Isabel Hardman

Isabel Hardman

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.

Corbyn and May were busy fighting other people at PMQs

Jeremy Corbyn took a bizarre approach to today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, choosing largely to have a go at the likely leader of the Liberal Democrats Jo Swinson, rather than the woman opposite him. He choose to focus his questions to Theresa May on cuts to legal aid, branding them a ‘Lib Dem decision’ and pointing

Isabel Hardman

Sir Kim Darroch resigns as British Ambassador after leak

In the past few minutes, Sir Kim Darroch has resigned as UK Ambassador to Washington. The Foreign Office has just released a letter in which Sir Kim says says the leak of diplomatic cables in which he described President Trump as ‘insecure’ has made it ‘impossible for me to carry out my role as I

Optimistic Boris looks ahead to turbulent term as PM in TV debate

Jeremy Hunt managed to sum up the Tory leadership contest very aptly this evening when he accused Boris Johnson of ‘peddling optimism’. The line, delivered in ITV’s leaders’ debate, did the Foreign Secretary no favours, though. He was pitching himself as the truthful realist, who wouldn’t make promises he couldn’t deliver on. Johnson ridiculed this

Isabel Hardman

Hancock given hard time over sugar tax and social care

On the subject of MPs who hope Boris Johnson might give them a job, Matt Hancock was before the Health Select Committee this afternoon, where he ended up taking a fair bit of flak for what the current government hasn’t done, and what the next administration might do. After his own failed leadership bid, the

Isabel Hardman

Could Boris Johnson make Jeremy Hunt his deputy?

Who will Boris Johnson appoint as his deputy? Now that voting in the Tory leadership is well underway – with 60 per cent of party members expected to have sent back their ballots by Thursday – most MPs are starting to think more about what the next prime minister’s cabinet will look like, and less

Why MPs’ mental health matters

Given the level of threats that they face, and the bizarre life they often lead, it’s no surprise that MPs have a higher preponderance of mental health problems than the general public. A study published this week in the British Medical Journal found that 34 per cent of parliamentarians had the symptoms of a common

Theresa May’s last-minute legacy panic

Theresa May has just a handful of days left as Prime Minister, but is still trying to secure a domestic legacy for herself. She is doing this in a last-minute manner that makes David Cameron’s famous essay crises look incredibly well-organised. Last week, she called for better design rules to prevent ‘tiny homes’ being built,

Is the Tory party trying to tear itself apart?

The Conservative party seems to have viewed the demise of the Jeremy Kyle Show as a gap in the market which it needs to fill, with a series of bizarre stories about the behaviour of some of its leading figures over the past few days. Just to top off Mark Field grabbing a female protester

A cacophony of a leadership debate

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

Can anyone stop Boris Johnson becoming prime minister?

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

How Boris’s campaign predicted he would get 114 votes

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

Isabel Hardman

May confirms she’ll stay on as an MP at dull PMQs session

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