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.
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
Unionist politicians are warming up for what they hope will be one of the biggest opportunities of the past two decades to undermine the independence cause. Whoever wins the SNP leadership contest today is taking over a party that doesn’t know its own kind any more – and a government that’s struggling to blame its
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
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
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
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
The nursing and ambulance strikes may soon be over. Ministers have this afternoon agreed a pay deal with trade unions representing nurses and ambulance workers that consists of a one-off payment covering 2022/23, and a pay deal for the 2023/24 year. Members of these unions will get 2 per cent of their salary for 2022/23,
How big a deal are the social reforms announced in yesterday’s Budget? They are designed to remove the reasons people have for leaving the workplace and not returning. The two biggest policies are the extension of childcare subsidies and the disability benefit reforms. Both are potent, though not necessarily in the way ministers suggest. Work
Keir Starmer really padded out his Budget response speech with pre-prepared lines today, to the extent that it was not quite clear what the Labour attack actually is. It’s always the case that replying to the chancellor the moment he finishes speaking is difficult. Occasionally opposition leaders are able to tease out a clear response
About halfway through his Budget speech, Jeremy Hunt was making a joke about returning from retirement on the backbenches in his fifties to a new career in finance. ‘How’s it going?’ heckled one opposition MP. The Commons erupted into laughter. ‘It’s going well, thank you!’ Hunt replied merrily. The speech itself did go smoothly: Tory
Prime Minister’s Questions was unusually feisty for a pre-Budget session. It covered the two big political rows of the week on the Illegal Migration Bill and Gary Lineker, both of which elicited a tribal response from both Conservative and Labour benches. The session started with a particularly angry question from Labour’s Jess Phillips about a tweet
Jeremy Hunt’s most important Budget announcement today won’t be something that’ll take effect in the next few hours or weeks. What Tory MPs are looking for above everything else is a commitment to reducing the tax burden and to the Conservative party going into the next election as a low-tax party. They have largely accepted
Rishi Sunak is in a hurry to fulfil his ‘five priorities’, especially on small boats. He’s in a hurry because there isn’t much time before the public use the general election to judge how well the Tories are doing. So legislation that promises to ‘stop the boats’ is moving through parliament swiftly. Most people agree
The tougher language on China in today’s refreshed Integrated Review hasn’t been enough for a number of Conservative MPs, who used the Commons statement on the matter to complain. When Foreign Secretary James Cleverly unveiled the updated security and foreign policy strategy to MPs, he described the ‘increasingly aggressive military and economic behaviour of the
Junior doctors have begun their 72-hour strike today, with tens of thousands of NHS appointments cancelled. NHS chiefs are more worried about the impact of this industrial action than they were about strikes by nurses or ambulance workers. This is not least because doctors who are members of the British Medical Association (BMA) and the
Keir Starmer decided that attack was the best form of defence at Prime Minister’s Questions. He tackled Rishi Sunak’s flagship ‘stop the boats’ policy on the basis that it simply won’t work. The Labour leader started his attack by linking International Women’s Day with what he claimed was the government driving a ‘coach and horses’
Rishi Sunak has just finished a press conference on his flagship legislation to curb illegal crossings in the Channel. The Prime Minister said the legislation would enable him to ‘keep my promise’ to the public to stop the boats and that it would ‘break the business model of the people smugglers’. He said ‘this is
Labour was the party under pressure in an urgent question in the Commons. This is not normally the order of things: it is usually the opposition or a disgruntled backbencher who tables the question, and an irritated-looking junior minister who is sent out to bat defensively on behalf of their beleaguered seniors. But today, the
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Tomorrow the government is set to deliver its plan the tackle small boats, legislation Rishi Sunak has been promising since before Christmas. Is Rishi about to get tough on immigration? Also on the podcast, what is the latest in the Sue Gray scandal? Will this – alongside continuing questions over Simon Case – start a
Helen Whately, the care minister, gave a moving speech this week. It was personal and emotional, but it won’t get much attention. Whately told a health conference organised by the Nuffield Trust about the final months of her grandmother’s life. Her grandmother had reached the age of 100 and was living independently, enjoying walks in
