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.
If Rishi Sunak still doesn’t recognise the description of himself as ‘tetchy’, then he could do worse than to watch back his performance before the liaison committee this afternoon. The Prime Minister was not in a good mood when the questions started, though he did seem to relax a little as the 90-minute session wore
The last Prime Minister’s Questions of the year always has a festive, pantomime tone to it. That doesn’t mean it is always a cheery, comfortable experience for a prime minister, though, and it wasn’t today. At least Rishi Sunak could come to the chamber with the knowledge that his Rwanda legislation had passed its first
There is a lot more trouble to come on the Rwanda Bill, whatever happens tonight. When James Cleverly told MPs earlier that the emergency legislation complied with international law but was ‘very much pushing at the edge of the envelope’, he was trying to suggest that there was something for everyone. So far all the
Robert Jenrick has just given a furious speech against the Rwanda Bill in the Commons. It was a very well delivered speech, and highly persuasive. The former immigration minister not only took apart the flaws of the legislation as he saw them: he also explained why he had apparently adopted a much harder line while
Rishi Sunak had a strange pandemic. He spent a lot of it in government meetings, the details of which he could not recall, and with people who he always got on with. That was the overall thrust of his evidence to the Covid Inquiry today. The only phrase that came up more than a variation
Rishi Sunak has already provided a statement of evidence to the Covid Inquiry, but this morning’s hearing spent more time examining his interview with Fraser in The Spectator last summer. Hugo Keith KC was particularly interested in whether Sunak had a line of communication with Boris Johnson that wasn’t recorded. Keith was referring to a
What does Boris Johnson want to come out of the Covid Inquiry? At the end of his second day of evidence today, the former prime minister claimed that it was social care reform and an investigation into how Covid originated. He told the room that in case he didn’t give evidence again (which he may
In the past few minutes, James Cleverly has confirmed that Robert Jenrick has resigned as immigration minister. He was asked repeatedly about the position of his minister of state in the Home Office during his statement on the emergency Rwanda legislation, and he has now said it ‘has been confirmed’ that Jenrick has left his
Boris Johnson had clearly come to the Covid Inquiry intending to be magnanimous about everyone, even advisers like Dominic Cummings who had ended up causing him so much grief – and who had not been at all complimentary about him in their evidence to the inquiry. He largely stuck to that persona in the first
It was another clear win for Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions today. The Labour leader decided to take a mocking tilt at the latest iteration of the Rwanda policy. He asked Rishi Sunak how successful it had been: ‘If the purpose of the Rwanda gimmick was to solve a political headache of the Tories’
James Cleverly has just signed a new treaty with Rwanda that the UK government hopes will lead to the deportation policy finally getting going. As he did so, the Home Secretary insisted that the Rwandan government had made a ‘strong commitment’ to the safety of asylum seekers – which was the key reason the Supreme
The government has just been defeated in the Commons for the first time since Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister. It wasn’t on one of the issues Sunak and his camp fret most about: it was on compensation for victims of the contaminated blood scandal. It was close: the government lost by just four votes on
Keir Starmer seems to be most comfortable when he’s pointing out how badly the Tories are doing, rather than when he is setting out his own plans. This afternoon he talked about the importance of long-term decision-making, skills and supply side reform: none of which would sound out of place in a speech by Jeremy
What is the Tory party’s policy on immigration after record-breaking net migration figures and the failure of its Rwanda policy at the Supreme Court? It was a question that was actually asked this afternoon by a Conservative MP. James Morris confronted immigration minister Robert Jenrick in the Commons on the new Home Secretary’s claim that
11 min listen
Rishi Sunak is on the defensive over legal migration. After figures late last week revealed net migration hit a record 750,000 in the year to December 2022, the Prime Minister is under pressure from his own side to act. This afternoon James Cleverly will address the House and is expected to lay out a series
Rachel Reeves is getting used to being nicknamed ‘the copy-and-paste shadow chancellor’ by the Tories. Today she leaned into that name by repeating a phrase she’s been using for a while; one she copied and pasted from another politician. Ronald Reagan’s 1980 question of ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’
Jeremy Hunt has just finished the most upbeat economic statement we’ve heard in a good while – certainly since the one from Kwasi Kwarteng that plunged the UK into economic turmoil. Today, the Chancellor was keen to impress upon MPs that the swathe of tax cuts he was announcing could only happen because of the
Keir Starmer decided to fill the space at today’s pre-Autumn Statement Prime Minister’s Questions with a focus on a missing pledge from Rishi Sunak. He pointed out that the five new pledges the Prime Minister announced this week missed one on the NHS, and asked why. Sunak replied that ‘just weeks after’ he became prime
Rishi Sunak wants to frame a benefits crackdown in tomorrow’s Autumn Statement in compassionate terms, with ministers saying people with mobility problems and mental illnesses can no longer be ‘written off’ thanks to advances in technology making it easier to work from home. Instead, they will be expected to look for work or face benefits
The Autumn Statement marks the latest in Rishi Sunak’s series of (often contradictory) relaunches Jeremy Hunt has started the week of his Autumn Statement in a rather more upbeat mood than usual. He spent yesterday talking about the importance of bringing the tax burden down and getting the British economy ‘fizzing’: a significant change of
