Isabel Oakeshott is a former Political Editor of the Sunday Times and is now International Editor of Talk TV
I am in Dubai where we are doing our best to keep calm and carry on. Granted, the sudden instruction to “seek immediate shelter’ in the early hours of Sunday morning was unnerving, but with the exception of excitable “influencers,” few people are cowering in their basements. On Saturday evening, I’d hotfooted it to the
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Matt Hancock gave evidence at the Covid inquiry today. The former health secretary said that ‘the doctrine was wrong’, care home preparation was ‘terrible’ and improper planning was an ‘absolute tragedy’. But why was it accepted that harsher lockdowns would’ve helped? Max Jeffery speaks to Isabel Oakeshott and Fraser Nelson. Produced by Max Jeffery.
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Isabel Oakeshott is a journalist and author of numerous political biographies, formerly the political editor for the Sunday Times. She’s known for a number of scoops over the years, including Chris Huhne’s speeding ticket and revealing Matt Hancock’s lockdown WhatsApps. On the episode, she talks to Katy about why toughness was a quality her parents
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Matt Hancock and I have almost nothing in common. For starters I’m terrified of spiders and hopelessly squeamish. I physically retched as I watched him eating unmentionables in the Australian jungle. Far more importantly, we fundamentally disagree over his handling of the pandemic. The passage of time has not left me any less angry about
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When Rishi Sunak resigned over Boris Johnson’s leadership, he acknowledged that it might be the end of his political career. His dreams of leading the Tory party already seemed over, thanks to his wealthy wife’s non-dom status. In a few short weeks, the Tory party did something quite extraordinary, and forgot about all that. Setting
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In Barnsley it’s a pork pie, in Ireland it’s a beer jug and in parts of the North, we now know the word ‘growler’ can mean something else entirely. Thanks to Angela Rayner, I have learned a vulgar term for female genitalia, and something much more useful – that after 20 years of dealing with
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On this week’s episode: Journalist Isabel Oakeshott on how she let the Matt Hancock scandal slip through her fingers a week before it turned up in The Sun (00:59). We’ll also be joined by Melanie McDonagh who’s written about how high tea has gone from an affordable British staple to and oversized and overpriced, still
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I want to apologise: I have let myself down. I let others down too, and I’m sorry. Not because, Matt Hancock-style, I breached social distancing guidelines with a steamy office affair — but because I missed the scoop. I was sent a compromising picture of the then health secretary and his mistress almost a week
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26 min listen
In this week’s podcast, we talk to the author of our cover story, eminent author, historian and broadcaster Niall Ferguson, who advances the theory that the West and China are in the throes of a new cold war which the Unites States is on course to lose, should the Biden administration continue to following Beijing’s
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Has Boris Johnson only just discovered the ruinous cost of childcare in this country? He has, allegedly, been seeking a rich donor to pay for a nanny for his one-year-old son Wilfred. What’s surprising is not that the Prime Minister has apparently told friends he needs £300,000 a year to keep on top of his
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Let me start by confessing that Diane Abbott made my heart sink long before she opened her mouth on BBC Question Time last week – and she has made it plumb the depths since. The confected row over the shadow home secretary’s “treatment” on the show showcases all that is rotten about the current Labour
From our UK edition
Let me start by confessing that Diane Abbott made my heart sink long before she opened her mouth on BBC Question Time last week – and she has made it plumb the depths since. The confected row over the shadow home secretary’s “treatment” on the show showcases all that is rotten about the current Labour
