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.
Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions ran along such familiar lines that it almost felt like a glitch in the Matrix. Jeremy Corbyn decided to peg his oft-asked questions about the NHS to Stephen Hawking’s death, pointing out that the world-famous scientist was also a passionate defender of the health service. As usual, those questions weren’t great.
Theresa May has been continuing to call Britain’s allies today to discuss the poisoning of Sergei Skripal. She is expected to give a statement to the Commons tomorrow about Russia’s response to the allegation that the state was responsible for the attack, and has been seeking assurances that countries such as France, Germany and the
Labour’s Executive Director for Governance, Membership and Party Services Emilie Oldknow has announced she is leaving, just weeks after Iain McNicol was ousted as General Secretary. At the time, Corbynite insiders had told me that Oldknow was the ‘power behind the throne’ and had been responsible for the real running of HQ as McNicol was
Philip Hammond used to pride himself on being ‘spreadsheet Phil’, the Chancellor who didn’t waste his time on politics because he preferred crunching the numbers. But today’s Spring Statement showed that he has learned the value of being overtly political. It was, as we had expected, an economic statement that was rather thin on the
Theresa May did a good job in uniting the House of Commons today, but someone who did an even better job in bringing together MPs to praise the Prime Minister was Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader’s partisan response to May’s statement on the poisoning of Sergei Skripal so antagonised Conservative MPs and so disappointed many
When she was moved to the Leader of the House position, it appeared as though Andrea Leadsom was being given a low-profile job because she wasn’t performing well in the Cabinet. Whether or not that was the case, Leadsom has actually turned out to be exactly the right person for this role. She proved that
Over the past ten years, mental health has gone from being one of those problems that no-one liked to talk about to something politicians tussle over to show they are the most committed. There is still a stigma floating around certain conditions, and people are still struggling to access the basic treatment that they need.
Theresa May should have had a rather difficult Prime Minister’s Questions today. Jeremy Corbyn chose to lead on the visit of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and then moved onto rough sleeping. Both matters are vulnerabilities for May, and ones Corbyn has consistently made a great deal of noise about. But there were two
Why on earth would we want to put up a statue of Margaret Thatcher in Parliament Square? That’s the question that a number of politicians are asking after the possibility arose once again at the weekend. ‘Steady on,’ said Nicola Sturgeon. Labour’s Chris Bryant was (unsurprisingly, perhaps) rather more verbose. ‘What Mrs Thatcher did to
When Theresa May gave her big housing speech today, in front of a rather strange fake brick backdrop that made the Prime Minister appear to be emerging from a chimney, she was trying to speak to two audiences. The first was those who believe, as she says she does, that the housing crisis is one
Despite the rather muted colours for the staging of her Road to Brexit speech, Theresa May tried to make her address as upbeat and cheerful as it was possible to be. She started by talking not about Brexit but about her agenda, restating a great deal of what she said on the steps of Downing
Yesterday, after Jeremy Corbyn’s speech on Brexit, he moved on from press questions about the substance of his policy change to seeking non-media questions. It was presumably to show that Labour is more interested in the real questions of real people rather than the biased agenda of the press. That real question ended up being
Could the Conservatives crash out of government in the next few months? That’s certainly a prospect that Theresa May’s allies want to talk up in order to scare would-be supporters of Anna Soubry’s amendment on Britain staying in ‘a’ customs union after Brexit. We discuss whether making the amendment a confidence issue is really the
Iain McNicol’s departure from the position of Labour General Secretary has been a very long time coming indeed. He wasn’t Ed Miliband’s first choice for the job, and he certainly wasn’t Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite person at Labour headquarters, either. After the snap election, Corbynites pushed for a ‘purge’ that involved ousting McNicol. They failed, then,
It’s fair to say that the Conservatives’ attempts to use the allegations about Jeremy Corbyn’s links with a Czechoslovakian spy have had mixed results. The high point came when Theresa May managed to produce a joke about blank cheques and Czechs at this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, and everything else has been competing to be
A common question in Westminster is ‘what is the point of the Liberal Democrats?’ The Lib Dems, it turns out, are asking their own existential questions: about PMQs. Since taking over as leader of the party, Vince Cable has been oddly absent from a number of these Wednesday sessions. His office says he has been
Could domestic abuse be the latest policy area to fall foul of the government’s inability to get anything done? It certainly seemed so yesterday when Theresa May told MPs at PMQs that the planned Domestic Violence Bill would not be published in draft form in the next few weeks, as ministers had previously suggested, but
What a convenient inconvenience the row about Jeremy Corbyn’s links with a Czechoslovakian agent is for the Labour leader. While the allegations that he was an informant during the Cold War may well be the ‘nonsense’ that he claims they are (they certainly don’t seem to correlate with anything released at the end of that
What a convenient inconvenience the row about Jeremy Corbyn’s links with a Czechoslovakian agent is for the Labour leader. While the allegations that he was an informant during the Cold War may well be the ‘nonsense’ that he claims they are (they certainly don’t seem to correlate with anything released at the end of that
Poor old Wandsworth Council. After being pilloried in the weekend press for banning children from ever having fun outside ever again, its members are complaining of a stitch up, claiming that they were merely updating by-laws which would allow them to prosecute someone who was drunkenly thrashing about in a tree, rather than a child