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.
The Labour party has a troubling recess ahead of it. Many of its members just won’t know what to do with themselves. This is because for the first time in two years, there is no leadership contest. Those who had eschewed beach holidays in favour of spending their summer recess in windowless rooms listening to
So Vince Cable is now the new Lib Dem leader, after no-else opposed the 74-year-old Twickenham MP for the party’s top job. Of course, in the Lib Dems the ‘top job’ is a little less powerful than in other parties, thanks to a spider’s web of structures that mean the leader can’t always do what
One of the few bits of legislation that the government thinks it can get past MPs is a domestic violence bill, which was announced as a draft bill in the Queen’s Speech. Yesterday the minister responsible for taking the Bill through the Commons, Sarah Newton, held a meeting with MPs, campaigners and survivors of abuse
Given how miserable things are for Theresa May at the moment, with her Cabinet behaving like children, her backbenchers urging her to use the authority she doesn’t have to tell those ministers off, and a policy free-for-all caused by having no majority, today’s final PMQs before the summer should have been extremely painful for the
Theresa May is to rebuke her Cabinet tomorrow for the way its members have been behaving over the past week. What started as ‘warm prosecco’ plotting, as Damian Green put it, has now moved to open insults being traded over top notch champagne at Westminster parties and ministers telling journalists the gory details of Cabinet
There are so many people angling for the Tory leadership now that it really is easier to list those who haven’t yet written an attention-seeking op ed or been spotted plotting in a shady spot in Westminster. It’s not just the ones who fancy the job for themselves, or the little nascent campaign teams that
You’d think a government wouldn’t launch its flagship bill that takes Britain out of European Union legislation without first being clear what taking Britain out of the EU would actually look like. Apparently not: the once Great Repeal Bill – now just plain old European Union (Withdrawal) Bill for less triumphant times – was published
Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions could have been memorable purely for the novelty of Emily Thornberry deploying a tremendous amount of sass in her questions to Damian Green as the pair stood in for Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May. But it was also memorable because as well as leaning across the despatch box and delivering one-liners
Every political leader and government goes through a phase when their spin doctors feel they need a relaunch. For some, the relaunch comes after a number of good years. For Theresa May, her relaunch came on the anniversary of her becoming Prime Minister – and after a rather tumultuous year. As relaunches go, this wasn’t
Time was when Theresa May ran such a tight ship as Prime Minister that even so much as talking off the record to journalists was seen as a bit of a risk for a Cabinet minister to take. But post-election, the Prime Minister has so little authority that a number of things that previously seemed
Since Jeremy Corbyn’s surprisingly good election defeat, his MPs who previously plotted to get rid of him have been queuing up to pledge their allegiance to the Labour leader. They have been doing this partly because they did make some rather dire predictions about the impossibility of holding their own seats, or indeed of Labour
This first week back in Parliament has proved quite how fragile the government’s power is. It may be able to govern in a technical sense – announcing bills, occupying Downing Street, and so on – but it cannot guarantee that it will get what it wants in the Commons. Having to accept the Stella Creasy
The lady’s slipper orchid, Cypripedium calceolus, is both a beautiful and silly–looking plant. It is the strangest of our native orchids, with a fat yellow pouch and burgundy twisting petals. It doesn’t quite look as though it belongs in the gentle English countryside and, for a while, it didn’t belong at all. Why did I
What a very different atmosphere the House of Commons Chamber will have today for its first PMQs since the election. In the week before Parliament dissolved, Tory MPs were in a most obsequious mood, reciting the ‘strong and stable’ slogan that Theresa May started her campaign with, and even telling the Prime Minister that ‘I
It’s hardly a surprise that the Tories aren’t pushing ahead with plans for new grammar schools, and hardly a surprise that Education Secretary Justine Greening confirmed this quietly in a written answer to a parliamentary question. They neither want to cause an upset with a policy not universally supported by Tory MPs when they now
Why is it taking the government so long to give even a ballpark figure of the number of people who are missing, presumed dead, in the Grenfell Tower fire? The streets around the disaster site are littered not just with appeals to find missing relatives and friends but also with posters alleging a cover-up and
Theresa May’s body language on leaving the European Council summit last night shows quite how much of a toll the past few weeks have taken on the Prime Minister. She looks exhausted. Now, you don’t have to feel sorry for May: she did, after all, decide to call the snap election that has proved to be
Can you remember what was in this week’s Queen’s Speech? Boris Johnson couldn’t on the day it was unveiled, making a total mess of trying to sell it on Radio 4’s PM programme. But as the week draws to an end, the main question about the Speech is whether it will pass unamended, not whether
Today’s exchanges between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn in the Commons following the Queen’s Speech showed how much difference confidence makes to a leader’s performance. While Corbyn will never be a scintillating orator – speaking for far too long and ending with a sentence that seemed to be aimed more at entering the Guinness Book
Tomorrow Theresa May will present a Queen’s Speech that doesn’t have the formal support of a majority of the House of Commons. Her negotiations with the DUP still haven’t concluded, with party sources this afternoon warning the Conservatives that they won’t be ‘taken for granted’ and criticising the way May and her team have conducted
