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.
Oliver Dowden had 20 years and four Tory leaders to prepare him for his understudy moment at PMQs. He’s helped a series of leaders work out their attack lines, their defences and their jokes – so it’s unsurprising that his chance at the despatch box sparring with Angela Rayner was so textbook that he should probably
The National Conservatism conference is entering its third day in London, and has managed to grab more headlines than the official Conservative conference usually does. Tory party conferences have become so stage-managed that attendees often don’t bother going into the main hall – except for a quiet breather – because they know they won’t learn
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Home Secretary Suella Braverman said that there is no good reason the UK can’t train its own lorry drivers and fruit pickers in order to bring immigration rates down. Katy Balls speaks to James Heale and Isabel Hardman about why this has rubbed some up the wrong way and Keir Starmer’s speech over the weekend,
The Speaker of the House of Commons has just given Kemi Badenoch a furious dressing down over the government’s u-turn on repealing retained EU laws. Lindsay Hoyle criticised the minister for using a written ministerial statement to sneak out the admission that the government will only be reviewing or repealing 600 laws by the end
Rishi Sunak has u-turned on his leadership campaign promise to repeal thousands of retained EU laws at a stroke. A written statement – always the preferred vehicle for awkward government news – from Kemi Badenoch this afternoon confirmed that the government will in fact only scrap around 600 laws in the Retained EU Law Bill
We learned very little from Prime Minister’s Questions today. Both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak used attack lines from previous weeks – ones that they will probably repeat until the next general election – and didn’t stray into any new areas. The Leader of the Opposition wanted to mock the Tory performance in last week’s
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James Heale speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman about the fallout from the local elections, some of the arrests made during the Coronation and Rishi Sunak’s plans to give powers to the pharmacies.
The 8 a.m. rush for a GP appointment is one of the emblematic problems the NHS is facing. It’s something both Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak like to talk about: the former because he wants to emphasise that he is more in touch than the Prime Minister, who admitted to using private healthcare for his
The political fallout from the coronation policing row shows us that if Labour does get into government after the next general election, it is going to have a hard time unpicking even reforms it has complained loudly about under the current administration. Though ministers are having to justify why the Metropolitan Police arrested 64 people,
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Early results from the local elections are coming in. The Conservatives were expected to perform badly, and Labour to make gains, and that’s certainly happened. But, if Labour were to replicate these results in a general election, would they win? And are the Liberal Democrats the ones really doing well? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy
Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer were both present for Prime Minister’s Questions, but the session was largely Why You Should Vote For This Party In The Local Elections Tomorrow. Backbenchers on both sides used the half hour to air their grievances with local councils led by their rivals, or praise the important work of authorities
The decision by the NHS Staff Council to accept the government’s pay offer is not the end of the stand-off between ministers and some healthcare workers, obviously. But it does mark a step away from the general hostility over pay that has marked the autumn and winter months. Unite and the Royal College of Nursing
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Richard Sharp has quit as chairman of the BBC, following an investigation into whether he properly disclosed his role in enabling an £800,000 loan to Boris Johnson before his appointment. What will happen next? Cindy Yu speaks to Katy Balls and Isabel Hardman. Produced by Cindy Yu and Max Jeffery.
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A judge has ruled that strikes by the Royal College of Nursing be cut short by a day, because the six-month mandate for strike action will have passed. Two more unions are still to vote on Health Secretary Steve Barclay’s pay offer. If they support it, could the RCN change their mind on the deal?
The High Court has this afternoon blocked the second day of strikes by nurses after Health Secretary Steve Barclay took legal action against the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to stop the walkouts. RCN members had planned a 48 hour strike between 8pm on 30 April and 8pm on 2 May, but today’s ruling was
The Illegal Migration Bill has passed its final Commons stage before it goes up to the Lords – but not without a number of blows being dealt by Conservative MPs. The legislation, which ministers claim will help ‘stop the boats’ crossing the Channel, passed its third reading in the Commons 289 votes to 230. But
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.
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,
The debate about NHS strikes is turning into one of those ‘am I being unreasonable?’ threads on Reddit and Mumsnet, where posters jump all over each other to point out the way someone has messed up in a relationship. Health Secretary Steve Barclay is still hoping to win the war of attrition between the government
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