Isabel Hardman

A British evacuation of Sudan began last night after a 72-hour ceasefire was agreed. Ministers, however, are anxious about the possibility that the fighting will start up sooner. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said it was ‘impossible for us to predict how long this opportunity will last’. Britons will need to travel to an airfield outside

Rishi Sunak seems keen to stand back from the row about Dominic Raab, offering more of a commentary on it being ‘right’ that the deputy prime minister and Justice Secretary has quit government, rather than accepting that Raab was a bully. His reply to Raab’s resignation letter suggests this, and this afternoon his official spokesman

Does Humza Yousaf really want to be ‘focusing relentlessly on the day job’, as he claimed at First Minister’s Questions today? It’s not a fun day job to focus on. The First Minister naturally had to face questions on the crisis in his own party when he faced MSPs today, with both Douglas Ross and

Keir Starmer had a much better Prime Minister’s Questions than Rishi Sunak today. The main reason for this was that the Labour leader had come with a clear thesis about the Tories breaking public services and Sunak not noticing. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister had brought along a bizarre insult for his opponent. While Starmer ridiculed

It was, by his own admission, a ‘not ideal’ set of circumstances for Humza Yousaf’s speech setting out his priorities as First Minister, with the arrest of the party treasurer just hours before he was due in the Scottish parliament chamber amid the ongoing investigation into the party’s finances. Then again, there were a lot

How long are the NHS strikes going to go on for? The collapse in agreement on nurses’ pay over the Easter recess has made it much harder for ministers to push the British Medical Association towards a deal on junior doctors’ pay, as well as undermining Rishi Sunak’s positioning as someone who gets things done.

Humza Yousaf is now officially the First Minister of Scotland, after Holyrood voted in favour of him taking over from Nicola Sturgeon. Yousaf secured the votes of all his 71 SNP colleagues and Scottish Greens.  The process in Holyrood allows other candidates to nominate themselves for the role too, so the party leaders of the

Unionist politicians are warming up for what they hope will be one of the biggest opportunities of the past two decades to undermine the independence cause. Whoever wins the SNP leadership contest today is taking over a party that doesn’t know its own kind any more – and a government that’s struggling to blame its

It’s tempting to see Keir Starmer as a political wind-up merchant given the number of times he likes to quote people who annoy his own activists. Recently he adopted the ‘take back control’ slogan and today he approvingly quoted Margaret Thatcher. Hell, the man has even praised Tony Blair.  Labour sees an opportunity in the

What was Boris Johnson up to at the Privileges Committee? The former prime minister has just finished more than three hours of evidence on whether he deliberately misled the Commons over partygate. In his opening statement, he said ‘hand on heart, I did not lie to the House’. One of his repeated insistences was that

The money for the NHS pay agreement isn’t new cash, I’m told. This is going to cause a real ruckus with the trade unions, who came away from today’s talks believing that the £2.5 billion deal was extra money from the Treasury. But talking to my sources in government, I now understand that while there

Keir Starmer really padded out his Budget response speech with pre-prepared lines today, to the extent that it was not quite clear what the Labour attack actually is. It’s always the case that replying to the chancellor the moment he finishes speaking is difficult. Occasionally opposition leaders are able to tease out a clear response