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.
The news that Chuka Umunna is getting paid £451 an hour to chair a new centrist think tank will go down very well indeed with some of his Labour colleagues. It’s not so much that those MPs are just delighted for Umunna, as it is that they can use his £65,000 salary to undermine the
Another question to the Prime Minister today that’s worth noting came from Labour MP Danielle Rowley on Universal Credit. She was asking not about the well-known problems with the roll-out of the benefit, but about a flaw with its very design: ‘The Work and Pensions Committee heard evidence that the lack of automatic split payments
Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions was a little shorter than usual. This was partly because, as James says, John Bercow spoke rather less. Normally, the Speaker likes to lecture MPs about how their behaviour will appear to the public, even sometimes using the word ‘bullying’. Such lectures will have considerably less force now, given Bercow is
John Bercow has told friends he is to step down as Speaker, according to the BBC. This follows Dame Laura Cox’s report into bullying and sexual harassment of House of Commons staff which says the existing senior leadership team in the Commons – including the Speaker – are probably incapable of changing the current ‘toxic
Why has Labour decided to give John Bercow at least a stay of execution as Speaker? Emily Thornberry was asked about whether Bercow should go following Dame Laura Cox’s damning report on bullying and harassment in the House of Commons, and argued that she shouldn’t go. She told Sky News: ‘I think this is absolutely
It’s rare that a government pauses the implementation of a flagship policy. There’s so much ego involved in these matters that to do so is to admit a failing, rather than merely being sensible. But the government has had little choice but to further delay the roll-out of Universal Credit while it sorts out some
How could the sort of bullying and sexual harassment detailed in Dame Laura Cox’s report on the treatment of House of Commons staff really have gone on for so long? There were policies in place for dealing with complaints, and on paper everything looked as though it was working well to prevent the rise of
What is the point of a Minister for Suicide Prevention? That Jackie Doyle-Price is taking on the role as part of her portfolio as a health minister is one of the big government announcements on World Mental Health Day, but it’s tempting to ask why on earth Theresa May is making such appointments. Some might
Jeremy Corbyn had the easiest lead into Prime Minister’s Questions today, and he didn’t squander it. He’d had a week to prepare, too, as Theresa May had offered him the lead last Wednesday when she told the Tory conference that austerity is over. So Corbyn took her line and applied it to mental health, policing,
Oh, what a delicious twist in the internal bickering of the Labour party. Chris Williamson, an MP who has spent the past few months touring the country campaigning for the mandatory reselection of his colleagues – or, as he prefers to brand it, a ‘democracy roadshow’ campaigning for all MPs to go through an ‘open
Cabinet ministers toddled up Downing Street this morning in a largely good mood. Most of them were relieved that last week’s Conservative conference hadn’t been the catastrophe that everyone had expected, and many were even happier that the conference had closed with Theresa May declaring that austerity is over. Of course, one of their number
One of the things that the Tory conference taught us was quite how worried the party is about Labour. There was almost a Mean Girls-style obsession with talking about Jeremy Corbyn in speeches on the stage, including Theresa May’s own address at the end of conference, where she returned to the problems with the Labour
Theresa May appeared comfortable on the conference stage today for the first time. It wasn’t just her Dancing Queen entrance or her references to the various nightmares that beset last year’s address. It was also that she was able to defend what she was doing with real passion and conviction. She also offered a good
How does Theresa May plan to reinvigorate her party and send it out, united and happy, after this week’s conference? If the extracts of her speech that have been trailed tonight are anything to go by, it’s not clear that the Prime Minister knows how to answer that question, either. It’s either the case that
If Theresa May’s sole goal for the Tory conference is to survive it, then she’ll likely be less interested in what Boris Johnson was up to at his big ticket rally this afternoon, and more concerned about any comments made by the chairman of the 1922 Committee, Graham Brady. Brady is famously the man who
So much of this Conservative conference has felt like a holding line from the party leadership, as though having the event in Birmingham has been inconvenient timing and something to survive, rather than enjoy. Mind you, this is the theme of Theresa May’s leadership generally: not only has the Prime Minister survived against the odds
One of the stories of this Conservative conference is the contrast between the crowd and atmosphere in the main conference hall, and the popularity of the fringes elsewhere. In previous years, the party has suffered stories about how corporate the whole event is, with members deciding not to bother with the expense of the whole
We may have just witnessed the first outbreak of genuine interest from the Conservative conference floor. Michael Gove was speaking to the not-full room, and bookended his speech with praise for the history of the Tory party. He started by telling the hall that ‘As we know all too well from our history, if you
Philip Hammond’s speech showed quite how insecure the Conservatives are feeling about themselves at the moment. The Chancellor was trying to defend the Tories on their more traditional ground, giving a hug-a-business speech designed to counter both Boris Johnson’s ‘f*** business’ line and the fears expressed by ministers and donors that the party has forgotten
Chris Grayling opened his conference speech by talking about a 50 year delay. Initially he could have been mistaken for describing a standard train journey in the north of England, but he was actually congratulating the government on reaching a decision on aviation capacity. Given the number of delays, cancellations and mistakes in his portfolio,