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.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Hancock survived MPs but questions remain unanswered

Matt Hancock's first attempt to defend himself against the bombardment of allegations from Dominic Cummings went well. The health secretary appeared in the Commons to answer an urgent question from Labour's Jon Ashworth on the matter, and he managed to get through the session without appearing beleaguered. This was partly as a result of a coterie of loyal (to the point of sounding entirely bizarre) Conservative backbenchers who stood up to congratulate the government on not having Cummings in it any more and to thank the health secretary for visiting their local hospital. There had clearly been an energetic effort on the part of Hancock's PPS and the Conservative whips to get a good number of colleagues to turn up and ask such questions.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

What we learnt from the Cummings evidence

17 min listen

From accusing Matt Hancock of criminal incompetence, to lifting the lid on the true nature of his relationship with Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings's evidence was nothing short of explosive. Katy Balls talks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about the highlights and what we learnt. There were few who escaped Cummings's censure. But in some ways, the sheer scale of alleged incompetence means that no one accusation will stick in the way that they might have done had they been made individually.

Isabel Hardman

Matt Hancock may get his revenge tomorrow

Today we heard more than seven hours of testimony from Dominic Cummings, much of it taking aim at Matt Hancock. Tomorrow it looks as though Hancock will give us several hours of his own take on the way the government – and Cummings – handled the pandemic. This evening, a spokesman for the minister said: ‘At all times throughout this pandemic the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care and everyone in DHSC has worked incredibly hard in unprecedented circumstances to protect the NHS and save lives. We absolutely reject Mr Cummings’s claims about the Health Secretary.

Isabel Hardman

Cummings leaves Boris rattled at PMQs

Oh, to be a fly on the wall in Downing Street as Dominic Cummings gave his evidence to the science and technology and the health select committees this morning. As it happens, we had the chance to see Boris Johnson reacting almost in real time to the revelations and allegations from his former aide, because he was taking Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons, with the main exchanges with Sir Keir Starmer falling conveniently in a 15 minute intermission in the evidence session. And the Prime Minister was clearly rattled.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

The local lockdown debacle

What a mess. Ministers have today been defending the decision to place eight areas in what is being called a 'lockdown by stealth', after it turned out that the government had quietly published guidance to slow the spread of the Indian variant without telling anyone in those areas.  That guidance, which pitched up on the gov.uk website at 5.26pm on Friday, told people to avoid indoor meetings and avoid travelling in and out of affected areas unless it is essential. But when journalists from the Manchester Evening News approached local politicians and public health officials, it turned out that they didn't know about this guidance. Which rather begs the question of what the point of it is.

Isabel Hardman

How damaging is the Tory Islamophobia report?

11 min listen

Islamophobia 'remains a problem' in the Conservative party, a report has found. Professor Swaran Singh, who analysed more than a thousand complaints of misconduct for his investigation, said that some Tories needed a 'completely new mindset'. Boris Johnson himself gave evidence to the inquiry, and when asked about his column saying a group of black people had 'watermelon smiles' said: 'Would I use some of the offending language from my past writings today? Now that I am prime minister, I would not.'On the podcast, James Forsyth says: 'There's an interesting question now about whether Boris Johnson goes further. Normally he is very reluctant to get drawn into specific newspaper articles.' And one year on from Dominic Cummings's extraordinary press conference in the No.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

What will Dominic Cummings say?

10 min listen

When Dominic Cummings appears in front of a parliamentary committee on Wednesday, the former aide is expected to attack Whitehall's institutional structure, a lack of government transparency in the pandemic, and the Prime Minister himself.In a still growing Twitter thread, the former aide has laid out his critique of how the government handled Covid-19. He says herd immunity was 'literally the official plan' in March, and that a detailed response was 'bodged amid total & utter chaos.'But how much damage can he do the PM? The Conservatives are just coming out of a successful local election campaign, the country is on course for social restrictions to end on 21 June, and the latest YouGov poll shows just 14 per cent of Brits trust Cummings.

Saturday

Isabel Hardman

Why are councils blocking parkrun?

There are few public health interventions as successful as parkrun. It wasn’t set up as a public health intervention, which may be one of the reasons it has worked so beautifully. The first one was just a group of friends doing a 5k time trial in London’s Bushy Park. But in the years since that first event in 2004, parkrun has spread across the world. It went from being a largely middle-class event for people who already considered themselves runners to being a part of many communities, deliberately expanding into deprived areas and trying to get a slower average time for participants completing the course, because that meant it wasn’t just reaching established runners and fit types.

Isabel Hardman

What could a reformed BBC look like?

14 min listen

Politicians have buttressed Prince William and Prince Harry's criticisms of the BBC in the wake of the Dyson report, which detailed Martin Bashir's forgeries to get access to Princess Diana, and the BBC cover up which ensued. Cindy Yu talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about the renewed scrutiny on the broadcaster.

Thursday

Isabel Hardman

Have the Lidl free marketeers won the day?

12 min listen

Despite some misgivings in Cabinet, free marketeers seem to have won the argument on the Australia trade deal, one of the first major deals to be struck after Brexit. Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about the latest discussions in government.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

Hancock tries to calm holiday confusion

The government is sounding increasingly upbeat about the prospect of sticking to the roadmap. At this evening's coronavirus press briefing, professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the Indian variant was probably no higher than 50 per cent more transmissible than the Kent strain, at least according to initial assessments. Meanwhile, Dr Jenny Harries said there was currently no evidence to suggest that the variant was driving up hospital numbers. But Matt Hancock was keen to remind viewers that 14 June is when the final decision will be taken on whether to stick to 21 June as the unlocking date. The Health Secretary also had to deal with the ongoing confusion over the amber list.

Isabel Hardman

Starmer’s flip-flopping came back to haunt him at PMQs

Prime Minister's Questions today wasn't a particularly easy session for either man taking the main exchanges. For Boris Johnson, it was a struggle to answer what Sir Keir Starmer referred to as a 'simple question that goes to the heart of this issue': if it's not advisable for people to travel to amber list countries unless absolutely necessary, is it now easier for them to do so?  Johnson repeatedly stressed that the government has been clear on travel restrictions, quarantine measures and penalties for failing to observe these rules. But a simple rule in politics is that if you're having to insist you've been clear, then your messages are as clear as mud.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Should Starmer let the cameras in?

11 min listen

Keir Starmer is reportedly thinking about giving access to a camera crew in order to create a fly-on-the-wall documentary about his leadership of the Labour party. Is this a good idea? Isabel Hardman talks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.

Isabel Hardman

Why air kissing has to go

If there is one good thing to come out of this godawful pandemic, please can it be an end to the practice of air kissing? You might have spent the past year longing to give your friends a bear hug, or hold your grand children, but how many of us have really missed one of the most bizarre formal greetings during social distancing? I certainly haven't. In fact, I am desperate for building back better to involve dispensing with this stupid affectation.  The beauty of a handshake is there is only really one way of doing it, and therefore much less room for things to go wrong.

Monday

Isabel Hardman

Could 21 June be delayed?

12 min listen

As England moves into the next phase of its lockdown easing today, the Indian variant threatens to throw the final phase off schedule. Could the government delay 21 June? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

The problem with a Covid inquiry

Will the government learn the lessons of the public inquiry into its handling of the Covid-19 pandemic? Boris Johnson this afternoon confirmed he was indeed setting one up, to begin in Spring 2022. True to form, Sir Keir Starmer complained that the inquiry should start sooner; a point he makes with almost every announcement from the government. Johnson was, also true to form, thinking partly of the political landscape over the coming weeks: announcing an inquiry now means he can appear to be on the front foot with learning lessons when Dominic Cummings gives his long-awaited select committee evidence later this month.

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

Has Angela Rayner got the upper hand?

17 min listen

Carolyn Harris, a key Starmer aide, has resigned her post as his parliamentary private secretary over allegations that she was behind some of the negative briefing against Angela Rayner. On the podcast, Katy Balls talks to James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman about whether Angela Rayner has come out of Labour's scrap, on top.

Isabel Hardman

Respect for Rayner is growing after Starmer’s failed sacking

The resignation of Carolyn Harris as Sir Keir Starmer's parliamentary private secretary (more here from Steerpike) shows that the peace between Angela Rayner and the Labour leader is very much on Rayner's terms. Harris is reported to have left the job after being accused of spreading baseless rumours about the deputy leader's private life. There have been furious briefings from both sides over the past few days but Rayner has not had to sack anyone from her side, showing she has ended up with more power than Starmer. A number of her frontbench colleagues are also seriously impressed by the way in which she negotiated her new lengthy job title over the weekend, saying it showed how in control of things she was compared to Starmer.

Isabel Hardman

Does No. 10 really have a plan for social care?

Is the government ever going to reform social care? After a lengthy row between No. 10 and the Treasury, the Queen’s speech does include a promise that ‘proposals on social care reform will be brought forward.’ The stand-off wasn't just over how much those proposals will cost, but the design itself. Perhaps this is why the briefing accompanying the speech is so very light on what the government plans to do. All we know is that the Health and Care Bill ‘will include provisions to improve the oversight of how social care is commissioned and delivered, and facilitate greater integration between health and care services by placing Integrated Care Systems on a statutory footing across the UK, putting more power and autonomy in the hands of local systems.