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.
It’s the last Budget before the election tomorrow and there are just a few days left of the Coalition. Which is why it is hardly surprising that a few of the pre-Budget briefings aren’t so much briefings designed to bag policies a bit more coverage but leaks by one party designed to embarrass the other.
Has Andy Burnham really reinvented himself to prepare for a future leadership bid? In this week’s Spectator, I interviewed the Shadow Health Secretary about his rather forthright views on the NHS: views that some suspect have conveniently changed in order to appeal to Labour’s base. You can read the interview here, but for Coffee House
How damaging for the Tories is the row about Grant Shapps’ second job? While it is quite easy to write up the Conservative chairman’s business past in a way that makes him sound like a slightly murky character teaching people how to make a ‘ton of cash’, does the latest story, that Shapps was still
It seems Tim Farron has rather annoyed his senior Lib Dem colleagues with his quite naked desire to become party leader. After the ambitious MP said that the Lib Dems got 2/10 for the way they’d handled the Coalition, he received a pretty hefty slap down from Lord Ashdown on this morning’s Pienaar’s Politics on
If general elections were won on how swanky a campaign office is, the Greens would beat the Lib Dems hands down in Bristol West. Their candidate Darren Hall works out of a smart, airy office overlooking the harbour in one of the most expensive commercial parts of the city. It’s all thanks to Vivienne Westwood,
It’s not just on the Health Select Committee that election fever is starting to take hold. The Public Accounts Committee had a party-political row this week too, with accusations that Tory members had blocked plans to question Lord Green over HSBC. There is now a leak inquiry underway about who from the committee told the
If mainstream politicians are a bit confused and downbeat at the moment, Scottish Labour MPs are the most miserable of the lot, facing a savaging in constituencies they never thought would slip out of their party’s hands. But last night Ed Miliband gave them reason to be a bit less miserable, just for a little
MPs this afternoon backed the motion calling for the government to set defence spending at 2 per cent of GDP – though not in huge numbers. There were 37 votes in favour to 3 votes against, which is hardly a furious uprising. This vote is a backbench vote, and so it is not binding on
Aside from whether he’s right to argue that we don’t need many racial discrimination laws, why does Nigel Farage think it’s politically a good idea to mull about relaxing them so that firms can take on British staff? The Ukip leader has spent most of today getting rather annoyed at what he says has been
Time was when Andy Burnham passed for a middle-of-the-road Labourite: he was deemed insufficiently dramatic and impressive to secure much support when he stood for leader five years ago. But these days, his colleagues — and the bookmakers — consider the shadow health secretary the frontrunner in any new contest. At an otherwise funereal Labour
It emerged this morning that Labour MPs took the extraordinary step of blocking the publication of the Health Select Committee report into the NHS – because the conclusions backed up government reforms. I have just been handed details of this report, and it’s clear why Labour wanted it suppressed: it contradicts the party’s attack message.
If ever you needed evidence that politics at the moment is a bit, well, weird, John Bercow has just apologised in the House of Commons for comparing Esther McVey to a washing machine. At Work and Pensions Questions in the Commons on Monday, the Speaker cut the minister off during an answer by saying ‘I
The government has today announced a drive to get more physics and maths graduates into teaching. It’s a good idea, given the struggle that many headteachers report in recruiting teachers with those backgrounds. The package includes £15,000 for students to help with their university costs in return for them teaching for three years post-graduation; fast-track
There are many quite understandable reasons for not promising to protect the defence budget. Some are pragmatic: there’s not much room in Whitehall for more budgets to be protected once you take into account those that already are. Some are theoretical, including the argument Clare Short advanced on Newsnight yesterday, which is that if your
Justine Miliband has given an interview to the BBC, a sort of ‘back my husband, my hero’ contribution to the Labour election campaign. She starts by talking about the pressures on the family and how ‘being a working mother’, she hasn’t really had a chance to think about what it would be like for the
It’s not just David Cameron who is unhappy with the way the Tory manifesto is looking at the moment. James reported at the weekend that the Prime Minister had demanded a re-write, and I have picked up some considerable dissatisfaction in the party at the way the document is being put together. Some departments feel
One of the really striking claims that Ed Balls made in his speech today was that the Tories would end up cutting more from the defence budget than Labour. This is not the sort of thing that you’d expect to hear: Labour saying it would end up spending more on defence than the traditional party
The three main parties are in an aggressive mood today. TheTories have a new attack poster warning voters about the dangers of a Labour-SNP deal, while Labour is warning voters of the danger of ‘1930s’ Tory spending plans, and the Lib Dems are launching their own plans to grow the economy. For Labour, today’s speech
Two politicians put in very assured and impressive performances on Marr this morning – if you can include nimbly dodging questions that you don’t want to answer ‘impressive’. of course, within the parameters of the way politicians are expected to behave, Caroline Flint and Philip Hammond did very well because they didn’t give anything away
This story was first published in tonight’s Evening Blend email, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political events. Sign up here. Over the past few weeks, Coalition ministers have been fighting over plans favoured by the Lib Dems to force companies with more than 250 workers to publish details of their gender pay
