Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman

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.

Kemi’s best PMQs yet

Kemi Badenoch was on good, brutal form at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Keir Starmer had tried to spike her guns by using a planted question to tell the chamber at the start that as the economy improved, he wanted to see more pensioners eligible for winter fuel payment. But the Tory leader still managed to

Isabel Hardman

Winter fuel U-turn and a rift at the heart of government

12 min listen

After sustained speculation and a local elections drubbing, Keir Starmer announced today at PMQs that the government will be softening their policy on winter fuel. Whilst it won’t come into effect for some time, they have agreed to ensure that ‘more pensioners are eligible for winter fuel payment.’  This comes hours after a memo was

Starmer was in no mood to joke at PMQs

Keir Starmer had a much more awkward Prime Minister’s Questions than he is accustomed to. This was largely because Kemi Badenoch was armed with the latest unemployment figures, but also because the Conservative leader was agile in dealing with the Prime Minister’s responses. However, the overall lesson from the session was that Starmer now wants

Isabel Hardman

Is Badenoch getting better, or is Starmer getting worse?

12 min listen

Prime Minister’s Questions today, and there was lots on the agenda. It is often a fool’s game to guess what the leader of the opposition will lead on, but today she had a wide choice of ammunition – from unemployment to welfare to the government’s new stance on migration to the war in Gaza. Kemi

Are Labour ‘pandering’ to Nigel Farage?

14 min listen

Keir Starmer has succeeded in keeping immigration at the top of the news agenda for another day – although he may not be happy with the headlines. After his set-piece announcement yesterday, the Prime Minister is caught between fire from both sides. On the left, he is accused of ‘pandering’ to Nigel Farage and even

Neither Starmer nor Badenoch got what they wanted from PMQs

Keir Starmer wanted to spend Prime Minister’s Questions talking about the UK’s trade deal with India, while Kemi Badenoch – and later SNP leader Stephen Flynn – wanted to attack the government’s energy and welfare policies. Neither side really succeeded in its aims: Starmer ended up shoehorning the trade deal into random answers, while Badenoch

Does Keir Starmer ‘get it’?

16 min listen

As the parties regroup following the local elections, both Labour and the Conservatives have to face a miserable result. Lucy Dunn speaks to Isabel Hardman and pollster Luke Tryl about the anger and disillusionment amongst the electorate, and why Keir Starmer message ‘we need to go further and faster’ can’t cut through. 

Local elections: who had it worse?

In normal political times, local election and by-election results would show a bad night for the government and a good night for the official opposition. Not so with this set of results in English councils and the Runcorn and Helsby by-election, where both Labour and the Conservatives have been given bloody noses and Nigel Farage

Isabel Hardman

Local elections live: is Reform unstoppable?

15 min listen

The word ‘unprecedented’ is often overused in politics, but these local elections have proved to be just that. The headline is: sweeping success for Reform.  Nigel Farage’s ‘teal tsunami’ comes at the expense of the main parties – turning the two-party consensus on its head. The recriminations for Labour and the Tories have already begun.

‘The spring of discontent’

11 min listen

Are we looking at a spring of discontent? It’s the final push ahead of this week’s local elections, and what Keir Starmer wants to talk about is expanding the NHS app – which he says will cut waiting lists and end the days of the health service living in the ‘dark ages’. However, what people

Keir Starmer can’t explain his changing views on gender

Keir Starmer was well aware that Kemi Badenoch would probably use Prime Minister’s Questions today to run a victory lap following the Supreme Court judgement on the definition of a woman. She has long been clear about the need to make biological sex the basis of such a definition, while Starmer has been on a

What happened at the Liaison Committee?

16 min listen

Parliament is about to go into recess for the Easter holiday and so – as is customary – Keir Starmer sat in front of the Liaison Committee this afternoon, where he was grilled on topics including tariffs, defence and welfare. This comes on the day when there has been a momentary reprieve in the markets,

Starmer and Badenoch played a childish blame game at PMQs

Keir Starmer had a special point to make at the very outset of Prime Minister’s Questions about the threat of tariffs from the US. He told the Commons that ‘a trade war is in nobody’s interest and the country deserves, and we will take, a calm, pragmatic approach’. He added that the government ‘will rule

Rachel Reeves’s non-Budget is very bad news

Rachel Reeves framed her Spring Statement around the insistence that Labour’s Plan for Change was already working, which meant that any changes she was having to make today had to be framed as small ‘adjustments’, rather than the sort of change of course that would allow the Conservatives to claim she was delivering an ‘emergency

Spring Statement or ‘Emergency Budget’?

12 min listen

The question that everyone in Westminster wants answered is what will actually be included in next week’s Spring Statement. Previously, the Spring Statement wasn’t looking like much to write home about – little more than an update. But with the economy taking a turn for the worse and her fiscal headroom narrowing, it has taken

Isabel Hardman

Badenoch caught Starmer out at PMQs

Keir Starmer didn’t have to defend his welfare cuts until later in the session at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, because Kemi Badenoch decided to focus on the looming increase to employers’ national insurance contributions. She was right to do so ahead of the spring statement, and her attacks were, for the second week running, much

Will Labour MPs stomach Liz Kendall’s benefits crackdown?

To underline that there was government agreement on the welfare cuts and reforms she was announcing, Liz Kendall had Keir Starmer, Angela Rayner, Ed Miliband and a slew of other cabinet and senior ministers sitting behind her in the Commons. The Work and Pensions Secretary announced ‘decisive action’ on the benefits system, which she said

Do Labour know what they want from welfare reform?

Liz Kendall and her ministerial colleagues were forced to offer an hour’s worth of holding statements about the government’s welfare reforms this afternoon when they appeared at Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons. Those reforms are supposed to be coming in a green paper this week, probably tomorrow, but the Work and Pensions Secretary

What is the point of abolishing NHS England?

What does Wes Streeting think the government will achieve by abolishing NHS England? The Health Secretary gave a statement to MPs this afternoon in which he confirmed that the health service will no longer be operationally independent from the government. As Streeting made clear to the Commons, the NHS was given operational independence by the