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.
Opposition Day debates from Labour are often rather boring, with a frontbencher getting very angry about energy bills (one of their favourite topics for opposition day debates), and three backbenchers pulling stern faces at the lonely minister whose job it is to reply. But tomorrow’s debate is being billed as a ‘box office’ encounter (which
A select committee meeting with the Big Six firms would attract attention in any year when the companies had announced such eye-watering price rises. But it is the political frisson added by Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze pledge that makes this afternoon’s hearing quite so interesting. Labour had a swing in its step anyway as
Ministers’ attention is now firmly focused on arguing that to abandon HS2 would be a sign that Labour is ‘playing politics with prosperity’, as Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin is set to say later today, or ‘abandoning the North’. Yesterday the Prime Minister slipped in a joke about Ed Balls being absent from the Commons because
Why did the Prime Minister give a statement in the Commons on the outcome of last week’s European Council summit? Though he is expected to report back to MPs each time one of these jamborees takes place, David Cameron didn’t really have a great deal to tell them other than the tantalising suggestion that the
Ofgem is the energy market regulator that is supposed to be examining what it is that is going well or badly in the market. But it doesn’t seem to be doing the greatest job. This week we will hear more details about the annual competition test announced by David Cameron at PMQs last week, but
Now that ministers are nearing a deal on those green taxes and levies, they are also trying to highlight their efforts to improve the energy market in general. Privately there were a number of Conservative MPs of a similar persuasion to John Major who I spoke to last week who sympathised with the former Prime
David Cameron insists that a project like high-speed rail needs cross-party support. That may well be sensible, but his desire for Labour to retain its support for the new line is founded more on the necessity of getting the legislation through Parliament, rather than a great belief in parties working together on the big things.
The Tories were expecting Ed Balls to be a little grumpy today after the ONS’ latest figures showed the economy was growing at its fastest rate in three years. And the Shadow Chancellor didn’t sound his cheeriest when he popped up to respond. In his official response, Balls said: ‘After three damaging years of flatlining,
As ministers had hoped, today’s first estimate of GDP figures from the Office for National Statistics shows that the economy grew by 0.8 per cent in the third quarter of 2013. Citi had predicted 0.7 per cent, and while the economy is still 2.5 per cent below its pre-recession peak, ministers now have evidence of an
Critics of HS2 are scenting blood on all sides now. As the Sun reports, giving Ed Balls the final say on the project is another sign that the Labour party is at least constructing a coffin for the project, even if it isn’t driving the nails in just yet. Meanwhile, on the Tory side, I
In the days before Ed Miliband went all Marxist/brave on energy (delete as tribally appropriate), the debate around energy was more about fracking than it was about freezes. Shale gas has taken a back seat while ministers wonder what on earth they can do about bills to take the wind out of the Labour leader’s
The Lib Dems are cross this afternoon about David Cameron’s PMQs announcements on cutting back on green taxes in energy bills. They are mainly cross because they were only given 30 minutes’ notice of the new policy before MPs crowded into the Chamber for the session, and are insisting that ‘nothing concrete has been agreed’.
What a combative interviewee Mike Penning made on the Today programme. The new work and pensions minister clearly felt that given the benefit cap is the most popular policy pollsters have touched in a long while (73% support the cap in principle), he could take the presenters and the Chartered Institute of Housing, which criticises
Ed Davey is currently answering an urgent question in the Commons on the Grangemouth petrochemical plant. He urged Ineos and Unite to return to talks, describing the failure of the negotiations as ‘regrettable’. As the questions from backbenchers to Davey continue, it’s worth noting that there wasn’t a single mention of the plant at Prime
When Ed Miliband announced his eye-catching energy policy, Tory MPs hoped that their party would respond in kind with something similarly interesting to voters but that would really work. They hoped this would underline that the Conservative party is the party of government, while Miliband was only suitable for opposition. George Osborne’s conference fuel duty
Much of the coverage of today’s Immigration Bill has centred around those controversial ‘go home’ vans, now ditched because they only sent one person home. Theresa May told the Commons this afternoon that ‘we won’t be rolling out the vans, they were too much of a blunt instrument’. In response to a question from Keith
The Lib Dems are coming in for a beating this morning from the Tories over Nick Clegg’s decision to go public with his thoughts on the flaws and limitations of the free schools programme. Rachel Sylvester and James Chapman both have very strong briefings from Conservative sources about the Deputy Prime Minister’s comments, while the
After every reshuffle, sacked ministers choose to tread a number of different paths. Some go rogue, either to the extent that Tim Loughton has since losing his job last year, or at least in publicly criticising their party’s policy, as Jeremy Browne has since being sacked in this year’s round. Others go to ground, receive
Over the past thirteen months since the ‘plebgate’ row broke over Andrew Mitchell and subsequently broke the then chief whip’s career, a number of pieces entitled or themed ‘Andrew Mitchell: An apology’ have appeared here and there as more has come to light about the allegations levelled at Mitchell. In most cases the writers accept
What does everyone think about free schools? That’s the question that is being asked of every Liberal Democrat who has the misfortune to pop up in broadcast interviews today, because it seems that you can now take any position you want on the subject, so long as you’re wearing a certain hat or you’ve got