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.
If Daniel Defoe had been writing about modern budgets, he would have adapted his famous saying to include the certainty of death, taxes and an absence of a long-term plan for adult social care. Once again, the statement from the Chancellor had a yawning gap where the settlement for funding the beleaguered sector should be. There
Sir Keir Starmer will have spent far more time preparing his response to today’s Budget which comes after Prime Minister’s Questions, but he did also manage to highlight a problem that isn’t going away for the government in his questions to Boris Johnson. The Labour leader chose to focus his stint on Yemen, criticising the
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Rishi Sunak has been a popular Chancellor, mainly because he’s responsible for pandemic giveaway after giveaway. But with tomorrow’s Budget, the tone will begin to change. Can he get through it unscathed? Katy Balls talks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.
There are just days until all pupils return to English schools, and Conservative MPs are becoming increasingly concerned about what state many of these students will be in when they arrive back in the classroom after the best part of a year trying to learn from home. At today’s Education Questions in the House of
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Contact tracers are trying to find a person infected with the Brazilian variant of coronavirus, after they incorrectly returned their testing form. How serious is the new strain’s arrival, and could it have been stopped with a stricter quarantine policy? Isabel Hardman speaks to James Forsyth and Katy Balls.
Helping children catch up on the best part of a year out of the classroom is one of the biggest tasks facing the government. On Wednesday, Gavin Williamson announced an extra £400 million in funding which schools can use to run summer programmes and other catch-up projects. That’s on top of £300 million allocated last
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Boris Johnson has finally set out his roadmap for easing lockdown. On the episode, Katy Balls talks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth about what to expect over the next few months.
Boris Johnson’s roadmap for emerging from the pandemic shows us quite how bad his sense of direction has been at times over the past few months. The Prime Minister and his colleagues in government have repeatedly insisted that they won’t be introducing vaccine passports — but today’s document confirms that ministers are in fact establishing
Is it really such a bad thing that the Chelsea Flower Show has been postponed to the autumn because of Covid? Yes, we’ll be missing out on the blousy, frothiness of early summer gardens that we see every year – not so many umbellifers, alliums or delphiniums – and yes, the Floral Pavilion will be
Most of the Conservative MPs who responded to Robert Jenrick’s statement this afternoon about an extra £3.5 billion to help with the cladding crisis sounded relieved that the government is finally doing something. But if ministers think that the response in the Chamber means they can relax, they are in for a bit of a
Will Brits be able to enjoy a summer holiday after the pandemic? Just a few months ago, Health Secretary Matt Hancock suggested they would, telling MPs that he had already booked his summer break to Cornwall. But today, Boris Johnson joined in with the rather less cheerful messaging coming out of government that it was
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At PMQs today, Boris Johnson said the public would need to ‘get used to the idea of vaccinating and then revaccinating in the autumn, as we come to face these new variants.’ The government’s contract with the Wrexham factory that helps make the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine has been extended to August 2022 at the earliest, so
Labour is demanding that Matt Hancock apologise to NHS workers for a ‘disgraceful attack’ on the NHS. In a letter to the Health Secretary, the party’s deputy leader Angela Rayner says Hancock must distance himself from a claim that ‘there is nothing special about the NHS, neither during this pandemic nor at any other time’.
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The government has managed to delay a backbench rebellion on the so-called ‘genocide amendment’ today, using what Iain Duncan Smith called ‘arcane procedural games’. The Trade Bill amendment, which would have seen courts given the power to designate abuses as a genocide, was expected to have a significant number of Tory backers. Katy Balls discusses
It has taken the Conservatives an entire decade to recover from their last attempt to legislate for a reorganisation of the NHS. Now, they’re proposing to unpick some of what’s left of that Health and Social Care Act. Details of a Health and Care White Paper leaked to the excellent Andy Cowper at Health Policy
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Latest research from the University of Oxford shows that their vaccine has ‘minimal protection’ against the South African variant of the coronavirus. Should the government be doing more to protect UK borders? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James Forsyth.
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It’s been weeks since the idea of a quarantine system was floated, yet nothing has been forthcoming on that front. Isabel Hardman asks James Forsyth and Katy Balls – what’s the hold up in government?
Wednesday’s very upbeat Downing Street coronavirus briefing underlined the optimism that Boris Johnson feels about the way the Covid crisis could work out for him. The Prime Minister was celebrating the UK passing the ten million mark for the number of people who have received their first dose of the vaccine, and thanked the NHS
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At PMQs today, Keir Starmer denied Boris Johnson’s claims that he wanted the UK to remain in the EU’s vaccine procurement scheme. Could a successful domestic rollout, away from the bloc’s programme, be seen by the public as an upside of Brexit and cause the opposition problems? Katy Balls speaks to Isabel Hardman and James
Boris Johnson had a pretty easy ride at Prime Minister’s Questions today, despite Keir Starmer raising two policy problems that the government is really struggling to stay on top of. The Labour leader asked his first three questions on the quarantine policy, pushing Johnson for much tougher rules, and then turned to the cladding scandal.