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.
64 min listen
How should we think of the 26 million people in the UK living with a long-term health condition? Under the current system, only a handful of long-term conditions are prioritised. This leads to a huge strain on NHS resources and capacity later down the road, as long-term health conditions comprise 50 per cent of all
What was the point of Rishi Sunak’s landmark AI summit at Bletchley Park? The Prime Minister has just given a press conference at the end of it in which he tried to underline his achievements. These included bringing together more than 100 of the leading AI nations and leading companies handling the technology and reaching
14 min listen
The Bank of England has once again taken the decision to hold interest rates at their 15-year high. There is growing market consensus that this second pause is a sign that interest rates have peaked, or nearly reached their peak. Will the Bank be able to tread the thin line between tackling inflation but also
Matt Hancock argued that he – rather than medical professionals – should be the one to decide who lived or died in the event of a shortage of medical supplies and the NHS being overwhelmed during Covid. This revelation comes from evidence given by Simon Stevens, who until 2021 was chief executive of NHS England,
11 min listen
Today the Covid inquiry heard from Helen McNamara, former deputy cabinet secretary (who infamously supplied a karaoke machine for one of the government’s lockdown parties). Her evidence suggested that the government’s pandemic response had a women problem – from not properly understanding lockdown’s impact on domestic abuse to not considering that PPE is designed for
In the past few minutes, Labour has suspended Andy McDonald from the party whip after comments he made that were ‘deeply offensive, particularly at a time of rising anti-Semitism which has left Jewish people fearful for their safety’. Those comments, which the Labour backbencher made at the weekend, included the phrase ‘between the river and
14 min listen
The Covid inquiry enters its most dramatic week, questioning Martin Reynolds (a.k.a. ‘Party Marty’), as well as former No. 10 advisors Lee Cain and Dominic Cummings. But it seems that the inquiry has gone down more the route of interpersonal drama rather than lessons learnt for government decisionmaking. So what’s the point of it? Katy
Was anything in Martin Reynolds’s evidence to the Covid inquiry surprising today? We already knew that Boris Johnson had a sketchy hold of the details when Covid emerged in early 2020, something that the PM’s former private secretary gave us more on when he admitted that there was a period of ten days where the
Keir Starmer is under increasing pressure from Labour frontbenchers to change tack and back calls for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict. There are now more than a dozen such MPs who have defied the party line to call for one, along with Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Greater
13 min listen
Today, Keir Starmer held a long meeting with some Muslim Labour MPs over their concern on his stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict, first ignited by comments he made on LBC which seemed to justify Israel’s electricity and water blockade of Gaza. The Labour leader has made huge progress to move his party on from the
It was revealing that Keir Starmer decided not to ask Rishi Sunak about Israel at Prime Minister’s Questions today. The Labour leader headed straight from the session into a crunch meeting with Muslim MPs and peers who are angry at the way he has handled the conflict (more from Katy here), and so he clearly
Why won’t the government proscribe the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps? MPs have been asking that question for more than a year now, but it has gained impetus since the Hamas attack on Israel, given the suspicion that Iran has been aiding Hamas. So far, the line from the Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary has merely
Rishi Sunak’s update to MPs on the Israel-Hamas conflict today included the revelation that the UK security services had concluded the strike on the al-Ahli Arab hospital had come from a rocket fired within Gaza and aimed at Israel. He announced this within a section about the importance of tone and language, and pointed out
13 min listen
Labour has overturned the Tamworth and and Mid Bedfordshire by-election results, overturning the biggest majority in by-election history. Is there anymore road for Rishi Sunak? Isabel Hardman speaks to Katy Balls and James Heale.
Why have the Tories lost both Mid Bedfordshire and Tamworth, seats they could normally rely on the laws of physics to be able to hold? According to Greg Hands, the party chair, the results are down to ‘legacy issues’ in the seats. They were vacated by Nadine Dorries leaving in disgust in a protracted fashion
Most of the questions to Rishi Sunak today at Prime Minister’s Questions can be usefully summarised by the point put to him late on by SNP MP Stewart McDonald. McDonald said: ‘Of course the sadism of Hamas can only be condemned and there’s no question of Israel’s right to defence and security. But international law
Yesterday’s statement on prison reforms from the Justice Secretary Alex Chalk was very much one of those why-didn’t-you-see-this-coming affairs. Chalk has only been in the brief since April, but he has had more warning than the past fortnight that prison capacity was running out. One of the problems Chalk has is that he is mopping
Should the UK warn Israel about its response to the Hamas attack? The Prime Minister was very pointed as he told the Commons that people ‘should call [the 7 October attack] what it was: a pogrom’. His statement was grave and included full support for Israel and for Jewish people in Britain. He repeatedly told
13 min listen
Justice Secretary Alex Chalk has been talking about ‘Texas-style justice’ to justify the government’s proposals for reform of the prisons system. What does it really mean? James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Cindy Yu.
14 min listen
Conference season is over, so we thought that we’d run through this year’s winners and losers. Did Rishi Sunak manage to present himself as the Action Man who can end the ‘thirty year consensus’ in British politics? Did Keir Starmer finally answer the question: if not them, why us? Did anyone surprise us? Or was
