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.
The Commons has gone into meltdown this evening over the Speaker’s handling of the Gaza ceasefire motion, with the Speaker expressing ‘regret’ for the way the debate ended up. SNP and Tory MPs stormed out at one point, and MPs voted on whether to close the chamber to the press and public as part of
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Sir Keir Starmer can breathe a sigh of relief this afternoon, thanks to Lindsay Hoyle. The Speaker has selected Labour’s amendment on a Gaza ceasefire, which means that a likely mass rebellion from Labour MPs will be averted. SNP and Tory MPs are furious at Hoyle, and say that he has tried to rewrite the
One person dominated Prime Minister’s Questions, and it wasn’t Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer. It was Kemi Badenoch, who appears to be going deeper into her battle with former Post Office chair Henry Staunton. Starmer decided to deepen the row further today, while Sunak notably didn’t make all that much effort to defend Badenoch beyond
The government has now tabled its own amendment to the SNP motion calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. This change to the text calls for ‘negotiations to agree an immediate humanitarian pause as the best way to stop the fighting’, and then ‘moves towards a permanent sustainable ceasefire’. It also says that a ceasefire requires
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Today Keir Starmer has moved his party’s position on a ceasefire in Gaza as he seeks to quell what could the biggest rebellion of his leadership. MPs will vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza with Labour set to add its own amendment to the SNP motion tomorrow. For the first time, Labour is calling
Labour has significantly shifted its language on Israel’s conflict with Hamas over the past 24 hours. But has it changed its position? Yesterday Keir Starmer gave a speech to Scottish Labour conference in which he called for ‘a ceasefire that lasts’, adding: ‘That is what must happen now. The fighting must stop now.’ His aides
Kemi Badenoch has been launching a few more grenades into the Post Office row, with a bullish statement in the House of Commons dismissing the allegations made at the weekend by Henry Staunton. The former Post Office chair had claimed an official had asked him to slow compensation payments to victims of the Horizon scandal
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Labour has the won two by-elections in Wellingborough and Kingswood, overturning big Conservative majorities in the process. Party chairman Richard Holden has brushed the results off as typical midterm by-elections where voters what to give the government a kicking. Does this argument stack up? And what can Reform take from the results? Isabel Hardman speaks
Sadiq Khan has announced six new names for the previously boringly-named Overground. The practical point of it is that the Overground goes everywhere and is quite confusing to navigate if you’re an occasional visitor. Breaking up the orange (which only stayed that way because Boris Johnson liked it being the same colour when he was
Labour has now suspended Graham Jones as a parliamentary candidate after a recording emerged of him allegedly saying that Britons who travel to Israel to fight for the IDF should be ‘locked up’. The former MP, who is standing again in Hyndburn, was taped appearing to refer to ‘f***ing Israel’, and saying it was ‘illegal’
Lord Cameron has shown again this afternoon how much the government’s tone on the conflict in Gaza has changed recently. The Foreign Secretary was taking questions in the Lords and heavily laboured the point that Israel should think twice before going into Rafah. He repeated his regular argument that there had been too many Palestinian
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Labour faces another antisemitism battle as their candidate for the Rochdale by-election said that Israel allowed the October 7th attacks as a pretext to invade Gaza. Azhar Ali has since apologised for his comments and Labour has allowed him remain the candidate for Rochdale. Natasha Feroze speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman about Keir
Who to blame for the demise of Labour’s £28 billion annual green investment pledge? According to Keir Starmer, it’s the Conservatives. He said this afternoon: ‘What would be really irresponsible is to know the damage done to the economy by this failed government and ignore that and pretend it didn’t happen.’ The party briefing is
Brianna Ghey’s father has called on Rishi Sunak to apologise for his ‘degrading’ comments at Prime Minister’s Questions. Peter Spooner told Sky News: For the Prime Minister of our country to come out with degrading comments like he did, regardless of them being in relation to discussions in parliament, they are absolutely dehumanising. Identities of
All power to Elliot Colburn, who used today’s Prime Minister’s Questions to talk about surviving a suicide attempt in 2021. The Carshalton and Wallington MP told the chamber: In recent years, something like 6,500 people in the UK die due to suicide. And in 2021, I was nearly one of them. Luckily, my attempt failed,
Rishi Sunak’s £1,000 bet with Piers Morgan continues to cost him more than the wager itself. It dominated today’s PMQs, with both Keir Starmer and Stephen Flynn attacking him on it. The Labour leader also gave a striking retort to one of Sunak’s regular lines mocking him on not knowing what a woman is. When
Nicola Sturgeon’s afternoon at the Covid Inquiry was pretty brutal. She was subjected to a difficult round of questioning on whether she used the pandemic to advance the case for Scottish independence. Funnily enough, the former first minister didn’t agree with that analysis. In fact, her memory was that she had never thought ‘less’ about
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Nicola Sturgeon became emotional during her evidence at the Covid inquiry today – a highly anticipated part of the inquiry given the issue of deleted Whatsapp messages. How did the former first minister come across today? And what else can the evidence tell us about how the Scottish government operated? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman
Keir Starmer opened PMQs by describing ‘the plight of the Member for Mid Norfolk’, whose mortgage had gone up by £1,200 a month and had to ‘quit his dream job to pay for it’. That Substack post from Tory MP George Freeman isn’t quite as potent as a note left on a Treasury desk, but
How and where did Nicola Sturgeon make her big decisions during the pandemic? Not on WhatsApp, and never badly, according to the evidence she has given to the UK Covid Inquiry so far this morning. The questions to the former first minister have largely focused on how she recorded discussions between ministers, and why she
