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.
Labour seems pretty keen to prolong its row with Boots chief Stefano Pessina. We’re on day three now. After Boris Johnson weighed in on this on his LBC show, Chuka Umunna said ‘the Mayor of London is right to set himself apart from the Prime Minister and make it clear he finds it disappointing when
Ukip’s foray into animal rights campaigning is going well. After the Jewish Chronicle pointed out that Nigel Farage boasted to them that he had done a great deal of work to protect shechita, the party’s agricultural spokesman Stuart Agnew told the paper: ‘This isn’t aimed at you – it’s aimed elsewhere – it’s aimed at
It doesn’t seem that William Hague has offered a decisive answer to the West Lothian question today. Indeed, judging by the reaction of the SNP and Tory MPs, the proposal that the Conservative Leader of the House has set out is encouraging many more questions. These questions include ‘just how much havoc can the SNP
MPs are currently debating changing the law to allow mitochondrial donations. This is a very complex area that few people understand, and that raises strong emotions on both sides, from those who say this will prevent 150 children a year suffering from life-threatening illnesses to those who predict it will put the UK on course
When David Cameron stood outside Downing Street the day after the Scottish independence referendum and said that the ‘West Lothian question deserves a decisive answer’, he was thinking mostly of the trouble that this answer would cause Labour. But now, as William Hague announces what that answer is, the trouble seems to be more Tory
One interesting nugget from Lord Ashcroft’s latest batch of polling is what his focus groups in two seats – Sutton and Cheam, and Elmet and Rothwell – had to say about the parties’ messages. Here’s a quick summary: Conservative: ‘Finish the job and get back on track’. Labour: ‘Vote Labour to save the NHS’, possibly
David Cameron and Nick Clegg naturally had the toughest tasks today when they faced young voters for the Sky question-and-answer sessions because they are having to defend policies their government has pursued. Clegg, who is normally very good at Q&As, grew rather wound up when having to defend the tuition fees U-turn and seemed more
Even though he wasn’t quite prepared in the sartorial stakes for the visit of Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, George Osborne was ready to use the meeting between the two as another messaging moment. Following their discussions, the Chancellor has released this quote: ‘It’s clear that the standoff between Greece and the Eurozone is fast
What do you say when asked what life experience you have as a politician? Probably not ‘I was an economic adviser in the Treasury’ and ‘I taught at Harvard’. But to be fair to Miliband, his answer to one of the trickiest questions levelled at him this morning on Sky wasn’t much different to the
Natalie Bennett has just been taking questions as part of the Sky leaders’ debates for younger voters, and delivered the second Green U-turn of the day, this time on terrorism. After struggling on the Sunday Politics to explain why her party thinks that membership of a terrorist group alone should not be a crime, the
Is Labour wise to go to war with the head of Boots for warning that a Miliband government would be a ‘catastrophe’ for Britain? The party, which has spent considerable effort trying to persuade business that it is friendly after all, seems to be reversing over that hard work by turning on Stefano Pessina in
The Tories are embarking on an ‘education week’, which means they won’t just be fighting Labour but also the Lib Dems, as the latter like to strike up a fight whenever something involving Michael Gove crops up. Indeed, some Tories suspect the Lib Dems in the Education department as being the source of today’s Independent
Who wants to work with who after the General Election? It’s a question that pundits like to chew over, partly because few politicians can afford to rule anything out with the polls suggesting quite such a jumbly outcome in May. But today two parties effectively ruled out a coalition with one another, even though they’re
The Greens may be in the middle of a national ‘surge’, with more than 50,000 members, but in one part of the country, their brand isn’t particularly trendy. In Brighton, the Greens on the council aren’t the best advert for the party – something our leading article picks up on this week. Indeed, such are
I think I’m coming down with galanthomania. It’s a rare affliction, but one that’s hard to shake, and it’s affecting more people every year. Galanthus are snowdrops, and galanthomania is a 21st-century version of that 17th-century craze for tulips which began in the Dutch golden age. At the height of the tulip mania some bulbs
The papers are full of Blairite warnings to Ed Miliband and Andy Burnham about the way Labour is campaigning on the NHS at present. Alan Milburn’s World at One interview gets a great deal of coverage, and just to twist the knife a bit further, the former Cabinet minister joins John Hutton to write in
Nicky Morgan has launched a rather strident defence of the government’s ‘British values’ agenda this evening, after fears that it is being used to punish schools unfairly. The Education Secretary recently announced that the Christian Durham Free School would close after Ofsted inspectors said teachers were failing to challenge ‘racist words and sexually derogative and
Senior Tories yesterday protested the removal of Theresa May’s special advisers from the candidates’ list, Coffee House understands. There had been talk of mounting a ‘rescue mission’ to reinstate Nick Timothy and Stephen Parkinson after they were struck off the list before Christmas, but at a board meeting of the Conservative party yesterday, MPs representing
While Cabinet members grumble about the way the government’s plain packaging announcement was snuck out last week, those Tories opposed to the measure have been counting up the number of colleagues who will vote against it.I understand that they are expecting at least 80 Tory MPs to reject the introduction of plain packaging in the
The Commons is pretty quiet at the moment, draining of energy earlier and earlier in the week as MPs head out to their constituencies. So quiet, in fact, that Labour seems to have given up on using departmental question times as a forum for making government ministers uncomfortable or piling any political pressure on their
