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.
MPs will debate the government’s preparations for more Bulgarian and Romanian migrants in Westminster Hall today, as another survey suggests that there’s no need to get unduly worried about the lifting of transitional controls. Ministers have in recent weeks managed to calm Tory backbenchers down by making announcements regarding restricted access to benefits and housing,
What is Sir Jeremy Heywood up to? Last week he jointly wrote an article praising Margaret Thatcher which led to a Labour MP accusing him of having ‘prostituted his high office’. This week he’s revealed to be discussing the behind-the-scenes wranglings in the Cabinet on economic policy. The Times’ Sam Coates reports this morning that
It’s not unusual for a trade union representing its members to resist change, and today the Royal College of Nursing is sticking well and truly to form. Not only has Peter Carter, its chief executive, called the government’s plan to put nurses through a year of work as healthcare assistants ‘stupid’, he has also penned
In the latest instalment of WWTD? Boris Johnson has called for ‘Thatcherite zeal’ from the government in standing up to militant trade unions. According to the Sun on Sunday, the Mayor of London wants a turnout threshold of 50 per cent before a strike is legitimate. A group of Tory MPs – including those quoted
Fitch’s announcement that it is downgrading the UK’s credit rating to AA+ isn’t as politically explosive as the downgrade from Moody’s in February, as it was inevitable that once one major ratings agency dropped the AAA, the others would follow like dominoes. The bigger story will be when all agencies have dropped the rating. Fitch
Should Michael Gove lengthen the school day? The question itself is wrong, of course, as what he wants to do is give schools the opportunity to change hours as they wish, rather than telling them what do to. This isn’t a case of ‘here is your freedom, and this is how you must use it’,
David Cameron’s local election kick-off speech today notably contained no reference to UKIP, but 12 mentions of Labour. The Conservative leader and his colleagues concerned with campaigns are on a damage-limitation exercise about the party’s chances in the local elections, and as well as taking the attack to Labour on the policy front – arguing
It’s not looking good for the Snooping Bill. The legislation is currently being re-written after serious concerns were raised with the first draft, but I’ve got hold of a letter from privacy campaigners which accuses the government of failing to hold the public consultation that was one of the conditions laid down in the damning
One interesting decision that Ed Miliband made this week was to appoint Karen Buck as his PPS, following the long-planned departure of John Denham. Tory MPs have told me they were very quickly given ‘lines to take’ on how this represented a big ‘lurch to the left’ on the Labour leader’s part. CCHQ is right
Today’s Ipsos MORI finding that voters can’t see Ed Miliband as Prime Minister underlines how much hard work the Labour leader really has to do. The poll for the Evening Standard found 66 per cent of those asked didn’t believe he was ready to rule the country, against 24 per cent who did. He is
Cometh the Gove, cometh the angry trade union representative. It was inevitable that the Education Secretary would have at least one exchange with someone from one of the two largest teaching unions when he took questions from the floor at today’s Spectator education conference. Gove spoke powerfully without notes on his vision for education, and
It was only last week that a Tory MP was warning Coffee House of the dangerous impact that high levels of public debt can have on growth. Today that theory is fighting for its life, with the authors of the Harvard paper that developed it in the first place in the firing line for an
When I arrived at St Paul’s at 6 o’clock this morning, a line of people, around 40-strong, had already set up camp with union flags (and one Canadian flag, too) opposite the church courtyard. The police officer drawing to the end of his night shift told me they had been there all night. Later, as
David Cameron is giving a reading at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral later today, but this morning he gave his eulogy on the Today programme. He made the quite striking observation that ‘we’re all Thatcherites now’. In one sense this is quite an obvious comment: as countless commentators have observed over the past week and a half,
Eric Pickles did manage to avert a defeat in the Commons on plans to let homeowners build extensions and conservatories without planning permission, but it’s worth asking how on earth the government managed to get in the position where its backbench was so worked up on a policy like this in the first place? The
Michael Gove is at it again. Today he’s taken it upon himself to ‘heap further misery’ onto teachers with ‘reckless’ plans that would damage children’s education. At least, that’s what the NASUWT teaching union would have you believe. The Education Secretary has in fact published advice for schools on performance-related pay, which they can use
There was a curious meeting of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee this morning. The MPs took evidence from Oliver Letwin and Maria Miller, and then from Harriet Harman, on press regulation. An evidence session with Oliver Letwin is curious enough anyway, as the Minister for Government Policy does tend to speak as though
So it doesn’t look as though last night’s ‘love-in’ that I reported went particularly well. Cheryl Gillan described planning minister Nick Boles last night as ‘completely unmoveable’. Meanwhile, Zac Goldsmith, leader of the rebels on the extensions row in the Commons, was on the Today programme this morning calling it an ‘odd policy’ and ‘very
Parliament’s only just back from Easter recess and already there’s a threat of rebellion in the Commons. The Growth and Infrastructure Bill returns to the Commons tomorrow afternoon for ‘ping-pong’, and a number of MPs are agitated about an amendment that passed as a result of a rebellion in the Upper Chamber. In March, the
When dolphins hunt fish, they gang up on them as a school, chasing them into the shallows. So it happens at the daily lobby briefing: when a morsel of a story appears and someone lets down their guard, the whole pack of journalists jumps in. Today the Prime Minister’s official spokesman was chased into the