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.
Another day, another strike. Nurses are walking out today and tomorrow, with the Royal College of Nursing vowing to ‘keep going’ with industrial action until ministers compromise on pay demands. Ambulance workers will also announce further strike dates today. Barclay and colleagues are acutely aware that they aren’t winning in this war of attrition Strikes
The Commons was wearily furious as it responded to the David Carrick case this morning. Carrick yesterday admitted 49 sexual offences across more than two decades as a Metropolitan Police officer. The fury of MPs didn’t stop at the police. There was a great deal of frustration with ministers for being too slow to do
It would have been news if the Commons debate about the Scottish Gender Recognition Bill hadn’t turned ugly quickly. The questions and answers following Scottish Secretary Alister Jack’s statement about using Section 35 of the Scotland Act to stop the progress of that legislation were deeply uncomfortable. Jack insisted that he was merely focusing on
Rishi Sunak and Michelle Donelan will this afternoon bow to the inevitable and accept rebel changes to the Online Safety Bill. They are doing so after it became obvious that the government was going to lose a vote on the legislation, due to have its remaining stages in the Commons later today. The Online Safety
MPs and peers are going to spend the next few weeks in an almighty fight about strikes and protests. Today the Commons debates the second reading of the Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill. Business Secretary Grant Shapps and Labour’s deputy leader Angela Rayner are going head-to-head on legislation requiring unions in key sectors to provide
12 min listen
It’s looking like a busy week in Westminster. So busy in fact that prime minister Rishi Sunak will not be attending the annual Davos meeting, organised by the World Economic Forum. His opposite number Kier Starmer will be making the trip however, is this a shrewd move from Labour? Also on the podcast, amended plans
Rishi Sunak has a rebel problem: we already know that. He’s got factions of Tory MPs prepared to vote against the government on a range of issues, and the Prime Minister knows that on each issue, there are different rebels, rather than just one easy-to-identify awkward squad. Even when he is, as Katy explains in
For a politician who has set much store by being pretty boring, Keir Starmer seems to be enjoying his current provocative spell. His desire to shake up the ‘nonsense’ bureaucracy in the NHS makes the Sunday Telegraph splash and was a key feature of his interview this morning with Laura Kuenssberg. He argued that ‘the
The Princess of Wales is in hot water for some remarks she made while visiting the Open Door charity in Birkenhead, which helps teenagers with their mental health problems through arts and dance. She is reported to have said: ‘Talking therapies don’t work for some people, they’re not for everybody. It’s so important to have
Matilda played with her mother’s stethoscopes when she was a child. As a teenager, she pored over anatomy books. She devoted her early twenties to medical school and has been cramming for postgraduate exams well into her thirties. Last summer, she jacked it all in. Being a doctor ‘was turning me into a bad person,’
10 min listen
Rishi Sunak has finally answered questions over his healthcare arrangements with a statement in Prime Minister’s Questions, stating that he is currently registered with an NHS GP but has used private healthcare in the past. Is this change in tack an admission that he should have answered the question sooner? Katy Balls talks to Isabel
He was going to change his line at some point. Finally, at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Rishi Sunak dropped his refusal to discuss his family’s healthcare arrangements and admitted he has gone private. He used the first question of the session, from Labour’s Cat Smith, to ‘answer the lady directly’ and say: ‘I am registered
It’s the first Prime Minister’s Questions of the year and strikes will undoubtedly dominate. Both sides feel they have a political advantage. Rishi Sunak sees his anti-strike laws requiring minimum service levels as a way of uniting his party and claiming that Labour don’t care about the basic safety of the public. Keir Starmer sees
13 min listen
Business Secretary, Grant Shapps has introduced a bill proposing a minimum level of public sector work during strike action for six key industries. Labour’s Angela Rayner told the Commons these plans are ‘insulting and utterly stupid’. As a policy that Tories largely agree on, could this bill bring the party together? Also on the podcast,
9 min listen
In an interview on Sunday, Rishi Sunak refused to tell Laura Kuenssberg whether he has a private GP. Could this question come back to haunt him amid accusations he is ‘out of touch’? As Parliament returns from recess, ministers are holding talks with unions to avoid further public sector strikes. However, with strike action still
Both the Westminster and Scottish governments are trying to show they have a grip on the crises in their respective National Health Services today. Neither currently find themselves politically in a strong place on the winter crisis. English Health Secretary Steve Barclay is giving a statement to the House of Commons when it returns this
Rishi Sunak is still refusing to say that the NHS is ‘in crisis’. He’s held meetings on ‘NHS recovery’ this weekend, and will have been told in no uncertain terms by healthcare leaders that this is a crisis, probably the worst one the health service has faced in its history. He told Laura Kuenssberg in
When I was a student, my housemates and I would buy our groceries from a shop that offered only days of the week as the best before. We had a lettuce that went off on ‘Tuesday’, bread that would go stale on a ‘Thursday’, and so on. It was useful for the shop, and useful
12 min listen
Keir Starmer said this morning that communities would ‘take back control’ under a Labour government. In a speech delivered just down the road from where Rishi Sunak spoke yesterday, the Labour leader promised to expand devolution. Is his vision radical enough? Max Jeffery speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Heale.
Keir Starmer’s new year speech was better than Rishi Sunak’s. It’s easier to give a speech about fixing problems when you’re in opposition and someone else has caused them. But it was just more interesting than what the Prime Minister had to say yesterday. There was the politically audacious decision to pick up Vote Leave’s