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.
Liz Truss’s Downing Street press conference has made everything worse, as far as Tory MPs are concerned. As soon as it was over, a number of backbenchers who had supported Truss for leader were locked into a call with Thérèse Coffey, the PM’s closest friend in Parliament and the Deputy Prime Minister. Those on the
Can sacking Kwasi Kwarteng really save Liz Truss’s premiership? In the past few minutes, the chancellor has had a meeting with the Prime Minister – and he has now left the government. Tory MPs have spent the past week doing a lot of writing. The first thing many of them have been writing is a
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After a day of speculation, the rumours that Liz Truss was about to U-turn on more areas of the mini-budget proved untrue. Conservative MPs had a tense evening in the 1922 Committee meeting last night – are there any good options left for the Prime Minister? Isabel Hardman speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.
Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions taught us two things. The first was that Keir Starmer has still got a long way to go before he is the one putting Liz Truss on the ropes. The second is that Truss has got a long way to go before she isn’t putting herself on the ropes instead. It
Tory MPs were in an anxious mood as they returned to the Commons this afternoon after weeks of conference recess and government meltdown. Their first session in parliament was, appropriately enough, Treasury questions, where they had a chance to air some of their anxieties with the Chancellor and his team. It could have been a
In the past few minutes, Conor Burns has been told to leave the government after a complaint of ‘serious misconduct’ was made against him. Downing Street has released a statement saying: Following a complaint of serious misconduct, the Prime Minister has asked Conor Burns MP to leave the government with immediate effect. The Prime Minister
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Liz Truss attended the European Political Community summit in Prague, where her frosty relations with Macron came to a head. Rather than ‘frenemies’, there were signs of thawing relations between the two. After years of diplomatic tensions over Brexit, immigration and energy, can the two leaders kiss and make up? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel
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Liz Truss has today delivered her speech to the Conservative Party Conference where she set out the vision for her government. It was arguably the best moment of a difficult week for the party. Has she succeeded in calming Tory nerves? Who are the ‘anti-growth coalition’ that she is taking on? Isabel Hardman speaks to
Liz Truss’s speech at Conservative party conference was workmanlike; she performed the task she’d set out to do. It was helped by a brief protest in the middle by Greenpeace, which allowed the Prime Minister to drive home her point about an ‘anti-growth coalition’ to a hall that was united in willing her on and
Iain Duncan Smith is the latest senior Tory to speak out against cutting benefits by not uprating them in line with inflation. The former work and pensions secretary and party leader told a ConservativeHome fringe on Universal Credit this morning that he thought it was a ‘peculiar debate’ to be having, adding: Almost certainly there
With a wearying inevitability, Liz Truss has gone from one row to another. One of her own cabinet ministers, Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, has warned her against cutting benefits. She told Times Radio: ‘I’ve always supported – whether it’s pensions, whether it’s our welfare system – keeping pace with inflation. It makes sense
Tory conference has long been more stage-managed than other party meetings, but this year the official speeches from ministers have also been condensed into a very strange late afternoon slot lasting just two hours. The rest of the time is free for fringe meetings and plotting. Ministers and their aides have been told they have
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Kwasi Kwarteng has just spoken at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham defending his mini-Budget, despite having u-turned on the cut to the 45p tax rate this morning. Will his speech have calmed his fellow Tories and, more importantly, the markets? Katy Balls speaks with James Forsyth, Kate Andrews and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Max
Kwasi Kwarteng’s speech to Tory conference was an attempt to get his party back behind him after his U-turn on the 45p rate. He acknowledged it a number of times in his address, opening by saying it had been a ‘tough’ day, but insisted that the government needed to keep going. The members in the
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As the NHS turns 74, the service has never been under so much strain. The pandemic has created record waiting lists of almost seven million in England alone. Every month, tens of thousands of accident and emergency patients are left to wait for more than 12 hours with ambulances queuing up outside. Other long-term challenges
Most Tory MPs went to bed last night convinced that their party was heading for an almighty showdown over the 45p tax rate. In the bars and parties of the conference in Birmingham, both Conservatives who were loyal to Liz Truss and those who were less-than-loyal were confident of one thing: she wouldn’t fold quickly.
Does Liz Truss really believe in levelling up? She doesn’t talk about it that much, and it wasn’t really a major feature of the ‘fiscal event’ recently (though given the way that’s gone, this might not be a bad thing). This evening Levelling Up Minister Dehenna Davison insisted that it really was still a thing.
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The UK was the first country in the world to begin its formal vaccine rollout, starting with the 91 year old Margaret Keenan. In the years since, the pandemic has been almost entirely routed in this country (though its impact on the economy, on healthcare, on the criminal justice system, continue to be suffered). But
Now that delegates have sung reedily along to the ‘Red Flag’ and ‘Jerusalem’, Labour is going home from its annual conference feeling pretty pleased with itself. Keir Starmer’s speech went very well, members were in an excited mood, and frontbenchers sounded serious and sober. But it’s not as though any of this has actually sealed
Wednesday morning at Labour conference is back to being the graveyard shift, with the delegates who are still there nursing hangovers and sharing videos of the speakers on the stage doing karaoke the night before. But this morning’s session covered two of the most important public services from two of the party’s rising stars –