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.
Another day, another promise that a government project will be in time and on budget. Yesterday it was universal credit, today it’s High Speed Rail, with a letter from the construction companies behind the project in the Telegraph. The letter, signed by chief executives and chairmen of Arup Group, Atkins UK, Balfour Beatty, Kier Group,
Universal credit is having a bumpy ride: but whose fault is it? Yesterday’s Commons urgent question on the National Audit Office report turned into a bit of a blame game, with Iain Duncan Smith saying rather bitterly that he had expected his department to meet the challenge of delivering this big reform. His response to
Even though Vladimir Putin slotted Syria into the G20 agenda last night, no-one seriously thought that this meant the world leaders would come to a proper agreement on what to do about the conflict. In the last few minutes, David Cameron has told journalists covering the summit that ‘divisions are too great’ for a deal,
What a nice host Vladimir Putin is. Shortly after world leaders gathered in his country for the G20 summit in St Petersburg, a briefing from the President’s official spokesman that Britain is ‘just a small island no-one pays any attention to’ made its way into the media. Nothing like rubbing the nose of one of your
David Aaronovitch’s furious Times column this morning described Ed Miliband as a vulture, swooping down on problems caused by this government rather than leading. If he wanted another example of how this leadership style has affected the rest of the Labour party, he could have done worse than to attend the Commons urgent question on
Iain Duncan Smith was in an aggressive mood when he appeared before MPs this morning to explain the latest awkward report on universal credit to the Commons. He combined his anger with a plethora of jargon. This made for an interesting debate, as it’s very difficult to sound punchy and angry while talking about ‘agile
There’s nothing wrong with the Prime Minister turning up to PMQs with a snappy line that he wants those watching to remember. But sometimes as the exchanges wear on, the risk grows that the clever line isn’t going to get a showing because the questions haven’t been quite right. And so the line gets shoehorned
Jesse Norman’s departure from the policy board hasn’t come as a huge surprise to many Tory MPs: I was with one after the vote who was subjecting his twitter feed to a lengthy examination to work out whether Norman was stranded overseas. The only evidence available was that Norman went to a beer festival on
Jesse Norman is to leave the Number 10 policy board after abstaining in last week’s vote on Syria, I have learned. It was made clear to the Tory MP, who is known to have disagreed with the government’s position on Syria, that this was an inevitable consequence of avoiding a three-line whip vote. But I
Ed Miliband needs to reassure his backbenchers that he does indeed have a good plan after the GMB union announced it was cutting its affiliation funds to the party by 90 per cent. But someone else already has a plan: and it looks strangely like one that will cause the Labour leader a bit of
Has Labour got a plan? If it does, the GMB doesn’t like it, announcing this morning that it will cut its affiliation funds from £1.2 million to £150,000, effective from january 2014. The cut is to reflect the number of the union’s members who it estimates would choose to affiliate to the Labour party under
MPs will vote on the second reading of the unpopular lobbying bill at around 7pm. It has not had a particularly enjoyable introduction to the Commons this afternoon, with attacks from Labour and nervous questions from Coalition MPs worried about its effect on innocent charities. Some Tory MPs – including Douglas Carswell – intend to
Today’s Foreign Office Questions was a far classier affair than yesterday’s rather snippy session with Philip Hammond on Defence. William Hague chose not to tell Labour that they had no authority when talking about Syria, instead choosing to focus on the humanitarian situation that Britain can still do something about. His first answer was as
For a bill purportedly about transparency, the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill has quite a lot of muddied water swirling around it at the moment. Leader of the House Andrew Lansley is currently giving evidence to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee on the legislation, which many fear has all
The Conservative party may have lost its summer momentum, but at least it isn’t worrying about Ukip at the moment. Former spin chief Andy Coulson is doing some worrying in this month’s GQ on the Tory party’s behalf, warning that the party needs an even stronger message on Europe to counter the threat of Nigel
Defence Questions this afternoon was, as you might expect, a rather chippy affair. It seemed that whenever Philip Hammond rose to answer a question, he answered it by reminding the Labour MP asking it of their party’s decision to oppose the government’s motion on Syria. Nowhere was this more the case than in the Defence
Will there be a second vote on Syria? As you might expect, that question dominated today’s lobby briefing with the Prime Minister’s official spokesman. He told journalists that ‘there has been no change’ in the Prime Minister’s view since Thursday’s vote and that ‘parliament has spoken: that’s why the government has absolutely no plans to
Nick Clegg has this morning added his own voice to those at the top of the Coalition saying they won’t go back to Parliament for another vote on Syria. The Deputy Prime Minister was careful to be clear that he and his colleagues respected parliament’s verdict, and didn’t want to push MPs when they had
Even though George Osborne did everything he could yesterday to kill talk of a second vote in the House of Commons on action in Syria, speculation about that vote still makes the front pages this morning. There are probably safer bets to place. But one of the failings of Parliament last week – amidst all
After the special relationship was found still breathing this afternoon, is there a chance UK involvement in Syria action might have life in it yet? If Congress does not debate and vote on action until 9 September, there is time for the UN weapons inspectors to report and the UN Security Council to vote. This
