Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman

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.

Will Xi really bring peace to Ukraine?

11 min listen

Xi Jinping said he will send diplomats to help broker peace in Ukraine after he had a phone call with Volodymyr Zelensky. But are China’s aims really as noble as they seem? Fraser Nelson speaks to Isabel Hardman, Svitlana Morenets and Cindy Yu. 

Isabel Hardman

Sunak and Starmer turn nasty again at PMQs

Keir Starmer is very fond of giving ‘deeply personal’ interviews where he tries to bring some colour to his grey suited image. He is also increasingly keen on deeply personal attacks on Rishi Sunak at Prime Minister’s Questions, as today’s session showed.  The Labour leader ramped up his attacks on Sunak as a ludicrously rich,

Isabel Hardman

Can the Foreign Office avoid the mistakes of Kabul in Sudan?

A British evacuation of Sudan began last night after a 72-hour ceasefire was agreed. Ministers, however, are anxious about the possibility that the fighting will start up sooner. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said it was ‘impossible for us to predict how long this opportunity will last’. Britons will need to travel to an airfield outside

Could Diane Abbott return to Labour?

17 min listen

Katy Balls, Fraser Nelson and Isabel Hardman discuss Diane Abbott’s suspension from the Labour party. Given her hasty apology, could Keir Starmer allow such a key figure to Labour’s left back into the party? Also on the podcast, what has been the fallout from Dominic Raab’s resignation? And how is Rishi Sunak trying to woo

Isabel Hardman’s Sunday Round-up – 23/04/23

11 min listen

Isabel Hardman hosts highlights from Sunday morning’s political shows. Today’s shows focussed heavily on Dominic Raab’s resignation from Rishi Sunak’s government. Whilst new deputy PM Oliver Dowden described Raab as a ‘man of his word’, Labour’s Jonathan Ashworth was less flattering, calling him: ‘Not just a bullying minister, a failing minister’. Education was also a

Rishi Sunak distances himself from Raab’s resignation

Rishi Sunak seems keen to stand back from the row about Dominic Raab, offering more of a commentary on it being ‘right’ that the deputy prime minister and Justice Secretary has quit government, rather than accepting that Raab was a bully. His reply to Raab’s resignation letter suggests this, and this afternoon his official spokesman

Isabel Hardman

Dominic Raab resigns over bullying report

10 min listen

This morning Dominic Raab has resigned from Rishi Sunak’s government following the findings of an investigation into bullying claims against him. Raab has been one of Sunak’s closest allies, serving as deputy PM and justice secretary. Where does this leave the prime minister?  Natasha Feroze speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman.  Produced by Natasha

Humza Yousaf’s track record remains the focus of FMQs

Does Humza Yousaf really want to be ‘focusing relentlessly on the day job’, as he claimed at First Minister’s Questions today? It’s not a fun day job to focus on. The First Minister naturally had to face questions on the crisis in his own party when he faced MSPs today, with both Douglas Ross and

Sunak’s ‘Sir Softy’ attack on Starmer flopped at PMQs

Keir Starmer had a much better Prime Minister’s Questions than Rishi Sunak today. The main reason for this was that the Labour leader had come with a clear thesis about the Tories breaking public services and Sunak not noticing. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister had brought along a bizarre insult for his opponent. While Starmer ridiculed

Humza Yousaf has a difficult road ahead of him

It was, by his own admission, a ‘not ideal’ set of circumstances for Humza Yousaf’s speech setting out his priorities as First Minister, with the arrest of the party treasurer just hours before he was due in the Scottish parliament chamber amid the ongoing investigation into the party’s finances. Then again, there were a lot

The NHS crisis won’t end soon

How long are the NHS strikes going to go on for? The collapse in agreement on nurses’ pay over the Easter recess has made it much harder for ministers to push the British Medical Association towards a deal on junior doctors’ pay, as well as undermining Rishi Sunak’s positioning as someone who gets things done.

Isabel Hardman

Does Sunak’s maths plan add up?

11 min listen

Parliament is back from the Easter break and Rishi Sunak has taken the opportunity to reiterate his commitment to improving maths literacy in the country. Listeners will remember that the plan to make maths compulsory until 18 was first announced in Rishi’s new year’s speech along with his five priorities. Why is maths provision so

Isabel Hardman’s Sunday Roundup – 16/04/23

11 min listen

Isabel Hardman hosts the highlights from Sunday morning’s political shows. This morning’s shows heavily focussed on the crisis in the NHS, after the Royal College of Nursing voted against the government’s pay deal, meaning further strike action. Pat Cullen says the strikes could last as long as Christmas. Conservative Party Chair, Greg Hands disagrees and

Will Kate Forbes’s attacks come back to bite Humza Yousaf?

Humza Yousaf is now officially the First Minister of Scotland, after Holyrood voted in favour of him taking over from Nicola Sturgeon. Yousaf secured the votes of all his 71 SNP colleagues and Scottish Greens.  The process in Holyrood allows other candidates to nominate themselves for the role too, so the party leaders of the

Starmer wants to steal crime from the Tories

It’s tempting to see Keir Starmer as a political wind-up merchant given the number of times he likes to quote people who annoy his own activists. Recently he adopted the ‘take back control’ slogan and today he approvingly quoted Margaret Thatcher. Hell, the man has even praised Tony Blair.  Labour sees an opportunity in the

It’s easy to become numb to the madness of Boris Johnson

What was Boris Johnson up to at the Privileges Committee? The former prime minister has just finished more than three hours of evidence on whether he deliberately misled the Commons over partygate. In his opening statement, he said ‘hand on heart, I did not lie to the House’. One of his repeated insistences was that

Keir Starmer (Credit: Parliamentlive.tv)
Isabel Hardman

PMQs: Starmer’s attacks on crime flop

Rishi Sunak isn’t giving evidence to the Privileges Committee’s inquiry today. Nevertheless, he got his defence on partygate in anyway when he took Prime Minister’s Questions. In one of his answers to Keir Starmer, Sunak told the chamber that the fine he received was investigated by a ‘senior civil servant’. He added: ‘The findings of

No new cash for NHS pay deal

The money for the NHS pay agreement isn’t new cash, I’m told. This is going to cause a real ruckus with the trade unions, who came away from today’s talks believing that the £2.5 billion deal was extra money from the Treasury. But talking to my sources in government, I now understand that while there