Isabel Hardman

Rishi Sunak’s big pitch this weekend is to grip the NHS waiting list crisis. It makes political sense, given the terrifying size of these lists now, with some trusts declaring their waits ‘unmanageable’. By the time of the next election, the crisis in the NHS is going to seem monstrous. Ethical concerns tend to end

After the last televised leadership debate was cancelled when Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak pulled out, we asked the remaining three candidates if they would come on SpectatorTV to face questions before Tory MPs’  final vote. (Since going to press the contenders will have been whittled down to two.) This is an edited transcript of

Does Penny Mordaunt know what she’s getting herself into? One of her most striking promises is to give MPs something called ‘social capital pots’: cash to spend in their constituencies. They are part of her attempt to soothe colleagues by describing them as ‘people who want to serve’ – and to weaken the power of

Is Boris Johnson going to turn up to Prime Minister’s Questions next week? The final answer he gave to Keir Starmer at today’s session suggested he either thought this was his valedictory PMQs, or that he’s planning to be elsewhere next Wednesday. He said the next leader might be chosen by ‘acclamation’ – which doesn’t

Today’s the day in the Tory leadership race where it starts to look less like a fun run with anyone and everyone taking part. By this evening, candidates need to have the backing of at least 20 of their MP colleagues. Rishi Sunak, Penny Mordaunt and Tom Tugendhat are the only candidates out of a

What did Sajid Javid pitch himself as this afternoon? Well, the candidate of tax cuts, along with all the others apart from Rishi Sunak. But given everyone is engaged in an arms race on how big and how soon their tax cuts will be, there is largely Conservative consensus now that these are going to

All the candidates in this Tory leadership contest will have to pay tribute to the importance of standards in public life, given what did for Boris Johnson. For some of them, this will probably be as meaningful as posting a #bekind meme on social media. But if there isn’t a wider reckoning over standards and

Boris Johnson has just given a bitter resignation speech that makes clear he is not going anywhere until a new leader is in place. He has set up a betrayal narrative, pointedly thanking the British public – but not his own party – for his time in office and saying it would be ‘eccentric’ to