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.

Does the Tory housing pledge really help the housing crisis?

Given the Tories are the party of Macmillan, it seems quite right that they’ve picked housing as one of their six key election priorities. David Cameron gave a speech on it today, promising 200,000 ‘starter homes’ – properties sold to first-time buyers at a discount – by 2020. There have been some complaints today, notably

Isabel Hardman

Tories ‘have fixed’ beleaguered campaign database

The Conservatives believe they have fixed their beleaguered campaign database, VoteSource, after increasing complaints from MPs. Coffee House understands that a number of MPs in marginal seats complained to party co-chair Lord Feldman after they started to tire both of finding that their data wasn’t being saved properly and of being told that everything was

Isabel Hardman

Immigration threatens to overshadow Tory housing week

It’s supposed to be the Tory housing week, with David Cameron setting out plans to double the number of discounted starter homes to 200,000. It’s an important, salient issue to make election promises on. But more salient is immigration, and somehow the Tories are having to talk about that again today. Today’s Times contains a plea

Are reports of a Ukip split greatly exaggerated?

Day two of the Ukip conference, and the placid mood continues. Delegates seem very content with the speeches that they’ve heard from Douglas Carswell, Patricia Culligan, Janice Atkinson and Diane James. They wee particularly entertained by Atkinson, who spent a great deal of her speech talking about Harriet Harman, and criticising the other parties’ policies

Farage uses speech to clarify his position

Nigel Farage’s speech to the Ukip conference was fine. Not a bad speech, but not his best speech, either. It was just fine. Activists seemed happy, ecstatic, even when he came on, and were joyful chanting when he left the stage too. But Farage clearly wanted to answer a number of questions about his own

Isabel Hardman

What Ukip needs from its spring conference

Ukip has put all the journalists in a special balcony above the main auditorium at its spring conference. It’s quite thoughtful of the party, as the gallery is right next to the press room where hacks can file, but it also means that they’re a little apart from the delegates. Sitting on the floor of

Single snowdrop sells for £1,390: welcome to galanthomania

Have you heard of galanthomania? It’s an affliction that can rob people of their money – and, it seems, their senses. They’re so desperate to get hold of some small white stuff that they’ll part with hundreds of pounds at a time – or even resort to theft. Galanthomaniacs are people who collect snowdrops, often

Isabel Hardman

The Tory trouble to come on defence spending

There are still some unhappy mutterings about the possibility that the Tories won’t commit to spending 2 per cent of GDP on defence in the next Strategic Defence and Security Review. Treasury sources have been pouring cold water on the suggestion that George Osborne has told David Cameron that spending will fall below that target,

Labour unsure about health policy its own councils support

The announcement today that Greater Manchester will receive full control of health spending – worth £6bn – has left Labour in a rather interesting position. On the one hand, it is easy for Andy Burnham to say that this sounds ‘like yet another NHS reorganisation’. But on the other, Greater Manchester includes a number of

Isabel Hardman

You can tell a lot from watching how MPs act

One thing worth noting from today’s PMQs – and indeed from all the sessions since the start if the year – was how many MPs left early. They are now not taking the sessions seriously enough to stay to the bitter end because they tend to involve the two party leaders talking at one another about their pet

Isabel Hardman

Do we now know what the Tory strategy for defence is?

For a while the Tories had hoped they could get away with dodging questions on defence spending until after the election. Even as the pressure within their own party for a commitment to the 2 per cent of GDP set by Nato, ministers were either saying they didn’t want to ‘pre-judge’ the Strategic Defence and

Why Natalie Bennett doesn’t need to do the sums on policy

To be fair to Natalie Bennett, she took the rather admirable step of apologising on the Daily Politics for being so woeful in her disastrous interview with Nick Ferrari this morning. But the whole episode tells us a lot about how the Green party views its appeal to voters. Yes, yes, it’s embarrassing that a party

Isabel Hardman

How long will Tories voice concerns over defence spending?

Can the Tories really avoid any proper discussion of their spending plans for the Ministry of Defence before the election? Though the international situation is so unstable, the party has clearly decided that as defence spending is not an election issue, it won’t talk about it. Perhaps they’d get away with this given Labour is