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.
As Liam Fox addressed a packed Carlton Club fringe this evening on a mezzanine floor in the ICC in Birmingham, a round of loud singing broke out on the floor below. The Prime Minister had appeared at another reception, and guests were cheerily singing ‘happy birthday’ to him. As the PM celebrated his birthday, his
Now that the Tories have at least agreed within their own party that they can find £10 billion of further cuts to the welfare budget, they are starting to ramp up the rhetoric on why it’s fair to do this, and how they can achieve it. Yesterday, Chancellor George Osborne said this: ‘Where is the
As I was running the daily leaflet gauntlet at the entrance to the Tory conference this morning, a man thrust a flyer for the Trade Union Reform Campaign in front of me, saying hopefully ‘trade union bashing?’. He clearly hadn’t got Robert Halfon’s memo about not bashing the unions, and neither had Michael Gove when
Tory party members were queuing for half an hour to get into the Mayor of London’s box office speech this morning. Even Ken Clarke struggled to get a seat in the nosebleed section of the Symphony Hall. It was the perfect hype for Boris’ campaign to become the anointed next leader of the Conservative party.
It’s David Cameron’s birthday today, but when James Naughtie suggested on the Today programme that Boris Johnson be sent to a remote country as ambassador, the Prime Minister sounded as though Christmas had come early, too. You could almost hear Cameron’s mind whirring as he considered which country might deserve the Mayor of London. As
I had the pleasure of chairing a fringe event hosted by the Howard League for Penal Reform today on young people and the criminal justice system. The focus for the event was how police and crime commissioners can change the way young offenders are treated. Home Office minister James Brokenshire was very keen to assert
The Conservative leadership is just starting to tap in to the idea that the next election will be about the ‘strivers’, but Robert Halfon and Priti Patel know all too well from their Essex constituencies that what Halfon calls ‘white van conservatism’ is a key battleground. At last night’s Institute of Economic Affairs, the two
Patrick McLoughlin was the obvious choice to confront Ed Miliband as the Labour leader tries to steal the ‘One Nation’ mantle from the Conservative party. The former miner opened his speech by remarking that the last time he had addressed conference was 28 years ago. He then invited delegates to watch a video of this
George Osborne is due to speak to the Conservative party conference just before lunch today. What he tells the Symphony Hall at the International Convention Centre may well put his Liberal Democrat coalition partners off their food, as his speech will make clear the Chancellor’s determination to cut a further £10 billion from the welfare
Nick Boles started his first fringe as a minister this evening by saying that after years of trying to make controversial points at party conference events, he wasn’t going to say anything interesting. The new planning minister’s attempt at being boring wasn’t thoroughly successful: Boles’ version of being dull and unreportable is still more fascinating
When it came to the passage in his speech on Europe, William Hague was clearly building up to a crescendo. He thundered out the lines ‘which will require the fresh consent of the British people’, and then paused for what he expected to be a rapturous round of applause from a Tory audience thrilled to
Grant Shapps used his speech this afternoon to the Conservative party conference to encourage Tories to not be shy. It’s not a charge you could level at the Conservative party co-chair himself, especially after he devoted the first section of his speech to talking about himself and his own election battles. He also revealed to
If the Lib Dem conference was all about proalition, the Conservatives seem determined to at least start their conference in a less coalicious frame of mind. This morning Chancellor George Osborne made very clear on Murnaghan on Sky News that he would not introduce either a wealth tax or a mansion tax: measures Nick Clegg
David Cameron has a tough task ahead of him for this week’s Conservative conference – a task that got a little harder when Ed Miliband surprised almost everyone by producing a cracking speech this week. The Prime Minister has a number of problems to tackle when he arrives in Birmingham. These include a rowdy party
Believe it or not, Labour’s party conference has finally ground to a halt. Here are the key lessons from the past six days in Manchester: 1. Ed Miliband is no longer a joke leader of the opposition. The Labour leader’s speech showed that he can now talk a good game, and even though much of
There was plenty of panto on the conference floor this week in Manchester. Ed Miliband encouraged delegates to boo several villains in his speech, and one of them was Michael Gove. In fact, Michael Gove popped up as the villain on Tuesday and in the Labour leader’s question-and-answer session yesterday, too, and again when Stephen
It doesn’t seem entirely fair that Stephen Twigg’s speech has been left to the final day of the Labour conference, when many have packed up and left Manchester already. But today Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary is to announce more reforms to education as part of the party’s new One Nation project. The idea is to
If we learnt nothing else from this afternoon’s question-and-answer session that Ed Miliband held with delegates, it’s that Labour delegates are quite as eccentric as Liberal Democrat members, if not more so. The junior coalition partner has long enjoyed the reputation of having an eclectic following, but those gathered in Labour’s hall had bought an
The good thing for Labour about Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday was that he didn’t talk about the deficit, or welfare or other thorny issues which make certain sections of the party very grumpy indeed. The Labour leader made only fleeting references to cuts to public services, too. So there was little to disagree on. It
Sir Richard Branson is not a man who takes kindly to failing to get his own way. That was why few people were surprised by the Virgin boss’ furious response to the government’s decision to award the West Coast Mainline to his rivals First Group. It wasn’t fair, he protested, and thousands of people seemed
