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

Is the boundary Black Swan dead?

One of the amusing inclusions in yesterday's otherwise anodyne Mid-Term review document was the promise that the government 'will provide for a vote in the House of Commons on the Boundary Commission's proposals for changes to constituencies'. If yesterday was a renewing of vows, some of them have been rather watered down since the Coalition Agreement, as its pledge for legislation for providing for fewer and more equal-sized constituencies has now simply become a 'vote'. Today at Deputy Prime Minister's Questions, Chloe Smith was quizzed by opposition MPs on whether the government might just drop the boundary changes. She said: 'The boundary commissions are continuing with the boundary review in accordance with the legislation which requires them to report in October 2013.

Isabel Hardman

Tories make hay with Labour’s welfare stance

The Welfare Uprating Bill won't fall into difficulty when it has its second reading in the Commons today, but with around five Lib Dem MPs expected to vote against or abstain on the 1 per cent rise in benefit payments, it's going to be a lively debate. The Conservatives are focused on making the debate less about Sarah Teather and other angry colleagues in her party and more about Labour's welfare stance. Grant Shapps has a new, bald poster campaign today on six sites in London. Shapps' new posters simply read: 'Today Labour are voting to increase benefits by more than workers' wages. Conservatives: standing up for hardworking people.' Iain Duncan Smith has taken the same line on his morning tour of the television and radio studios.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Briefing: What does the Mid-Term Review say the Government is going to do?

The coalition has worked very hard, taken tough decisions, worked in the long-term interest of the country for short-term political gain. That, if you can't summon the energy to read all 46 pages of the Mid-Term Review, is its surprising verdict on the Coalition so far. But the document also sets out plans for the rest of this Parliament, although many have already been announced in previous speeches and launches. Here's the bluffer's guide to what the Government has got in store up to 2015: Deficit - The Government will stick to its deficit reduction plan 'while protecting vulnerable groups and key long-term investments'. Business, enterprise and growth - Sector-specific industrial strategies, including plans to boost high-tech industry.

Isabel Hardman

Sarah Teather dents the Coalition’s unity message by announcing her benefits rebellion

Coupled with Lord Strathclyde's resignation over the way the Coalition worked in the House of Lords, Sarah Teather's announcement that she will rebel against the government tomorrow is extremely poor timing. Today was supposed to be about unity, the Coalition working well together in the national interest. Now there are suggestions that this unity isn't visible in the Upper Chamber, and that senior Lib Dems aren't quite as ecstatic about key policies as Nick Clegg might try to argue. Ever since she went AWOL on the day of a vote on the benefit cap, Teather was a rebellion waiting to happen.

Isabel Hardman

Hacked Off produces its own ‘clean’ Leveson legislation

It is no great surprise that Hacked Off director Brian Cathcart believes the government can't be trusted to implement Leveson: the Prime Minister made very clear on the day of the report's publication that he didn't believe governments could be trusted to regulate the press via statute. But what is interesting about the draft bill that the media reform pressure group has published this morning is that it claims to be the most faithful implementation of the Leveson recommendations: more faithful, even, than that proposed by the Labour party.

Isabel Hardman

While the Coalition celebrates proalition, the two parties are still making their differences public

The Coalition reaches its proalition peak today with the publication of the mid-term review, but Downing Street strategists are keen to spin out the good feeling for as long as possible. David Cameron and Nick Clegg will launch the review in their first joint appearance in Downing Street since December 2010, but the details of many of the measures on childcare, transport, housing and pensions won't come today. Instead, we'll see a trickle of announcements over the next couple of months. The leaders have already published a foreword to the review document, which starts by restating the Coalition's central mission: deficit reduction.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Don’t ban Frosties: teach children the life skills they need to make choices

What a very sensible idea from a group of more than 200 MPs in today's FT: teach children about personal finance. The All-Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People wants financial education to become a compulsory part of the curriculum, with banks visiting classrooms. The idea that Natwest and Barclays could send their representatives into classrooms is obviously not enormously palatable to everyone, with critics arguing that this is just another route for big business to indoctrinate innocent minds. But consider this: research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research found a lack of financial education costs the taxpayer £3.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

The next Labour welfare policy?

As he was selling his party's plan for a jobs guarantee on the airwaves today, Liam Byrne made a passing reference to something that could form another part of Labour's welfare policy offer. The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary was talking about myths and misconceptions about the benefits system, and said: 'I think a lot of people are surprised when they find out that jobseeker’s allowance is a little bit above £70 a week, and I’ve had constituents who’ve been frankly shocked when they’ve lost their job, they’ve gone down the jobcentre and they’ve discovered what the true rate of JSA is.

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron denies bickering with Nick Clegg

Nick Clegg made clear before Christmas that he wants gory, open and honest government; today the Prime Minister was equally clear that he doesn't. Asked this morning on Radio 5Live about whether he was happy with the Lib Dem desire for greater differentiation between the parties, the Prime Minister replied: 'I think that both parties will succeed if the Coalition succeeds, Nick Clegg and I work well together, and actually there are huge challenges facing this country. We have got to pay down the deficit, re-balance the economy and we have got to improve standards in our schools.

Isabel Hardman

Labour revisits old welfare ghosts with its jobs guarantee

Dig out the bunting, fly the red flags in celebration, for finally we have a policy from the Labour party. Ed Miliband promised that 2013 would be the year he'd set out some 'concrete steps' on key policy areas, and to that end he's announced a jobs guarantee for the long-term unemployed. Coffee House readers will already be familiar with this scheme, as Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Liam Byrne discussed it in his interview on this site in December.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

The horror of the ‘fake’ independent coffee shop

It's official: this country is going to the dogs. The proof? Tesco has been insidiously infiltrating the coffee shop market with a chain of shops that look independent. The Guardian reports outrage in Crouch End, where customers were 'duped' by 'independent-looking, stripped back coffee shops'. The greatest crime of Harris + Hoole - which has its majority stake owned by the family that founded it - is that Tesco has a 49 per cent stake in the business, but doesn't plaster its own logo above the shops, preferring instead to fill them with nice furniture and pretty decor. Here's one quote from the piece: "I avoid Starbucks because it's a big chain and it avoids tax," said Carol Levine, 50, a Crouch End physiotherapist enjoying her lunch break in Harris + Hoole.

Isabel Hardman

Cristina Kirchner forgets the most important people in the Falklands row: the Islanders

The British government has been gently rattling the bars in its stand-off with Argentina over the Falklands of late: giving the Queen a stretch of land in Antarctica which Cristina Kirchner's government disputes the ownership of is one example. But today, ahead of a referendum in March for Islanders to decide whether they want the Falklands to remain under British sovereignty, Kirchner has upped the tension. In a letter published as an advert in today's papers, the Argentine President demands that the UK 'abide by the resolutions of the United Nations' to end colonialism and negotiate a solution to the sovereignty dispute over the Islands.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Teachers are demoralised, but parents are protesting

The school holidays are nearly over, so here's a cheery tale for those returning to the classroom next week. Teachers are demoralised, says a poll [PDF] for the NUT which found 55 per cent of those in the profession described themselves as having low or very low morale. Out of the 804 surveyed by YouGov, 71 per cent said they didn't think the government trusted them to get on with their jobs. Michael Gove has made it pretty clear that there is indeed one group of teachers that he doesn't trust to get on with their jobs: 'militant' trade union members who initiate industrial action such as 'work-to-rule' measures. But there's another group that's feeling rather demoralised, too: parents. Just before Christmas, a group of people waving placards appeared outside a school in Chesterfield.

Isabel Hardman

Are Christians being persecuted in Britain?

Douglas Murray makes a striking point on his Spectator blog about the violent persecution that many Christians face across the globe, while the Church of England fights over gay marriage and women bishops. Christians in this country do fear that they are being persecuted, too, with a case making the headlines at the weekend about a Baptist who had unsuccessfully sued her employers for forcing her to work Sundays. Actually, in Celestina Mba's case, it does sound rather unfair that she came under pressure to work on Sundays when she had asked at the start of her employment to be exempted from doing so on the grounds of her religious belief. The judge rejected her case, observing that Sunday as a holy day isn't a fundamental requirement of the Christian faith.

Isabel Hardman

Fiscal cliff: what happens next?

Last night Congress agreed on a deal to avert the fiscal cliff. If you're a little hazy on the detail of what that cliff actually was, it's well worth reading Jonathan's excellent briefing, while below are the details of last night's drama, and what we can expect in the weeks and months ahead: What happened last night? Congress agreed on legislation which will avert the 'fiscal cliff', with a 257-167 vote just after 11pm in the House of Representatives. Out of 236 Republicans, 151, including Majority leader Eric Cantor, voted against the Bill. The Senate had approved the measure the night before by 89 votes to 8. The US Treasury has also confirmed that the government had hit its $16.4 trillion debt ceiling.

Isabel Hardman

Now Nick Clegg turns on Labour ahead of mid-term review

Nick Clegg is in a pugnacious mood at the moment. First there was the very conveniently leaked memo in which Lib Dem strategists urged MPs to criticise their Tory Coalition partners publicly. Now he's gone on the attack against Labour's spending plans, or lack thereof. The Deputy Prime Minister writes in The Times: 'The Labour leadership continue to complain about the coalition's approach, but without providing any credible alternative. They're learning the tricks of opposition and finding their rhetorical refrains. But where are the numbers? Where are their sums? The country has undergone the biggest economic crisis in living memory, yet they offer no explanation of how they'd get us out of this mess, nor any admission of responsibility for their part in creating it.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Society is forgetting its elderly

During the 2010 general election, two grand politicians came to visit the teaching hospital where a doctor friend of mine worked. He had finished a 13 hour night shift, and, at a loose end, decided to track those two grand politicians' journey around the hospital. They visited the impressively equipped cardiology wards, stopped by at a premature baby unit (if you can't have a photo of you kissing a baby, you can at least get one next to an expensive incubator with an even tinier baby inside it), and moved on to the oncology wards to talk to patients battling cancer. My friend went home feeling rather disconsolate.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

François Hollande: Ed Miliband’s embarrassing friend

Time was when Ed Miliband had plenty to say about François Hollande. When the new French President celebrated his victory in May, the Labour leader praised Hollande for his 'determination to help create a Europe of growth and jobs, in a way that is responsible and sustainable'. He added: 'This new leadership is sorely needed as Europe seeks to escape from austerity. And it matters to Britain.' Then, Miliband was keen to work together with his new friend Hollande. Just a few months down the line, though, Labour has a bit less to say about how the French president is a shining example of the centre-left showing leadership and hope in Europe. First there was the noisy exodus of top earners from France ahead of the introduction of Hollande's flagship 75 per cent tax.

Isabel Hardman

A new EU membership for Britain: second-class or sensible?

Becoming a 'second-class' member of the European Union doesn't sound awfully appealing on first glance at today's Times story. But the 'associate membership' being considered by the Union of European Federalists would see Britain remain in the single market but lose its commissioner in Brussels and eventually its MEPs, too. Those drawing up this version of the new treaty also envisage that there would continue to be a seat at the Court of Justice for Britain.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Realism and optimism: David Cameron’s New Year message

David Cameron's New Year message is a rather sober one, but it's not downbeat. The theme is 'realism and optimism' and the Tory leader's aim is to demonstrate to voters that his policies are putting the country on the right track, and to that end he makes some strong points on deficit reduction, unemployment, education, welfare, tax and pensions. Encouraging optimism about Britain's trajectory is important because 2013 is going to be a difficult year, not just for the Conservative party internally on issues such as Europe and gay marriage, but for the Coalition, as new cuts come in and critics call on the government to change tack. Ed Miliband's Dickensian pre-Christmas PMQs offered a little taster of that.