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.

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Assange’s balcony scene

From our UK edition

Julian Assange appeared in public for the first time in two months this afternoon to make a statement about his continuing resistance to attempts to extradite him. The Wikileaks founder made a number of claims and arguments which it's useful to have a look at in further detail: 1. 'If the UK did not throw away the Vienna conventions the other night, it was because the world was watching'. Foreign Secretary William Hague has insisted that there are no plans to 'storm' the Ecuadorian embassy to arrest Assange. Either officers will attempt to arrest him when he leaves the building for Ecuador (although there is an interesting theory he may try to do this disguised in some sort of package, as diplomatic parcels cannot be examined by the police. Let's see how well that one works out...

Isabel Hardman

Darling: Osborne has given up on growth

From our UK edition

'Unless you do something now it will be years before we recover.' This morning those words come from former chancellor Alistair Darling in an open letter to George Osborne, but they could just as easily be from a member of his own backbench, or from Boris. Darling's letter, published in the Sunday People, accuses both Mr Osborne and the Bank of England of having 'given up on any plan for growth'. 'Your policies since 2010 simply haven't worked, you need another plan - call it plan B, call it whatever you like,' he writes. He's essentially saying the same thing as Boris Johnson did this week, but using slightly more polite words than 'pussyfooting': expansion of London's aviation capacity, more houses, replacing power stations and investment in rail.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Police commissioners: how a flagship policy could embarrass ministers

From our UK edition

The staggeringly low turnout that the Electoral Reform Society is predicting for November's Police and Crime Commissioner elections comes as little surprise to those involved in organising the vote. In fact, I was quite surprised that the ERS expects a turnout as high as 18.5 per cent, and I suspect the Home Office might be, too. Nick Herbert betrayed his nerves about the turnout earlier this week when he was harangued by Evan Davis on the Today programme. Today the ERS' chief executive Katie Ghose predicted that this could be a 'perfect storm, which could result in the lowest turnout for a national election in British history' and could 'degenerate into a complete shambles'.

Isabel Hardman

The losers of the Libor scandal

From our UK edition

The Treasury Select Committee published its stinging report into Libor today, and it makes uncomfortable reading for all involved. 'That doesn't look good,' committee chair Andrew Tyrie said when describing the failure of both the FSA and the Bank of England to spot the manipulation at the time. His committee's report also pointed out that things did not look good for Bob Diamond's 'highly selective' evidence, either, saying: 'The committee found Mr Diamond's attempt to subdivide the later period of wrongdoing [following his telephone conversation with Paul Tucker] neither relevant nor convincing.

Friday

Isabel Hardman

The weak contract worth £100 million

From our UK edition

Moving people off sickness benefits and back into the workplace was never going to be an easy job. It's a sensitive process dealing with all the grey areas that complex illnesses and disabilities throw up, and has always needed careful handling. But today ministers came under fire for the way they hold the company that carries out the assessments for fitness-to-work decisions to account. The National Audit Office has identified weaknesses in the Work and Pensions department's contract with Atos Healthcare, which carries out the work capability assessments.

Isabel Hardman

The green belt isn’t as green and pleasant as you’d think

From our UK edition

The two best fights to watch in Westminster this autumn will be about land: the shape of constituencies, and where developers will be allowed to build the new homes that ministers are increasingly seeing as the best solution to Britain's growth problem. Tim Shipman reports in the Daily Mail today that the Quad is 'thinking the unthinkable' and considering relaxing rules around building on the green belt as part of those planning reforms that Eric Pickles and colleagues are dreading. Cue outrage and news reports featuring photographs of beautiful rolling green meadows. Sources in the Communities and Local Government say they do not recognise the Mail's report. But why is the green belt so sacred?

Isabel Hardman

Ministers fail to sell themselves on playing field sell-offs

From our UK edition

If you're a minister, or even the Prime Minister, and you take to the airwaves holding a page of figures aloft, it's always a good idea to make sure the figures are actually correct before you enter the studio. When David Cameron read out a break down of playing field sales on LBC radio during the Olympics, he was trying to crush reports that under this government, schools are continuing to reduce their sports facilities in return for money. You can watch the film of Cameron with his sheet of paper here. The problem is that this sheet of paper wasn't actually correct when it said there were only 21 sell-offs, and as Christopher Hope reveals in today's Telegraph, there were actually 35 applications to sell school playing fields, of which 30 were approved.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Hague stands firm on Assange

From our UK edition

William Hague took a robust line on Julian Assange at his press conference this evening. He made clear that the British government would not allow the Wikileaks founder safe passage out of the UK, and warned against using diplomatic immunity as a means of 'escaping regular process of the courts'. Assange is wanted in Sweden on allegations that he raped one woman and sexually assaulted another in August 2010. He denies both charges and has spent the past 56 days hiding in Ecuador's embassy, where it was today confirmed that he is being granted political asylum. The police still intend to arrest Assange as soon as he leaves the embassy, but Hague's press conference locks the foreign secretary into stand-off with his Ecuadorian counterpart, Ricardo Patino.

Isabel Hardman

Housebuilding slumps

From our UK edition

If ministers needed any more encouragement to improve the supply of new homes in this country, today's figures on house building starts and completions from the Communities and Local Government department might just do it. Housing starts in England in the three months to the end of June fell by 10 per cent on the previous quarter. If you compare the figure for starts in this quarter to those in the same quarter last year, there has been a 24 per cent drop. The number of completions has also fallen by five per cent between the first and second quarters of this year, but has risen seven per cent on last year. If you burrow into the figures, which you can find here, you'll also see a sharp drop in the number of housing association homes being built since last year.

Isabel Hardman

A-level results crib sheet

From our UK edition

This year's coverage of A-levels has been a little different to that in previous years. Sure, there are still plenty of blonde twins coming out of the woodwork to take impressively high jumps in the air but there are no headlines about results breaking new records for the proportion of top marks awarded, and that's because tough new rules on the exams came into effect this year. Last year results remained static for the first time in a decade, and this year, they saw a drop. The number of marks at A or above fell 0.4 per cent to 27 per cent of total grades awarded. Just under 7.9 per cent of entries were marked at the top A* grade, a fall from 8.2 per cent in 2011. The overall pass rate has only increased marginally to just under 98 per cent.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Boris accuses Cameron of ‘pussyfooting’ on growth

From our UK edition

Last week Boris Johnson was in jellyfish mode, drifting along and delivering the occasional sly sting to the coalition. Now that the Olympics are over, the Mayor has launched something of a shark attack on his Westminster colleagues. In an interview with the Evening Standard, Boris accuses ministers of 'pussyfooting' and calls for the government to 'make a very powerful statement of ambition for London' involving new infrastructure and even a new airport: 'The government needs to stop pussyfooting around. I don't think you can rely on Heathrow. Even if the government was so mad and wrong to try to do the third runway or mixed-mode, those solutions would rapidly run out of usefulness and time.

Isabel Hardman

Good jobs news goes against grain

From our UK edition

Ministers are generally cautious in welcoming falls in unemployment in case they represent a blip for just one quarter. But Iain Duncan Smith was pretty chipper this morning when the Office for National Statistics announced a fall in the jobless stats for the fifth quarter running and the strongest employment rise since the middle of 2010. In the three months to June 2012, 29 million people were in work, up by 201,000 on the previous quarter. The employment rate rose by 0.4 per cent to 71 per cent, and there are 4,000 fewer unemployed young people.  The number of unemployed people fell by 46,000 to 2.56 million.

Isabel Hardman

A nice new row for the coalition

From our UK edition

When Nick Clegg announced he was giving up the struggle on House of Lords reform, he named a number of policy areas that could fill the huge legislative void left by the collapse of the plans to overhaul the upper chamber. One of them was banking, and the Deputy Prime Minister told journalists it might be worth examining whether it was possible to go further than the Vickers proposals on this area. Today's Financial Times fleshes out what going further might entail. Vickers had originally proposed banning the retail operation of a bank from selling interest rate and currency swaps, but this was dropped in the white paper on banking reform. Now Clegg and the Business Secretary Vince Cable want to re-open talks on this issue.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Usain Bolt, tax campaigner

From our UK edition

Living legend Usain Bolt is an unlikely mascot for those who campaign for reform of our tax system, but by confirming that he will continue to avoid competitions in the UK because of the amount of tax he would have to pay, he's now the poster boy for the movement. If he attended races here, he would be taxed 50 per cent on his global sponsorship and endorsement earnings, and on any appearance fees he receives. The Treasury granted an exemption for the Olympics to ensure athletes would not stay away because of the hit on their earnings. 'As soon as the law changes, I'll be here all the time,' Bolt said. This has inevitably attracted the sort of moralising about paying tax that ministers normally make a superb mess of.

Isabel Hardman

Bercow calls ‘no-hopers’ to order

From our UK edition

John Bercow's interview with the World at One was guaranteed to raise a few hackles across Westminster, and he certainly delivered on that by attacking 'totally low-grade, substandard' 'no-hopers' in the media. But well as revealing that he told his mother to stop reading the Daily Mail after reading something unpleasant about him in the newspaper, the Speaker also made some other interesting comments about his own role.

Isabel Hardman

Fares rise brings fresh cost of living woe to Tories

From our UK edition

This morning's announcement that the retail prices index rose to 3.2 per cent in July, up from 2.4 per cent in June, means commuters will see a 6.2 per cent rise in their train fares in January. Fares rises are currently calculated using RPI + 3 per cent. Analysts had predicted RPI would be 2.8 per cent, which means tickets will be even more expensive than originally expected. Don't forget rail fares already saw an average 8 per cent rise at the start of this year. Some tickets will rise by a further five percentage points if other fares on a network are kept lower as a balance. Before he was reshuffled from the transport brief, Philip Hammond described trains as a 'rich man's toy'.

Isabel Hardman

Herbert’s ‘boring waffle’ betrays unease on police commissioners

From our UK edition

'That's just boring waffle!' shouted Evan Davis on Radio 4 this morning when policing minister Nick Herbert refused to give direct answers to his questions on the turnout expected in the police and crime commissioner elections. Herbert repeatedly argued that 'any turnout will confer greater legitimacy' than the current system of unelected police authorities. But his repeated refusal to pin down any figure for the percentage of voters who will trudge out of their homes on a cold and possibly rainy November evening to vote for the commissioners betrayed an unease about how well these elections are going to work out in practice. Herbert and his colleagues will know that a low turnout will be awkward, not least once the new commissioners are in place and start taking unpopular decisions.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Lib Dems toy with airport plans

From our UK edition

The Liberal Democrats published the agenda for their autumn conference today, and one of the motions on the paper is on 'a sustainable future for aviation'. Conference will debate the motion, tabled by Julian Huppert, on Sunday 23 September, and you can read it in full here. In essence, it rejects new runways at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick, and calls for UK aviation policy to be based on: accessibility from north and south, growth with the UK's carbon budgets, minimal impact to the local population, minimal impact on the local environment and maximum hubbing potential. This is not surprising, but if conference approves the motion in full, it will make life awkward for the coalition, which is coming under increasing pressure to increase airport capacity in the South East.

Isabel Hardman

Labour plays a sensible game on school sport

From our UK edition

It would be wrong to say that David Cameron has had a bad Olympics. After all, the Games went extremely well, both in terms of logistics and Britain's wonderful medal haul. The Prime Minister is not responsible for the bouncy mood of the country at the moment, but he's also not having to answer aggressive questions from the media about an awful security breach, total gridlock in central London or worse. But the Prime Minister did rather let himself down by being drawn into the inevitable debate about sports provision in the state education sector during the Games. That discussion started so early into Britain's rise up the medal table that at the time it was impossible to assess whether state-educated athletes were pulling their weight.

Isabel Hardman

The economy needs more than the Olympics to perk it up

From our UK edition

We won't know the economic impact of the Olympics until the GDP figures for the third quarter of this year are released, but today both Boris Johnson and Downing Street tried to strike an upbeat note. In his Telegraph column, the Mayor of London writes: 'As we marvel at what they have done, and the general success of the Games so far, I want to issue a general word of caution to the Olympo-sceptics, who will be itching to return to their gripes. They will say there will be no increase in sporting participation, and no economic benefits, and that we will not succeed in regenerating east London. Well, just remember one thing, everyone. These Olympo-sceptics were proved decisively wrong about the Games. They will be proved wrong about the legacy as well.