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
Ukip launched its general election campaign poster today. Nigel Farage was there, both in person and in print, with a very large image of his face emblazoned across the new poster. Mark Reckless was there, posing for photos with the party’s ‘pledge card’ (although unless he has very big pockets or an enormous wallet, the
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Why are the Tories peddling what the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has described as ‘at best unhelpful’, which is the claim that households would be hit with a £3,000 tax bombshell if Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minister? The IFS’ analysis came out earlier today, but this evening George Osborne repeated the claim, saying: ‘Well
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Now that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have had their final audiences with the Queen at Buckingham Palace, they can get on the road. Their shiny battle buses are waiting to accompany them on the campaign trail. The Lib Dems are charging hacks who want to clamber aboard their bus £750 per person per day,
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The order in which the party leaders will stand in this Thursday’s televised debate has been set as follows: Natalie Bennett, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, Ed Miliband, Leanne Wood, Nicola Sturgeon and David Cameron. So Ed Miliband will be in the middle, and David Cameron and Nigel Farage will be sufficiently far apart from one
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Will we learn anything from any of the parties in this election campaign? And will the polls tell us anything either? Yesterday Labour was excited that it had a four-point lead over the Tories in a YouGov poll. Today the Tories are excited that they’re four points ahead in a ComRes poll. The polls are
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More crying in the Commons. More applause. John Bercow didn’t try to hide his tears as it became apparent that the government had lost its vote that would have fatally undermined him. The motion to re-elect the Speaker by secret ballot after the general election failed by 202 ayes to 228 noes. It looks as
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The Commons has gone beyond uproar on the vote on the secret ballot to re-elect the speaker. There has been clapping, a standing ovation, and tears. Charles Walker, chair of the Procedure Committee, told MPs that he had been ‘played for a fool by the whips and the party leadership who had had meetings with
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Well, after months of Parliament appearing boring, tired and without things to discuss, the zombie seems to have woken up. MPs are currently in uproar in the Chamber over William Hague’s proposal to make the re-election of the Speaker at the start of the Parliament a secret ballot. Naturally, those who really dislike Bercow are
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William Hague has given today’s vote that will set up a secret ballot on the re-election of the Speaker as a ‘leaving present’ to Tory MPs. But not all of them are happy with the way this vote is being carried out. Here is an email from Julian Lewis, passed to Coffee House, about what
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Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with negative campaigning (though surely there’s something a bit wrong about being inaccurate). But when parties pontificate about crafting messages of hope and avoiding smears and falsehood, before plumping for the latter, can they really be surprised that overall voters are a bit cheesed off with mainstream politics? All the parties
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The post-Budget attack lines for Labour were clear in Ed Miliband’s speech on Wednesday: his party will allege that the Tories have a ‘secret plan that dare not speak its name’ to cut the NHS in the next Parliament. To underline that claim, Labour has this morning published its first election poster, threatening that the
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How has George Osborne’s Budget gone down with his party? The Tory MPs I’ve spoken to in the past 24 hours or so since the Budget seem reasonably content with it. They’re not skipping through the corridors singing, but they’re equally not furious or despairing. Most seem to have sympathy with the lack of a
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George Osborne this morning said that people should judge him on his track record, as he refused to set out the detail of welfare cuts planned in the next parliament. The IFS’s Paul Johnson didn’t seem to think this was good enough when he gave his verdict on the Budget today. He said: ‘It is
From our UK edition
If there’s one major takeaway from this morning’s Budget interviews, it is that voters won’t get the opportunity to make as informed a choice as many would like in May. George Osborne refused to set out the detail of the £12 billion of welfare cuts he will make in the next Parliament and gave a classic politician’s answer on
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If George Osborne’s Budget is going to end up in a mess, it hasn’t done so yet. The worst criticism that the front pages of even hostile newspapers can come up with is that the Chancellor has produced a very political Budget which is hardly a surprise. Most splash on the retail offers in the
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Ed Miliband didn’t produce a spectacular response to the Budget, but neither did he have a bad outing at the despatch box. It was certainly better than his performance last year, and Labour MPs seem – in public at least – quite cheered by the whole thing. The Labour leader did have to contend with
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The PMQs before the Budget is always pretty pointless, and David Cameron turned up clearly determined to trivialise his exchanges with Ed Miliband as much as possible. He came armed with a plethora of jokes about second kitchens, chuckling about throwing two kitchen sinks at problems, that if the Leader of the Opposition couldn’t stand
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Nick Clegg is turning up to the Budget today, which is an improvement on the Autumn Statement, which he bunked off in order to hang out in Cornwall with Lib Dems trying to get re-elected. He’s even got his own Lib Dem alternative Budget tomorrow. This may mean his party doesn’t get much of a hearing
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The Cabinet met this morning to discuss the Budget, with the Chancellor telling ministers that today the Conservatives will ‘set out the next stage in a plan that is working’ and deliver a ‘truly national recovery’, a reiteration of the comments he’s already posted on Twitter. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told journalists that ‘there was
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Ed Miliband will respond to the Budget today (the Shadow Chancellor responds to the Autumn Statement, and has a Budget speech the day after the main event). In the past couple of years the Labour response hasn’t been fantastic, partly because the Tories have got a very well-organised (and at times just rather brutish and