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.
Keir Starmer joked at Prime Minister’s Questions today that Tory MPs seemed to be on recess already. But he wasn’t exactly firing on all cylinders either, giving automated answers to Kemi Badenoch’s questions about tax and the economy. Having complained volubly about prime ministers not answering the questions he asked as leader of the opposition,
If he were measuring his success at Prime Minister’s Questions purely by avoiding making any senior colleagues cry, Keir Starmer had a reasonably good session today. Rachel Reeves was beaming on the front bench, and next to her Yvette Cooper was joining in with the smiling too. It was the same level of smiling sincerity
The public won’t forgive and nor will I, said Health Secretary Wes Streeting of plans by junior doctors to strike over his refusal to cave to demands for 29 per cent pay rises. Speaking to the Times he said: ‘There are no grounds for strike action now. Resident doctors have just received the highest pay award across the
Given we have known for a good while that Labour thinks the way to save the health service is to move care out of hospitals and into the community, you might have expected today’s NHS ten-year plan to explain how the government is going to do that. The preventive agenda is not a new idea that needs
14 min listen
Today Wes Streeting – with the help of Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves – announced his 10 year plan for curing the NHS. It’s all about creating a ‘Neighbourhood Health Service’, but what does actually mean in practice? Much of the plan was leaked in advance: first, focusing on preventing disease before it becomes too
If you’re looking for an early example of Tom Stuart-Smith’s work, you’d have to go to a car park to find it. The now world-famous landscape designer started his career doing ‘awful supermarket projects’ where ‘landscape was perceived as just something they kind of had to do’. This was in the 1980s: today, if you
11 min listen
There were extraordinary scenes in PMQs today. Rachel Reeves appeared distraught as the Prime Minister failed to guarantee her security when asked by leader of the opposition Kemi Badenoch. It was brutal to watch, as the iron chancellor’s lip quivered and a tear rolled down her cheek. In many ways, you can’t blame her –
Keir Starmer was utterly brutal at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, though towards his own Chancellor, rather than the opposition. He refused to say, when invited by Kemi Badenoch, that Rachel Reeves would be in position until the end of the parliament. Behind him, Reeves looked utterly miserable, to the point that Badenoch highlighted it in
What do we really need to change about the NHS? Later this week we will finally get the NHS plan from Health Secretary Wes Streeting which, like all the other big reforms before, promises to make the health service fit for the future and focused on patients. Streeting has been more articulate than many previous
Liz Kendall tried to use her Commons statement on the government’s U-turn on some of the disability benefit cuts to persuade her colleagues that the changes made the legislation worth supporting. Not all of them sounded very convinced: there were repeated complaints about a ‘two-tier system’ whereby two people with the same needs would get
13 min listen
There have been a number of navel-gazing interviews with the Prime Minister over the weekend. Across thousands and thousands of words, he seems to be saying – if you read between the lines – that he doesn’t particularly enjoy being PM. In better news, Labour seems to have quelled the welfare rebellion. Liz Kendall is
Wes Streeting has announced yet another inquiry into NHS maternity safety: this time a national investigation which the Health Secretary wants to address ‘systemic problems dating back over 15 years.’ This rapid review, modelled on the Darzi review of the NHS, will report in December 2025 and will work across the entire maternity system, using
MPs are coming to the end of the assisted dying debate. The speeches can be roughly divided into the following camps: those who, like the Bill’s sponsor Kim Leadbeater, are very much in favour of the Bill and confident in its drafting; those who are in favour of the principle of assisted dying but who
14 min listen
It’s a historic day in Westminster, where MPs will vote on the assisted dying bill – the outcome of which could have huge repercussions for healthcare, politics and the courts. It’s such a significant day, in fact, that we’ll be recording another podcast just after the result is announced at around 2.30 p.m. Kim Leadbeater’s
This evening, the Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft has resigned as a government whip over the disability benefit cuts. In a letter to Keir Starmer, she writes that she is quitting the frontbench ‘with a heavy heart’, adding: Foxcroft’s resignation suggests that the rebellion over disability benefit cuts really is quite serious I have wrestled with
Kemi Badenoch will have been irritated to miss today’s Prime Minister’s Questions, given it denied her the opportunity to accuse Labour of delaying the inevitable on a national inquiry into grooming gangs. Sadly for those watching, the fact that today’s session was a battle of the deputies did not mean that the rest of us
Has the government really U-turned on grooming gangs? Six months after resisting a national inquiry into the crimes committed against young girls by men of predominantly Asian heritage, ministers have announced one. But Yvette Cooper’s statement to MPs this afternoon about the exact nature of that inquiry suggested the government had executed something a little
This evening, Keir Starmer has announced he does want a national inquiry on grooming gangs after all. The Prime Minister had tasked Baroness Casey to conduct a rapid review of the evidence available on the scale of these crimes committed by gangs – and her review is expected to conclude on Monday that there needs
‘Mr Speaker, he loves talking about Liz Truss – why? Because he wants to hide from his economic record.’ Kemi Badenoch didn’t need to do much guesswork ahead of today’s Prime Minister’s Questions: she knew Starmer would bring up the former prime minister. Starmer always likes to mention Truss, as Badenoch pointed out, but today
Kemi Badenoch was on good, brutal form at Prime Minister’s Questions today. Keir Starmer had tried to spike her guns by using a planted question to tell the chamber at the start that as the economy improved, he wanted to see more pensioners eligible for winter fuel payment. But the Tory leader still managed to
