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.
Jeremy Corbyn chose to focus his questions to the Prime Minister today on the government’s response to the Grenfell Tower fire. It was the second anniversary last week of that fire, and campaigners have accused the government of not keeping its promises to the survivors of that disaster. The Labour leader asked about the slow
Last night’s Tory leadership debate was an illustration of where the wider party has ended up: fractious, confused, and without a clear plan for what to do next. Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions showed the damage that these blue-on-blue attacks are doing to the Conservative party. A number of the candidates have criticised the policies of
Boris Johnson’s warning that the televised Tory leadership hustings would be a ‘cacophony’ was proved correct this evening when the five candidates spent an hour talking over one another. Any private fears the former Foreign Secretary may have had about his own performance were largely unjustified, though, as he stayed reasonable and quiet throughout the
Now that Rory Stewart has gone from joke candidate to probable former spy who has a shot of making it to the final two of the Tory leadership contest, how do the other candidates deal with him? As James explains, Stewart’s best hope of getting through the next rounds is to bleed votes from Michael
Stella Creasy’s complaint that as an MP she will be unable to take maternity leave is just the latest piece of evidence of Parliament’s dysfunctional nature. The Labour MP has tried – in vain – to get extra funding from the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority so she can appoint someone to cover her work while
Can anyone stop Boris Johnson? It is an inevitability that the former Mayor of London will be in the final two candidates of the Tory leadership contest, and already many members of other campaigns are talking about what he will do as Prime Minister, rather than how their candidate will beat him. Given there has
Boris Johnson’s campaign team has been so well-organised that it predicted exactly the number of votes he would get in today’s secret ballot, I understand. According to WhatsApp messages between his supporters, one member handed Johnson a sealed envelope with ‘114’ written in it before the result, telling him to open it once the official
It is isn’t a great surprise that Esther McVey, Mark Harper and Andrea Leadsom have been knocked out of the first round of the Tory leadership contest, with 9, 10 and 11 votes respectively. None of them had particularly organised campaigns or a sufficiently distinctive pitch to the Conservative party. McVey, for instance, was still
Sajid Javid’s leadership launch was delayed by over an hour because Parliament was trying to make up its mind on whether to stop a no-deal Brexit. When he eventually arrived, there was a rather jolly atmosphere in the room, encouraged in part by the fact that his campaign team had thought it wise to offer
A fair few MPs felt there was no reason to come to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, given the real action is in the Conservative leadership contest. There were spaces behind Theresa May as she took questions from Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader clearly hadn’t put much effort into preparing for the session, either, offering a
Promising to protect Theresa May’s legacy isn’t really a feature of this Conservative leadership contest. That’s not just because so many of the candidates disagree about the type of Conservatism that they the outgoing Prime Minister espoused, but because she doesn’t really have much of a legacy to protect. But one of the few reforms
Boris Johnson is currently the quiet man of the Tory leadership contest, lurking in the shadows rather than courting media attention as he usually does. His campaign team has deliberately held him back from touring the studios to avoid gaffes or rows. They’re even nervous about the limited exposure he has, joking that he is
Michael Gove is one of those people who enjoys finding themselves with their back against the wall, fighting. His leadership launch this afternoon was mired in questions about his past drug use, but the Environment Secretary looked totally unruffled by the rows of the past few days and the questions from journalists after his speech.
Dominic Raab’s launch was just downstairs from the event that Matt Hancock held, and rather more serious, too. He was able to underline his parliamentary support, filling the front row of his audience with MPs who cheered loudly at appropriate moments. He was introduced by Maria Miller, who joked that she hoped to persuade him
What does Matt Hancock offer the Conservative party? He’s a former Remainer who has stayed loyal in Theresa May’s Cabinet and so has a bit of a tricky pitch to make to a party furious about the outgoing Prime Minister’s failure to deliver Brexit. He also hasn’t got an eye-catching drugs story to get attention,
‘Dear Chief Secretary, I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards — and good luck!’ Liam Byrne will forever be haunted by the note he left on his desk for his successor in 2010. Both coalition parties made much of what was supposed to be a joke about the difficulties of keeping Whitehall spending in
With just a few days to go until nominations close in the Tory leadership contest, candidates are busy trying to shore up support in the parliamentary party. There are five – Sam Gyimah, Andrea Leadsom, Rory Stewart, Mark Harper and Esther McVey – who currently don’t have sufficient nominations to make it onto the ballot
The Tory leadership contest rules are to change in order to whittle down the number of candidates, the party board confirmed this evening. After it became clear that the contest was going to be rather chaotic with more than a dozen candidates, the party agreed to raise the threshold for nominations to make it harder
Why did Change UK end up splitting? Well, there were the personality clashes. And then there was the failure to attract more MPs who were supposed to break off from their existing parties to join the quest to change politics. But the biggest reason the party ended up in this mess was that simply it
Just a few months after becoming a political party, Change UK has announced it is splitting. Six of its MPs, including its leader Heidi Allen, have quit, with Anna Soubry now taking the crown. The party confirmed the split with a press release typical of its odd behaviour throughout its existence, focusing on Soubry’s election