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.
Normally when MPs criticise the uncertainty around the government’s relationship with another country, they are referring to the constant chopping and changing around how to engage with China, not Israel. But where the UK stands on both countries is in flux at the moment, and today’s Foreign Office Questions in the Commons didn’t help much
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Today is the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference, at which Rachel Reeves has laid out her plan to ‘Get Britain Working’ and prove Labour as the party of business … despite what the recent Budget and the employers national insurance increase might suggest. What’s the mood of big business today? Also on the podcast,
Should Shabana Mahmood be allowed to ‘impose’ her religious beliefs on everyone else? Lord Falconer doesn’t think so, arguing yesterday that the Justice Secretary was ‘motivated… by her religious beliefs’ in her opposition to assisted dying. He added: ‘I respect that religious belief but I do not think it should be imposed on everybody else.’ It’s
Angela Rayner was so keen to get out of the traps with her criticism of the last Conservative government at today’s deputy prime minister’s questions that she almost forgot to welcome her new sparring partner. Alex Burghart is not yet a household name: in fact, he isn’t even Rayner’s direct counterpart, as Kemi Badenoch hasn’t
Will there be more resignations following the departure of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury? The Church is, as on everything else, split on the issue, with some bishops saying that there needs to be wider accountability, and the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell saying that no more resignations are necessary. Given part of the
Kemi Badenoch didn’t have the best start at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions: she asked a question that had apparently already been answered, allowing Keir Starmer to mock her early on. But the Prime Minister ultimately had the tougher session. That repeated question first came from Lib Dem Christine Jardine at the very start of the
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Justin Welby has announced he is resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over his handling of serial child abuser John Smyth. In a statement, he said ‘it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024’. He says he believes stepping aside ‘is in
You don’t need to have a strong opinion either way on assisted dying to be concerned about the latest attempt to legalise it: from a scrutiny perspective, Kim Leadbeater’s bill leaves a lot to be desired. It was published last night, 38 pages long, and will be debated in just under three weeks’ time. Most
In the past few minutes, Justin Welby has announced he is resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over his handling of serial child abuser John Smyth. In a statement, he said ‘it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024’. He says he
MPs are getting involved in the row over Justin Welby’s position as Archbishop of Canterbury, with Conservative MP Nick Timothy requesting an urgent question in the Commons today. Pressure for Welby to resign has been building from various quarters within the Church of England’s General Synod and the wider church. As in politics, some are
Justin Welby has said he considered resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth. That report, which emerged this week, found the Church of England had, from 2013, missed opportunities to bring Smyth to justice: from that point onwards, Welby and other senior figures knew
What difference has Kemi Badenoch’s victory made to the way the party talks about education? Badenoch doesn’t want to make policy straight away, having stood on a platform promising a fundamental rethink of what the Conservatives stand for. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons suggested that in the meantime, she wants her frontbenchers to put
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Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the opposition, and we have an early indication of who will make up her shadow cabinet. She has already chosen her chief whip in loyalist Rebecca Harris; Nigel Huddleston and Dominic Johnson will be party chairman; Laura Trott will be shadow education secretary; Neil O’Brien will be shadow
Rishi Sunak’s final act in the Commons as leader of the opposition was one he clearly enjoyed. The outgoing Conservative leader had what is normally the unenviable task of responding to the Budget just minutes after it had been delivered, before the small print reveals the real story. Rachel Reeves had helped him quite a
All the political framing of the past three months has been around Rachel Reeves’ first Budget. Black holes have been ‘discovered’, public services have been found to be in a worse state than expected, and Liz Truss has been exhumed at every opportunity (or at least, when she hasn’t been inserting herself into the political
When Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister, he and Keir Starmer had some of the most repetitive and uninformative sessions at Prime Minister’s Questions. Today was his final stint as leader of the opposition in this forum, and the session was charming. It covered the coast-to-coast route, which travels through his Richmond constituency, the importance of
The gardening world is a gentle, friendly place. Rows are rare, with disagreements creeping in softly like moss, not blowing up the way they do in politics. Everyone is quite nice to one another, almost to a fault. Which is why the row over Tom Massey’s AI garden at the Chelsea Flower Show is quite
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Wes Streeting has been out on the airwaves this morning, giving us a better idea of what will be in the Budget when it comes to the NHS. In an attempt to resuscitate a ‘broken but not beaten’ NHS, he has announced a cash injection reported to be up to £7 billion – including £1.57
Is the Speaker being a bit precious with his complaint about pre-Budget announcements? Lindsay Hoyle made a statement in the Commons this afternoon in which he issued a stinging rebuke to Rachel Reeves and other ministers for going ‘around the world telling everybody’ about significant Budget policies, rather than making the announcements to MPs first.
Keir Starmer has given up trying to define what a ‘working person’ is after last week’s debacle, announcing at the start of his pre-Budget speech today that working people know who they are. The Prime Minister said: ‘I know some people want to have a debate about this, and I know there will always be