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.
Boris Johnson is today launching the Welsh Conservatives’ manifesto. For the Tories, this event comes with a trigger warning: it was where Theresa May defended her party’s social care U-turn in 2017 after its disastrous manifesto launch. The clip of her insisting that ‘nothing has changed’ became one of the defining moments of the election
It’s late afternoon in the car park of Workington Asda. A little crowd is gathering in one corner, most of them clutching cameras and tripods. We’re not here to find ‘Workington Man’, the supposed archetypal voter who apparently all the parties need to court to win this election. Instead, Workington men and women — and
Can Priti Patel really stand in Barrow-in-Furness, which has some of the most deprived wards in the country, and say that the government isn’t responsible for poverty? The Home Secretary’s comments to the BBC’s North West Tonight have unsurprisingly gone viral because of the juxtaposition between the charity she was visiting and the stridency with
The Liberal Democrats may have brought confetti canons to their manifesto launch, but they have still struggled to get as much attention today as they hoped, given Boris Johnson’s loose lips on the National Insurance threshold cut. They are also – by leader Jo Swinson’s own admission – suffering a squeeze in the polls. The
The Conservatives are naturally very determined not to repeat the mistakes of the last election campaign, particularly when it came to the way the party’s manifesto was ‘dumped’ on an unsuspecting public in the middle of the campaign. Campaign aides say the 2017 mistake was not to roll the pitch in the run-up to the
No one has much certainty about what sort of government we will end up with after this election. Even when they are being totally honest in private, neither of the two main parties will really say they’re confident they can get a majority. The Tories hope they have a good chance of getting a decent
In the past few minutes, Tom Watson has announced that he is stepping down at this election. In a surprise letter, the Labour deputy leader says his decision is ‘personal, not political’ and that he is ‘not leaving politics altogether’. In the meantime, he wants to spend more time campaigning on public health. After 35
This election is going to be particularly discombobulating for the ex-Tory MPs who are now independents. Even though all three of them – David Gauke, Anne Milton and Dominic Grieve – have been through at least four elections each (Grieve has been an MP since 1997, while Gauke and Milton were elected in 2005), this
Are MPs really fleeing parliament in their droves, having decided that it’s just too mean and dysfunctional a place to stay? There have been so many resignations over the past couple of weeks that you might be forgiven for wondering if there will be any MPs, let alone women MPs, in Westminster at all after
Nicky Morgan has announced she is standing down as a Conservative MP at the next election. She isn’t the first to say she’s off, but what’s different about this resignation is that Morgan is a serving member of Boris Johnson’s cabinet. In her resignation letter, she cites the need to send more time with her
Amber Rudd was one of the more high profile ex-Tory MPs, quitting the cabinet and the party whip in protest at the way her colleagues who had rebelled on taking control of the order paper had been treated. It is therefore particularly awkward that her status has become the subject of such controversy. This morning,
Heidi Allen has announced she is standing down at the election, citing the culture of abuse and intimidation in politics as one of the reasons. In a letter to her constituents, she writes: ‘I am exhausted by the invasion into my privacy and the nastiness and intimidation that has become commonplace. Nobody in any job
Would anyone want an election after witnessing this afternoon’s Commons debate on the matter? Both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn have just produced rambling, slightly nonsensical speeches arguing their corner. The Prime Minister wants an election. The Leader of the Opposition does not. Neither offered much that was convincing to support those stances. Johnson’s main
The stronger the prospect of a general election, the easier it will be for Boris Johnson to get through the week that Britain was supposed to be leaving the European Union. He had said he would rather ‘be dead in a ditch’ than miss the deadline, but is now taking a two-pronged approach to distracting
Keith Vaz is facing the longest suspension in history after the Commons Standards Committee found he had breached the MPs’ Code of Conduct by paying two male escorts for sex and offering to cover the cost of cocaine for a third man. The Committee – which is made up of MPs and lay members, said
One of the defining themes of this week has been the government threatening to do something dramatic, before manifestly not carrying out that threat. We’ve had No. 10 sources claiming Boris Johnson would pull his Withdrawal Agreement Bill if MPs voted down the programme motion, only for the Prime Minister to announce he is ‘pausing’
Nothing in Caroline Flint’s CV would have marked her out as someone who would end up marshalling 19 of her fellow Labour MPs through the ‘aye’ lobby to vote for Boris Johnson’s deal. One of the original ‘Blair babes’, she went on to become Gordon Brown’s minister for Europe. She campaigned for Remain in the
Boris Johnson has cancelled his appearance before the Commons Liaison Committee tomorrow morning, arguing that he feels he should devote himself to trying to secure a Brexit deal. In a rather last-minute cancellation, the Prime Minister has written a personal note to the Committee’s chair Dr Sarah Wollaston in which he argues that it would
The debate on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is as noisy as you might expect, given how high emotions are on both sides. What is less predictable is whether MPs will be debating the legislation tomorrow, or whether the government will pull the bill after losing its programme motion vote tonight. It’s not clear where the
Appropriately, given the length of time it has taken politicians of all colours to continue putting off taking any sort of decision on Brexit, the government has decided to try to break the legislative speed record this week by rushing through the Withdrawal Agreement Bill in just a few days. Leader of the House Jacob
