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.
12 min listen
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
What sort of trouble is the Rwanda deportation legislation going to get into in the Lords? It passed its second reading last night, as expected, and peers also defeated an attempt by the Liberal Democrats to block the legislation entirely. But the debate gave us some idea of the problems the Safety of Rwanda Bill
Tory ministers are now well rehearsed in the latest slogan that Rishi Sunak wants to take into the election. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons underlined what it is: ‘Our plan is working, Labour would take us back to square one.’ Education Secretary Gillian Keegan took care to ram that into every answer she gave,
The government has just lost one of its bargaining chips in the long-running junior doctors’ strikes: hospital consultants have narrowly voted against the pay deal that they were offered. The BMA had put to its members the offer of an additional 4.95 per cent, on top of the 6 per cent raise already given to
Rishi Sunak sidestepped another Tory rebellion this afternoon with the announcement of an extra £500 million in funding for councils in England. A group of more than 40 Conservative MPs had joined colleagues from other parties to warn of a crisis in local authority funding that was threatening even deeper cuts to services and council
‘Another week with no ideas. Absolutely no ideas for this country and absolutely no plans.’ Either Rishi Sunak or Keir Starmer could have hurled that insult across the chamber at Prime Minister’s Questions this week – or indeed any week. Once again, both leaders were arguing over who didn’t have a plan, with a few
Simon Clarke’s detonation last night didn’t come as a huge surprise. The Tory whips had already pre-briefed a group of MPs that the Daily Telegraph piece calling for Sunak to go was incoming, and asked them to get out and fight Clarke’s comments. For all the whips’ efforts, there are other Conservative MPs who are
What happens if the latest round of strikes against the Houthis don’t deter them? That was the big question as Rishi Sunak made his statement to the Commons on yesterday’s attacks. The Prime Minister stuck to his two key lines from last week, that the strikes were targeted, and that the Houthis’ attacks are no
