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.
Prime Minister’s Questions today asked the same question that Katy raised in her magazine cover piece last week: what is the new government’s stance towards China? Oddly, the man asking that question never really answered it himself. Rishi Sunak spent much of his premiership in a semantic quandary over what kind of challenge or threat
Keir Starmer’s reset isn’t going very well. He turned up at Prime Minister’s Questions today clearly hoping to talk about the vision he had for the country, but ended up doing something he always complained about others doing when he was in opposition: dodging the question. A planted question from a Labour backbencher allowed Starmer
How long are the Tories going to campaign on the winter fuel payment? It was their main line of attack on Monday at Work and Pensions questions in the House of Commons, with a number of Conservative MPs asking ministers to say how many pensioners were going to die this winter because of the restrictions
Keir Starmer took a different tone on Israel today. That change of tone is to a certain extent to be expected, given the Prime Minister was marking the first anniversary of the 7 October attacks. He reflected in the Commons this afternoon that there were still nearly 100 hostages unaccounted for, and families across Israel
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Keir Starmer has not yet reached the 100 day mark but already he has lost his Chief of Staff. This afternoon, Downing Street has confirmed that Sue Gray is leaving her No. 10 role. Instead, she will be taking on an ‘advisory’ role as the Prime Minister’s envoy for nations and regions. In a statement
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What Keir Starmer wants to be talking about today is his landmark £22 billion investment into carbon capture. Flanked by Ed Miliband and Rachel Reeves, his speech was an unusually personal one where he spoke about the impacts of deindustrialisation. But how new is this policy? And what does this huge investment mean for the
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The final day of the party conference saw all four candidates take to the stage in a bid to have a David Cameron moment. Back in 2005, Cameron managed to gain momentum at the party conference with an assured speech (no notes) and get one over on his main rival – the then frontrunner –
Kemi Badenoch’s opening video before her speech had a series of politicians and normal people talking at odd angles into their phones about the need for a new politician. She was pictured smiling, charming people in person, and vowing ‘let’s renew’, before she walked onto the stage for another no-notes speech. It was, as you
James Cleverly’s speech did a much better job than Tom Tugendhat’s of explaining what sort of person he is, and what he wants to do with the party. It was very characteristic of Cleverly: there were lots of mentions of ‘optimism’, which is probably his guiding philosophy in life, and some well-delivered jokes, including one
Max Johnson’s life while he waited for a heart transplant had become so miserable and traumatic that he didn’t care whether he carried on or not. Indeed, the colourless, almost lifeless nine-year-old recorded a video saying he wanted to die. His parents felt as though they were on ‘death row’ as they waited for a
Kemi Badenoch is being followed around the Tory party conference by her own comments about maternity pay. She had to explain what she was on about again when she had her main stage interview in the Birmingham hall this afternoon, telling Chris Hope that ‘I think maternity pay is quite important’, and that she was
Jeremy Hunt is one of the few Tories at Conservative Party Conference willing to take the fight to Labour. In the second day, he sat down for an on-stage interview where the former Chancellor spoke about the winter fuel allowance, freebies, but also made some polite suggestions about where the Conservative party shouldn’t go, and
Tom Tugendhat may have the most interesting merchandise in this Tory leadership contest (including fake tan, for reasons no-one has yet explained), but he is not, as things stand, the frontrunner. He is also the least experienced of the contenders in government terms, though he decided today to compensate for that in his on-stage interview
Jeremy Hunt is one of the few Tories willing to take the fight to Labour while the Conservative leadership contest drones on. The shadow chancellor gave an on-stage interview at party conference in Birmingham this morning where he continued to attack Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ ‘£22 billion black hole’ narrative. Hunt suggested that not even Labour
The first row of Tory conference has, unsurprisingly, involved Kemi Badenoch. The leadership contender was on Times Radio this morning where she was making a point about business regulation and ended up suggesting that maternity pay in this country was ‘excessive’. Here is a transcript of her exchange with Kate McCann: KM: Do you think
Keir Starmer has moved on rather quickly from Labour conference, pitching up in New York to tell Israel that it can use ‘no more excuses’ and must allow more aid into Gaza. In his speech to the UN General Assembly, the Prime Minister also called for an immediate ceasefire, and said there needed to be
Arguably the most difficult speech of the whole of Labour conference came from Liz Kendall. The Work and Pensions secretary not only had the winter fuel payment cut to deal with, she is also responsible for welfare reform to get people off sickness benefits – one of the most fraught areas of policymaking – and will
This Labour conference has largely been about Keir Starmer and his ministers making the argument for what they are doing, rather than giving any details of how they plan to achieve it. Wes Streeting’s speech to the hall in Liverpool this morning fitted that pattern. He didn’t announce anything new. Instead, he set out quite
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Sir Keir Starmer has declared ‘change has begun’ in Liverpool. He defended the cuts to the winter fuel payments, announced a Hillsborough Law, and saw off a heckler. But did we learn anything from the speech in terms of policy? Is he leaving conference in a better or worse position than he entered? Isabel Hardman
Keir Starmer has his big speech today at Labour conference and, like Rachel Reeves’s offering yesterday, the Prime Minister plans to strike an upbeat tone while warning he can’t offer ‘false hope’. He will tell the hall in Liverpool that there’s ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ if the government takes ‘tough decisions now’.