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.
Every so often, when another strange case crops up of someone being declared fit as a fiddle for work who then dies a few days later, or who cannot walk, talk or feed themselves, questions are asked about how on earth the government could have got its fitness-to-work tests quite so wrong. These Work Capability
Michael Gove wants to blame Labour for today’s PISA rankings, in which the UK has fallen five places to 26th, and Labour wants to blame Michael Gove. So in this spirit of mutual accusation, Gove and his opposite number Tristram Hunt, pitched up in the Commons asking one another to support their own plans for
David Cameron’s visit to China is rather different to some of his recent trips. Firstly, as Douglas Murray outlined yesterday, he’s not making as big a noise about human rights as he did when he was in Sri Lanka recently (and in Sri Lanka, it wasn’t just noise: it was the body language, with an
Michael Fallon is the Spectator’s Minister of the Year, nicknamed the ‘Minister for Royal Shale’ for his dual role in the privatisation of the postal service and getting fracking going in this country. He’s also the minister whose thinking most closely mirrors Number 10’s stance on the energy market at present, and so his speech
One of the Conservatives’ great victories in government has been to portray the party as on the side of consumers against behemoth and sometimes inefficient producers. Take education, where Michael Gove has set to tackling the ‘Blob’ of the education establishment on behalf of parents who want real choice over their children’s education. Or the
Of all the ministers involved in the Coalition negotiations over energy bills, Ed Davey has had quite the worst experience. He has had to water down his conference bullishness about standing up to the Tories to a sort of amiable plea that the Lib Dems really are keeping the Coalition green. When his departmental junior
The Autumn Statement isn’t until Thursday, but already it’s clear what the attack lines will be from both sides. As James explained earlier, the Tories and Lib Dems will want to focus on the ‘responsible recovery’, which means fewer giveaways than a Chancellor might be tempted to make at this stage in a parliament and
Tim Yeo’s local Conservative association in South Suffolk have deselected the 68-year-old MP via secret ballot last night, the BBC reports. Yeo was only recently reinstated as chair of the Energy and Climate Change select committee after the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards ruled he had not broken rules on lobbying. As Yeo has previously said he
How kind of the teaching unions to get us all in the mood for Christmas with a nice big pantomime. The latest amusing drama from the NUT and NASUWT is over a meeting that they’re supposed to be having with Michael Gove about their ongoing industrial dispute. This dispute, if you will remember, nearly led
After hours of really insightful discussions about bacon butties, MPs have finally approved the third reading of the #LetBritainDecide Bill in the Commons. The legislation will now pass to the House of Lords, where the fun really begins. I’ve already written that the Bill has served its purpose in uniting the Conservative party. But it
If today’s energy bills confusion is an example of how the government plants stories, it really is a poor gardener of news. Number 10 this morning denied that ministers had asked the energy companies for a price freeze, with the Prime Minister’s spokesman saying: ‘The government has not asked for a price freeze’ and added
One of the techniques that horror writers employ to make their novels as frightening as possible is to avoid describing their monster in any great detail. Read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and by and large it will be your own imagination filling in the details of Victor Frankenstein’s creation as the creature lumbers out of its
Labour is enjoying some success with its narrative that the government is running scared of all sorts of awkward votes and campaigns at the moment, from plain packaging to payday loans. Yesterday Miliband’s spinners were briefing that this included the Immigration Bill amendment tabled by Nigel Mills and supported by influential backbenchers such as 1922
David Cameron’s restrictions on welfare for new migrants have pleased Tory backbenchers – but not enough for them to drop their Commons campaign for the transitional immigration controls to be extended. There are now 46 Conservative MPs signed up to support it, and I’ve just spoken to Nigel Mills, who tabled the amendment, who said:
Commentators sometimes like to describe a particular session of Prime Minister’s Questions as ‘vintage’. If ‘vintage’ is the correct description for the good weeks, this one was more of a serving of tepid Blue Nun. David Cameron was in a very odd mood indeed. He was clearly pleased with an early quip referencing Miliband’s Desert
Tory MPs are in a funny state of mind this morning. They’re pleased that the Prime Minister has started to give some meaty details of what he wants from an EU renegotiation. But they’re also confused that there seems to be no media operation to ‘soak up’ this new line. There aren’t any ministers hogging
Last night David Cameron, George Osborne and Lynton Crosby held a meeting with the Conservative parliamentary party. Coffee House has exclusive details of what took place. There was a presentation on how well the party was doing from the Prime Minister (without any new information), and one from Lynton Crosby in which the strategist asked
David Cameron knows that the only criticism from other parties of his plans to restrict welfare access for new migrants will be that he isn’t being tough enough. Such is the fear on all sides of being accused of repeating what the Prime Minister describes in his FT article as the ‘monumental mistake’ of the
So Andrew Mitchell is going to pursue his fight with the police over the ‘plebgate’ row, even though the Crown Prosecution Service said there was insufficient evidence to suggest the officer who claimed Andrew Mitchell called him a pleb was lying. The former Conservative chief whip told a press conference this afternoon that not only
The swell of support continues for Nigel Mills’ amendment to the Immigration Bill which would most likely land the British government in court by trying to extend transitional controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants to 2018. I have learned that Graham Brady, influential chair of the 1922 Committee, has now signed the amendment too, and