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.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Ed Miliband defines socialism and capitalism

Ed Miliband has long made responsible capitalism a primary concern of his leadership, and in today's Telegraph, the Labour leader has a stab at explaining a little more of what he wants it to look like. He has lately taken to pointing out that his speech to his party's conference last autumn which so confused people with its talk of predators has come good following scandals such as Libor. MPs in his party hope that he will point this out once again when he gives his conference speech in just a few weeks' time. But enlarging on this theme now, he tells Charles Moore this: 'But I believe capitalism is the least worst system we’ve got. I believe in the creativity of Blackberry [picking up his], or whatever. But I want it to be more decent, more humane, more fraternal.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

Has Grant Shapps scrapped boundary hopes?

The Liberal Democrats' decision to scupper the boundary reforms gave them two advantages for 2015. The first was obvious: they would not lose the seats that the Boundary Commission would have scrapped. The second is that they - and Labour - were able to start selecting their candidates for the next general election on the basis of the existing boundaries a full year ahead of the Conservatives, who would continue to wait for parliament to approve those changes. ConHome reveals today that Grant Shapps has changed that policy in order to prevent the Tories falling behind in their 2015 campaigning. The Conservatives will also use the existing constituency boundaries.

Isabel Hardman

Wanted: superhuman central banker

The race to replace Sir Mervyn King started today when an advert searching for the next Bank of England governor appeared in the Economist. It wasn't a particularly exciting start to the race: William Hill has named Paul Tucker the favourite to succeed Sir Mervyn. He is currently 7/4 to get the job. Tucker is the deputy governor of the Bank currently, and based on his job title alone, the odds would hardly be surprising. But remember that this is the man who made a meal of his appearance before the Treasury Select Committee in July, uttering the strange phrase that 'we thought it was a malfunctioning market, not a dishonest one' when it came to suspicions about manipulations of Libor. It says a great deal about the other candidates that Tucker came out top.

Isabel Hardman

Vince Cable strives to show he is not obstacle to growth

Vince Cable is today announcing that the government will not be taking up Sir Adrian Beecroft's 'fire-at-will' proposals to allow bosses to sack underperforming staff without risking unfair dismissal claims. There was no great appetite for the plan, the Business Secretary will say, arguing that 34 per cent of small businesses consulted by his department were in favour, with 32 per cent against and 30 per cent unsure. Though many Tory MPs embraced the idea of 'fire-at-will' as a means of encouraging firms to take on more employees without the fear of costly consequences if the arrangement did not work out, others within the party were uneasy that they might damage the mortgage market by making lenders extremely reluctant to offer loans to people, even if they had months of payslips.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

MPs pile in to EU referendum group

As previewed on Coffee House last week, John Baron today launched his all-party group calling for an EU referendum. He has so far managed to bring more than 50 MPs on board, along with a good number of Labour MPs. DUP MPs will also attend. The first meeting will be on 16 October. Yesterday José Manuel Barroso gave momentum to the group's calls for a vote on Britain's membership of the EU by pushing for greater political union. He said: A deep and genuine economic and monetary union, a political union, with a coherent foreign and defence policy, means ultimately that the present European Union must evolve. Let’s not be afraid of the words: we will need to move towards a federation of nation states. This is what we need. This is our political horizon.

Isabel Hardman

Boris seeks rebel representative in the Commons

Boris Johnson is on the look-out for a ring-leader in parliament for his push against the expansion of Heathrow, I understand. His people have been calling around sympathetic backbench MPs trying to persuade one of them to head up the campaign in the Commons. On first glance, Zac Goldsmith might have been an obvious choice, given his talks with the Mayor of London about a by-election in his seat if the government does U-turn on a third runway. But Boris wants someone who is less of an individual within the party who can co-ordinate backbenchers in a revolt. Presumably he also needs an MP who can spearhead not just the aviation campaign in the Commons, but also aid Boris' return to parliament from within if Goldsmith does leave in a blaze of fury.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron’s moving Hillsborough statement

In many ways, today showed this current Parliament and the Prime Minister at their best. David Cameron hadn't brought Flashman with him to Prime Minister's Questions today in any case, but for his statement on the Hillsborough tragedy, he adopted a solemn and respectful tone. The whole chamber was still, save for sharp intakes of breath from MPs as horrifying findings from today's report from the Hillsborough independent panel were read to them. The worst was that many more - possibly 41 -  lives could have been saved had the response to the disaster been adequate. 'Anyone who has lost a child knows the pain never leaves you.

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove rebuffs calls for a GCSE remark

Michael Gove faced a tough grilling from MPs on the Education Select Committee this morning about the row over GCSE English results. But the Education Secretary gave as good as he got, launching a fierce attack on the Welsh education minister Leighton Andrews for putting children in Wales at what he said was a disadvantage by ordering a remark of the papers. He told the packed committee room: 'I believe that the children who have been disadvantaged are children in Wales. I think the decision by the Welsh education minister, Leighton Andrews, is irresponsible and mistaken.

Isabel Hardman

Osborne to drop debt target to avoid ‘nightmare’ cuts

George Osborne is in for a really rocky autumn to follow the dismal summer he's just survived as chancellor. The Times and the Guardian are both reporting this morning that the Chancellor is set to drop his key fiscal target of having public sector net debt as a proportion of GDP falling by 2015 as a result of higher government borrowing and lower tax receipts. Osborne has decided that the political fallout from abandoning this target, which he has long touted as a sign of the success of his policies, would be smaller than the 'nightmare' of further cuts, particularly the £10 billion cuts to the welfare budget.  Jonathan wrote in July about the approach of a 'hideous choice' for the Chancellor if growth downgrades continue.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg: I don’t think gay marriage opponents are bigots

Nick Clegg is currently eating a Ben & Jerry's ice cream called 'Appley Ever After' with gay marriage campaigners celebrating the government's consultation on introducing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Things didn't go all that appley for the Deputy Prime Minister earlier today, though, when the Cabinet Office sent out what he later claimed was a draft of his speech that he was never going to give, which said: 'Continued trouble in the economy gives the bigots a stick to beat us with, as they demand we “postpone” the equalities agenda in order to deal with “the things people really care about”. As if pursuing greater equality and fixing the economy simply cannot happen at once.

Isabel Hardman

How a new whip saved a new minister from an embarrassing rebellion

It was not the ideal first outing for a new minister at a committee approving new legislation. Justice Minister Helen Grant arrived at the committee considering two compensation schemes last night to discover Conservative backbenchers in uproar. None of the MPs had been able to get their hands on the explanatory notes for the legislation, which covers the Victims of Overseas Terrorism Compensation Scheme 2012 and the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme 2012. So they did not know, until they arrived at the evening meeting, that they would be expected to approve sweeping cuts to compensation for postmen attacked by dangerous dogs and other victims of crime.

Isabel Hardman

Picking the next Bank of England Governor

Treasury questions is one of the more entertaining spectacles on offer in the Commons. There's the standard banter between George Osborne and Ed Balls - today we saw the Chancellor dub his opposite number 'the member for Unite west', with Ed Balls noting in his reply that at least he'd only been heckled by a few trade unionists rather than the entire Olympic stadium. There were new ministers to welcome too: Greg Clark received such a warm cheer that he joked he felt 'like Boris Johnson'. But the centrepiece of the session was - along with the confirmation that the Autumn Statement will take place on the rather wintery date of 5 December - George Osborne's announcement about the appointment of the next Bank of England governor.

Isabel Hardman

UK trade deficit narrows

It's been a funny 24 hours, hasn't it? The UK has had good news from the tennis and good news on the economy. Unusual, particularly in the latter's case, where the news may appear better than it actually is. Figures from the Office for National Statistics released today show the UK's trade deficit narrowed to £1.5 billion in July from a £4.3 billion deficit in June. There was a 9.3 per cent rise in exports of goods to £25.8 billion, and a 2.1 per cent drop in imports by £700 million to £32.9 billion. Before everyone gets too excited, though, the dramatic rise is partly down to June's figures being so terrible after the disruption caused by the Queen's Diamond Jubilee bank holiday.

Isabel Hardman

No re-mark of GCSE English

Any hope that Labour might hold that the latest revelations about Ofqual might prompt a re-mark of the GCSE English papers is almost certain to be disappointed. Even though Welsh exam papers are being re-graded, I understand that the same is not going to happen in England. A source close to education secretary Michael Gove says: 'A small number getting lucky in January isn't a reason to give everyone else an inflated mark now. GCSE exams and marking systems are discredited. We said this years ago and the education establishment complained. We got rid of modularisation, introduced by Labour, and said we need to replace a broken system - and Labour and the unions complained that we were moving too fast.

Isabel Hardman

Briefing: Universal Credit

MPs are due to debate the government's plans for universal credit in the House of Commons this afternoon. The Opposition Day motion questions whether ministers have 'failed to properly account for numerous basic details of how the scheme will work', and calls for them to address 'deep flaws' in the project. So where is the project at the moment, and what are those deep problems? The background Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith unveiled the universal credit at the Conservative party conference in 2010. It was based on the work that his think tank, the Centre for Social Justice had carried out when Duncan Smith was in opposition, and led to the publication of a white paper called 'Universal Credit: welfare that works' in November 2010.

Isabel Hardman

Vince Cable calls time on ‘laissez-faire’

Vince Cable's speech on the government's industrial strategy today is expected to signal the end of a 'laissez-faire' approach to business. But the Business Secretary appeared un peu trop détendu himself when describing plans for a state-backed business bank on the Today programme. 'This is, as I say, something we're discussing within government at the moment. There is a scope for example for rationalising our activities as well as new lending. But the scale and scope is something that I'm discussing with the Chancellor at the moment.' There wasn't much detail on offer, other than that this bank 'may well' involve state lending. But as Sam Coates points out this morning, a real bank would take years to set up.

Isabel Hardman

Ofqual pressured exam board on English GCSE

If any members of the education select committee were wondering if they would have enough questions for their witnesses today, last night's scoop from the Times Educational Supplement might give them a few pointers. Leaked letters seen by the newspaper show exams regulator Ofqual pressured the Edexcel exam board to raise the grade boundaries on its English GCSE just two weeks before the summer results were published. A letter from Ofqual's director of standards Dennis Opposs to Edexcel on 7 August 2012 says: 'This may require you to move grade boundary marks further than might normally be required.' Though Edexcel disagreed, saying its proposed grades were 'fair', Opposs pushed the board again, arguing it was obliged to ensure its results were consistent with other boards.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Iain Duncan Smith denies threat to universal credit

Allowing Iain Duncan Smith to dig his heels in at the Work and Pensions department in last week's reshuffle sent out two messages. The first was that the Prime Minister is not as authoritative as he should be: telling someone that you'd rather they moved to one department, but that it's ok for them to remain where they are isn't exactly 'butch', to borrow the PM's own favourite word. The second is that the Prime Minister was worried about the future of the DWP's reforms, and was keen to put someone else in charge of implementing the behemoth computer system for the universal credit, even though events meant he was unable to do so. Liam Byrne prodded Duncan Smith on this today at Work and Pensions questions.

Isabel Hardman

Where Brendan Barber has a point

Brendan Barber's last speech as General Secretary to the annual TUC Congress in Brighton made a salient point about what politicians can learn about the private sector from the G4S debacle. Ministers may well dismiss the majority of Barber's comments about cuts and labour market reform without poring through the transcript, but there was one attack that he made that will ring true for those on the right as well as the trade union officials sitting in the conference hall. Using the Olympics as his grand theme, Barber said: 'Private is always better than public, they argue. Not true, as we saw all too clearly when it came to Olympic security.' He added: 'Congress, it's right to celebrate the Olympics, but it's even more important to learn from them.

Isabel Hardman

Boris muscles in on Davies’ airport inquiry

Boris Johnson has already denied that the work he is carrying out on airport capacity in London is a rival commission to the one set up by the Government and led by Sir Howard Davies. 'I was a bit flummoxed by that,' he told LBC this morning. 'What we're doing is we are going ahead with our contribution to the Howard Davies commission.' It doesn't actually matter whether the Mayor is holding an inquiry called the Johnson Inquiry Into Airports, with its own logo and press launch, or whether he's actually just calling experts together to develop a detailed submission to the Davies Commission as he suggests he is. The point is that in nine months' time, two years before the government's commission reports, Boris will announce his own solutions to the demand for greater aviation capacity.