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.
Both Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May turned up in good form to PMQs today. The Labour leader was unusually nimble with his ripostes, deploying statistics on home ownership straight after the Prime Minister’s mockery of the Labour party’s attitude towards home ownership. But as usual, he didn’t manage to make the homeslessness figures that he
Tory MPs are now sufficiently worried about the changes to the way that refuges for domestic abuse victims are funded that they have started to speak out publicly. This morning, in a Westminster Hall debate, three Conservative backbenchers told the Communities and Local Government minister Marcus Jones that the government ‘must intervene’ to stop refuges
Despite the government reaching its long-awaited milestone of ’sufficient progress’ in the Brexit talks last week, certain key figures on both sides of the debate seem intent on muddying the waters as much as possible. Mr Steerpike reports on David Davis’s latest efforts on that front, while Labour MPs are trying to understand the implications
In the midst of the confusion over whether the UK and Ireland have agreed for Northern Ireland to remain in the customs union, Tory MPs have been invited to a party meeting this afternoon at 4. Some backbenchers who are particularly interested in scrutinising Brexit had requested that they be given the same sort of
Nobody said Brexit was going to be easy, did they? It turns out that even talking about how difficult Brexit is going to be is pretty tricky, and the person feeling that most keenly is David Davis. Today the Brexit Secretary came under fire from all parts of the House of Commons for the heavy
Being a backbench MP can be pretty dull. In recent times, former members of the government have found the experience of merely being a member of the legislature so upsetting that they’ve downed tools and left Parliament altogether: David Cameron made a big show of saying he’d stay on and serve Witney from the backbenches,
Why does Emma Dent Coad continually get into trouble for spiteful comments, tweets and jokes about her political opponents and those with a privileged accident of birth such as members of the royal family? Perhaps the Kensington MP is suffering from a strange cognitive dissonance resulting from having to represent a fair few people whose
Why is a Conservative government publishing an industrial strategy? This afternoon, Business Secretary Greg Clark tried to insist to MPs that the white paper he was presenting wasn’t a return to the mistakes of previous governments in picking winners and constraining businesses, but a means of ensuring that Britain was able to compete with other
If Philip Hammond’s Budget was designed to stave off any particularly pressing problems, rather than really building the Britain that he suggested he was going to build in his introductory remarks, then it’s not yet clear whether he’s managed that with Universal credit. Yesterday the Chancellor told the Commons that ‘I recognise the genuine concerns
If we accept the usual caveat that it’s difficult for any Opposition leader, no matter how good, to respond well to a Budget straight after it has been delivered only in its broad-brush form, then we might conclude that Jeremy Corbyn’s response today was pretty good, all things considered. The Labour leader was angry and
On Budget Day, MPs and journalists joke about it being a ‘quiet day’ and ‘not much going on’ as they pass one another in the corridors of Westminster (this is an accurate representation of how utterly hilarious the corridors of power normally are). Today’s Budget was in a number of respects rather quiet, especially in
Jeremy Corbyn rarely talks about Brexit at Prime Minister’s Questions, and it is interesting that he chose today’s session, which will get little attention as a result of the Budget, to probe Theresa May on the matter. The Labour leader did have a good stint, quoting a number of European negotiators, Tory backbenchers and Cabinet
Vicky Atkins was the first MP from the 2015 intake to become a minister, and had been preparing assiduously for doing so. She asked loyal questions of the Prime Minister and beavered away on the Home Affairs Committee and the joint committee examining the Draft Investigatory Powers Bill. But it was obvious that this very
Two of the biggest unsolved domestic crises in this country are surely social care and housing. Both have creaked from ‘in trouble’ to ‘already in crisis’ without much in the way of serious policy or money from successive governments. Today, ministers turned their attention to both matters, making rather different announcements on how they might
Should the British government be more suspicious of Russia? Theresa May obviously thinks so, telling Vladimir Putin in a speech this week that ‘we know what you are doing and you will not succeed’. Jeremy Corbyn is less keen, with his spokesman telling journalists that ‘I think we need to see more evidence of what’s
Does Theresa May want to build more homes? The problems that the Prime Minister faces on this matter were summed up very neatly by two different Tory backbenchers at Prime Minister’s Questions today. She was asked by Tom Tughendhat whether she would ‘take the chance to build more homes’, to which she replied that ‘my
Is Theresa May growing in confidence again? At the weekend, the Prime Minister warned Brexit rebels against blocking Britain leaving the EU, and tried to force their hands by tabling an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill on the date of Brexit. That hasn’t gone down so well with the rebels, who are variously tabling
Boris Johnson had to be summoned to the Commons by an urgent question from Labour, but when he got there, he did eventually apologise for his blunder in which he had told MPs that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe had been visiting Iran in a professional capacity to teach journalism. The Foreign Secretary was in far less bullish
Given all the rows in Westminster at the moment, it’s easy to forget that there are Brexit negotiations going on. But those involved in the talks from the EU’s side haven’t, and neither have they neglected to notice that Theresa May’s government is looking remarkably flimsy. Hence Michel Barnier’s warning today that there are only
Priti Patel is on her way back to Britain to face the music following her strange holiday-cum-lobbying operation in Israel. Yesterday it emerged that the International Development Secretary had not told Number 10 that she had suggested giving humanitarian aid to the Israeli army in the Golan Heights. It has been so heavily briefed that
