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.
Rishi Sunak used today’s Prime Minister’s Questions largely as an opportunity to attack the Labour party, and specifically Keir Starmer’s policy U-turns. This is fertile territory given there have been so many, even if the Labour leader is now adopting better positions than ones he naively took earlier on in his tenure. It does also
Matt Hancock’s evidence to the Covid inquiry was some of the most explosive we’ve seen so far. It was largely damaging to anyone who wasn’t Matt Hancock, naturally, but the former health secretary did induce some rather big cringes from all present when his voice cracked as he said ‘I’m not very good at talking
What’s the point of the government’s flagship Rwanda deportation scheme if it isn’t going to save money for the taxpayer? That’s a reasonable question to ask after the Home Office finally published its impact assessment on the plans – as yet unrealised – to deport asylum seekers to the East African country. That document revealed
10 min listen
As mortgage rates surge and a new Opinium poll finds Labour’s lead has jumped to 18 points, Rishi Sunak appeared on Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC show to insist that his plan is the right one. But was his slightly cranky reaction to some of the questions a reflection of how the party is really feeling about
11 min listen
James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and Kate Andrews as the Bank of England announced it has hiked interest rates to 5 per cent. Faced with inflation, a looming mortgage crisis and personal debt, Rishi Sunak said today he is ‘100 per cent on it’. But can he turn things around? Produced by Natasha Feroze.
Is Labour really going to reform the House of Lords? The party has ended up in a bit of a pickle over abolishing a chamber that it also wants to stuff with its own peers. The party’s spokesman yesterday told journalists that there was still a plan to create a Labour majority in the Lords
Rishi Sunak had a much better Prime Minister’s Questions than he might have expected, given the worrying economic news this morning. The Prime Minister sometimes turns up with too much, over-caffeinated energy. Sometimes he tries to defend his government with attacks on Labour that don’t sound as though he came up with them himself. But
Jeremy Hunt was bombarded by MPs worried about the ‘mortgage timebomb’ when he took Treasury questions in the Commons today. Everyone on all sides was concerned, and offering their own ideas of what to do and who to blame. One problem for the Chancellor is that ‘everyone’ includes members of his own party, many of
MPs have just voted 354 to 7 in favour of the Privileges Committee report’s finding that Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over partygate, and that he should be banned from having a former members’ pass. At some points in this evening’s lengthy debate, it appeared that there wasn’t going to be a vote, and even
Is partygate all in the past? That’s what Rishi Sunak is hoping. He sent Penny Mordaunt to the Commons this afternoon to back the Privileges Committee report into Boris Johnson, while saying the vote on sanctions for Johnson himself ‘is a matter for individual members’. The chamber had far more opposition MPs in it than
Everyone giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry has their own corner to defend. And every ex-prime minister has a part of their premiership that they spend the rest of their life talking about and trying to justify. For David Cameron, it was his public spending cuts. Experts blame them for the health service being in
11 min listen
We have finally got the results of the Privileges Committee’s report into whether Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament, and it doesn’t make for comfortable reading for the former prime minister. The 30,000-word document finds that he committed multiple contempts of parliament, including deliberately misleading the house, deliberately misleading the committee, breaching confidence, impugning the committee
The Privileges Committee has published its report on whether Boris Johnson deliberately misled parliament over partygate. It is damning. The 30,000-word document finds that he committed multiple contempts of parliament, including deliberately misleading the house, deliberately misleading the committee, breaching confidence, impugning the committee and the democratic process of the house and ‘being complicit in
Nadine Dorries has this evening explained why she isn’t yet resigning as an MP, after she initially quit ‘with immediate effect’ last Friday. The Mid Bedfordshire MP had gone mysteriously quiet after her announcement, prompting Downing Street to suggest that she was letting her soon-to-be-former constituents down. She has now revealed that she is waiting
Is Labour U-turning on another big spending pledge? Last week, shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves scaled back the party’s £28 billion green energy spending plan to take account of a tougher economic picture. Today, reports suggest the party is planning a similar retreat on childcare, dropping plans for a universal system in favour of means testing.
Keir Starmer had a dilemma at Prime Minister’s Questions. Focus on the Boris Johnson psychodrama, or the more tangible story about mortgages and interests rates? He went for Tory infighting first. But then Sunak took the curious approach of deciding to use Starmer’s opener as an opportunity to address the Johnson question head on, rather
Boris Johnson has announced he will be standing down from parliament with immediate effect, after the Privileges Committee recommended a ten-day suspension for his conduct over partygate. There will be a by-election in his constituency of Uxbridge and South Ruislip. Johnson will not contest his seat. In his resignation letter, the former prime minister attacks the
Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden’s White House press conference started late, presumably to make a point that the two had just found so much to talk about in their bilateral. Like a date that had gone really well. When the pair eventually appeared before journalists, they spent most of their opening statements banging on about
12 min listen
The Green Party’s first and only MP, Caroline Lucas, has announced today that she’ll be stepping down at the next election. On the episode, Katy Balls talks with Isabel Hardman and Fraser Nelson about Lucas’s achievements and what it’s like to be the sole MP of your party in a parliamentary system like ours. Produced
Is it right that the government is going to let more people use weight-loss jabs on the NHS? Anti-obesity jabs, such as Ozempic, are one of the hottest talking points right now. How fat we are has long been one of those problems that people think can be solved by ‘one quick trick’. But these