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.
David Cameron is an essay crisis Prime Minister. He works best when his back is against the wall. And this conference he had a last-minute test set for him which he had to step up to. That test was set by the Labour party last week, with its focus on the cost of living, and
Normally when a Prime Minister gives a speech to a party conference, the ‘line’ for the next day’s newspapers is pretty clear. A policy announcement means it’s easy to write the introduction to the story, which is supposed to sum up what happened in under 25 words. But David Cameron’s speech today could only really
The Tories are naturally the most worked up about Ukip – while trying to publicly pretend that it doesn’t exist, of course – but when David Cameron gives his speech to conference shortly, what will he say about the Lib Dems? He faces two yellow challenges: the first is to try to stop the Lib
One of the striking things about the extracts of David Cameron’s speech that have been briefed so far is that the Conservative Prime Minister is having to respond to a number of key themes of Ed Miliband’s conference last week. Labour should be pleased that it has set the agenda for this conference season, not
When the Number 10 policy board was formed, many dismissed it as a sop to angry backbenchers that would have no real power. It lost one of its biggest figures, Jesse Norman, after the Syria vote, and I reported a few weeks ago that there were concerns the members weren’t gelling all that well. But
Michael Gove has only just started speaking to his party conference, but already he has made a powerful, emotive case for the moral value of his education reforms. The education section of the afternoon programme has resembled an evangelical Christian outreach event where people give their ‘testimonies’ about how they came to faith. It had
Jeremy Hunt has an unusual way of delivering a forceful speech. He pulls a worried, frowny face, and speaks in a special growly sort of voice when he wants to criticise his opponents, but doesn’t shout, or indeed really raise his voice at all. Today he delivered a particularly forceful speech to the Conservative conference
During his speech, Boris Johnson frequently looked down at his notes and then looked a little surprised, as though he hadn’t expected half the content to be there. This wasn’t his strongest speech, but it was clear that among all the jokes about large boring machines, the murder rate in Brussels and other quips that
Boris Johnson is difficult to pigeonhole, but at Tory conferences he seems to be taking the role of counsellor-in-chief, cheering up party activists with a slew of jokes and slights on other ambitious colleagues or indeed his party leader. As ever, there were two huge queues outside the auditorium this evening for his event on
Nigel Farage can’t come into the Conservative conference secure zone, but is hovering around the metal barriers at fringes and receptions. The Tories are trying to squeeze him out of the frame as they hold their annual jamboree, but they aren’t succeeding terribly well: today’s news is full of speculation about a Tory/Ukip pact, even
George Osborne is currently giving his speech to the Tory conference, which is being well received – particularly impressive in this flat hall. He focused initially on the argument that fixing the economy is the way to solve the cost of living crisis. But his MPs will also be heartened that he didn’t stop there.
There was no chance the Conservatives could come to Manchester, with a row over the future of high-speed rail raging, and not make a big thing of the proposed new railway line. But as I explained in my Telegraph column last week, the party knew that a little crafty rebranding wouldn’t go amiss, and so
How can the Conservatives deal with Labour’s attack on the cost of living? As I explained last week, the party believes that the best way to address the opposition’s focus on living standards is to talk about the bigger picture rather than the ‘footling little things’. Senior Tories I’ve spoken to in the past week
William Hague has to be one of the most charming men in the Cabinet. Today, rather than attacking his Lib Dem colleagues for being ‘woolly’, as Philip Hammond did, the Foreign Secretary made the case for a majority Conservative government by saying quite politely, at the end of a long list of British foreign policy
Does Justine Greening enjoy being International Development Secretary? I ask only because while the text of her speech to the Conservative party conference contained a lengthy defence of aid spending, the minister managed to sound about as thrilled as someone who had just discovered their bus fare had gone up by 10p when she actually
listen to ‘Hammond: ‘A Conservative government will never send our forces in to battle without the right kit’’ on Audioboo Philip Hammond’s speech to the Conservative conference was accompanied by the set of circumstances that most ministers have bad dreams about after eating too much cheese. First he was interrupted by two men in military
Manchester Central is a beautiful, cavernous conference venue. But it also seems to be acting as a bit of an atmosphere sink today. When Grant Shapps bounded onto the conference stage after the party’s tribute to Baroness Thatcher, he might have expected that his speech, which was full of the sort of fare that Tory
One of the key dividing lines in 2015 will be over what sort of action each of the parties proposes to take over filling the financial black hole. The choice is between tax rises and spending cuts, and the Tories were first out of the blocks to make clear that they want to focus on
That the Conservatives were going to announce a marriage tax allowance at their party conference had to be one of the worst kept secrets in Westminster since the date of the last general election. So they’ve managed to go one better than the £750 allowance proposed by their 2010 manifesto with David Cameron announcing in
When Lord Howell described parts of the North East of England as ‘desolate’ (or did he mean the North West?), he was talking about shale gas exploitation, but he could have more accurately applied the term to the map of Tory support in the region. The urban north hasn’t supported the party since the late