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.
Is Boris Johnson a robot? I ask this advisedly, given the connotations of that word in the political arena, but the way the Prime Minister responded to questions from a journalist this afternoon does suggest he might be turning into one. He was asked by ITV’s Joe Pike for a response to the photo of
Believe it or not, there was yet another televised election debate tonight, this time on Channel 4, called the ‘Everything But Brexit’ debate. The Tories had refused to take part, and while their decision will have been partly down to their ongoing battle with the broadcaster, which they have accused of being biased, they will
Jo Swinson had a terrible session on Question Time earlier in the election campaign, but tonight in her interview with Andrew Neil, she showed that it is possible for a leader who believes what they are saying to survive a very tough grilling with their dignity intact. She faced difficult questions on her party’s Brexit
With just over a week to go till polling day, tis the season for endorsements from publications and public figures. We’ve published our leader in tomorrow’s Spectator setting out why this election is too important to not take sides. There’s been plenty of debate about the New Statesman’s unusual refusal to endorse Labour, arguing that
Tonight’s ITV election debate had a slightly different cast to the seven-way BBC programme on Friday night, but its spokespeople offered pretty much the same soundbites throughout the show. It started with the parties arguing about the lessons from the London Bridge attack, with Conservative Rishi Sunak and Labour’s Richard Burgon repeating the lines their
For a seven-way debate which didn’t even feature the two main party leaders, tonight’s BBC election programme was remarkably good. It felt as though it started with a jolt, with all the senior politicians present looking dazed as they struggled to find the words to respond to this afternoon’s terror attack at London Bridge. It
Why did Boris Johnson refuse to attend tonight’s Channel 4 leaders’ debate on the climate? His party has gone to war with the broadcaster, writing to Ofcom before the programme even started to complain about the way the prime Minister had been ’empty-chaired’, a slowly-melting ice sculpture replacing him (and another for Nigel Farage). According
Jeremy Corbyn’s interview with Andrew Neil was one of the most uncomfortable half hours of the Labour leader’s tenure. In contrast to the ITV debate, where he appeared confident and quick-witted, Corbyn struggled to answer questions on a number of different issues, complaining all the while that Neil wouldn’t let him finish. By the end,
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
