain's credit rating' as the first of its eight benchmarks, George Osborne told MPs that what he had always said was important was the confidence of the markets. MPs were largely in a tribal mood.

Isabel Hardman

Will the UK keep its AA1 rating until 2015?

From our UK edition

Labour has been granted an urgent question in the Commons on the loss of the AAA credit rating this afternoon, and we can expect George Osborne to reiterate his comments over the weekend that this downgrade was a 'clear message that Britain cannot let up in dealing with its debts'. But will he suggest that the UK can hold onto the AA1 status that it now holds with Moody's until the end of this Parliament? Announcing the downgrade, the agency said it didn't expect any changes in the rating over the next 12-18 months. But it added: 'However, downward pressure on the rating could arise if government policies were unable to stabilise and begin to ease the UK's debt burden during the multi-year final consolidation programme.

Isabel Hardman

How will the Rennard allegations affect the Eastleigh by-election?

From our UK edition

What effect will the Rennard allegations have on the Eastleigh by-election? Channel 4 has been working on the story for months, but it is obviously taking off at an inconvenient time for the Liberal Democrats. There is also - for both Coalition parties, although particularly for the Tories because this was a key pledge for George Osborne - the problem of the AAA credit rating loss. But don't forget that the by-election was triggered by Chris Huhne's 'guilty' plea for perverting the course of justice, and in spite of repeated references in Conservative campaign material to 'trust', Huhne appears to have had little effect on the by-election. One Conservative MP I spoke to about the Rennard scandal over the weekend suspects it may have similar limited impact on the Lib Dems.