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.
From our UK edition
As the new SNP MPs settle in to their new life in the House of Commons, a picture is doing the rounds on social media showing a Commons Chamber that is near-deserted, save the SNP benches, which are packed. The caption from the BBC Parliament channel is ‘MPs are debating safety at HM Naval Base
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Number 10 has not given an official denial that David Cameron has ruled out pulling out of the European Convention on human rights, with the Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman today saying that the manifesto was ‘absolutely’ the best guide to the Prime Minister’s position on human rights reform. This is what the manifesto says on
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The Home Office has today published a bill banning a number of ‘legal highs’ such as laughing gas, poppers, and so on. There is a big debate about whether this sort of legislation is worth it, and so on, but one particular substance may cause a rather different row. ‘Poppers’, which can apparently be bought
From our UK edition
On election night, between the exit poll suggesting the Conservatives would be back in a coalition government and the slow realisation that they were heading for a majority, Defence Secretary Michael Fallon was heard remarking to colleagues that the UK might just end up maintaining defence spending at 2 per cent of GDP after all.
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Of all the talks he will have with European leaders about his plans to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with Europe, David Cameron was always likely to enjoy his meeting with Angela Merkel the most. And she doesn’t seem to have disappointed him, saying treaty change was not ‘impossible’ and that ‘we would like to be a
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The most striking aspect of Labour’s response to the Queen’s Speech yesterday was that it is ‘sympathetic’ to the Tory plan to lower the £26,000 benefit cap for workless households to £23,000. This is a policy position that Harriet Harman developed after some discussion with the rest of the party as she prepared to respond
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George Galloway’s announcement on Twitter this afternoon that he is standing for London Mayor hasn’t surprised many, given he suggested he would do so before he even lost his seat as Respect MP for Bradford West. But it is still significant because it means that there will now be a fierce left-wing force splitting the
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Boris has finally spoken. Intervening on his Tory colleague Cheryl Gillan, who was complaining about a lack of funding for rural public services and transport, the new MP for Uxbridge said ‘Will she not agree that in fact her constituents get a superb service from Transport for London?’ He thanked the government for its continued
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The SNP have done a rather good job this afternoon of uniting the rest of the Commons against them by indulging in the shameful practice of – brace yourself – clapping in the Chamber. This is on top of trying to turf Dennis Skinner out of his preferred seat to the extent that the octogenarian
From our UK edition
Six more Labour MPs have endorsed Yvette Cooper as leader: Coffee House has the names exclusively. Emily Thornberry Ian Austin Jim Cunningham Karen Buck Lyn Brown Steve McCabe They’re an interesting mix, ranging from Londoners like Karen Buck, Lyn Brown and Emily Thornberry to those with seats in the Midlands, such as Ian Austin, Jim
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David Cameron has decided to stall on human rights reform for now, partly because the Tories couldn’t quite work out how to get the reforms they wanted, and partly because the Prime Minister knew that he had a rebellion in his own party on his hands, opposition from almost all other parties bar the DUP,
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Could there be a sadder sight today than Nick Clegg, intervening on behalf of his now tiny ‘minor party’ in the Queen’s Speech debate? The Lib Dem leader is responding to this afternoon, his first intervention since the general election, and plans to use his slot to complain that the Tories are already turning their
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Chris Bryant is haunted by Labour’s general election defeat. He has taken his former colleague Douglas Alexander’s office, and Commons staff have been appearing to collect the former Shadow Foreign Secretary’s computers. ‘They were referring to the computers as “the defeated computers”,’ he says. ‘Politics is quite brutal.’ The defeated computers are a sad symbol
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In many ways, Yvette Cooper has a perfect CV for Labour leader: a wealth of experience in government, not factional, respected by colleagues (except those who had a habit of moaning that she was, er, working on her leadership bid when in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet), well-known in the party membership, capable of delivering a
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There is so little detail on David Cameron’s talks with Jean-Claude Juncker that it is almost outweighed by the briefing on what the pair ate while at Chequers (a spring salad, followed by pork belly and vegetables and a dessert of lime bavarois). What we were told was that ‘Mr Juncker reiterated that he wanted
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After pulling out of the Labour leadership contest himself, Chuka Umunna has given his star-studded endorsement to Liz Kendall, along with his leadership team of Emma Reynolds, Stephen Twigg and Jonathan Reynolds. In an article for the New Statesman, Umunna writes: ‘For us, our next leader must get this vision right. On all these big
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The government’s announcement that EU migrants will not be able to vote in the EU referendum tells us a number of things about the way David Cameron is approaching this vote. Firstly, he’s keen to show everyone that he’s getting on with it – indeed, the Prime Minister seems reinvigorated on all fronts at the
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David Cameron was in an extremely confident mood when he addressed the press at the end of today’s EU summit in Riga. He continually joked about journalists needing to write stories about the trials and tribulations of his EU renegotiations over the next couple of years, but those stories not meaning very much at all.
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After Harriet Harman announced that Labour would ‘let the public in’ to its leadership contest, the BBC has announced that it will broadcast a hustings with the candidates on 17 June. The programme, which will be broadcast on BBC Two (which might give a clue as to how popular BBC executives think this example of
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Liz Kendall is the great unknown Labour leadership candidate. She is the only one who hasn’t been in government or Shadow Cabinet, and as I blogged earlier, she needs to show that she has got qualities that make up for this lack of experience. She made a pretty good start on this at the press
