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 broadcasters’ proposals for the TV debates have not gone down particularly well in many quarters of Westminster. David Cameron, who has been trying to avoid the issue for as long as possible, claimed today that he has ‘always been in favour of TV debates’, even though he’s not really in favour of any debates
Why are the Conservatives so serene after losing the Clacton by-election and seeing their vote collapse in Heywood and Middleton? It is not that the party has finally decided endless fighting is no longer a good idea, but that it is holding its breath for the Rochester and Strood by-election. If Mark Reckless, the second
The Tory whips are busy today, but not necessarily with fallout from the Clacton by-election. They have sent a message round to MPs saying the following: ‘There is a possibility that there will be a business statement on Monday which will also affect whipping next week.’ Some MPs have read this as a suggestion that
How are the two parties reacting to their bruising night in the two by-elections? David Cameron – after telling us, helpfully, that ‘there were two by-elections last night’ – went on to say repeatedly that the results spoke to a ‘wider truth’, that if you vote Ukip, you’re in danger of getting a government led by Ed
Last night’s by-election results were bad for both the main Westminster parties. The Tories did not manage to make significant inroads into Douglas Carswell’s majority, and their vote collapsed in Heywood. Their main saving grace is that the Rochester by-election has united the party in fury and is a fight they think they can win.
Tonight Clacton is set to return the first elected Ukip MP to the House of Commons. The Conservatives have already tried to factor in Douglas Carswell’s defection as something they can cope with – and this has been made quite a lot easier by the tribal anger that Mark Reckless provoked when he announced he
listen to ‘Podcast: Nick Clegg’s speech’ on audioBoom
Nick Clegg will, as promised, use his conference speech today to announce waiting time targets for mental health treatments. The Deputy Prime Minister, as part of government efforts to bring mental and physical health onto an even keel, introduce targets for the first time and pledge some (although not very much) more money to help
One of the most striking things about the Lib Dem conference is not that the party has decided to be mean about the Tories in a mildly obsessive and weird way, but that Nick Clegg and colleagues have also been softening the red lines that could really stop them returning into coalition with the Conservatives.
Nick Clegg may feel he’s got his party in a reasonably good place and a reasonably good mood. But he has just been defeated by the Lib Dem conference on his attempt to change party policy to allow airport expansion in the South East. As part of the policy paper on the economy, delegates were asked
The Liberal Democrats now have an official party policy that football clubs wanting to win is a cause for concern. The party’s conference has just approved a motion, which Coffee House reported on yesterday, complaining that ‘winning has become the primary motive in the sport’ and about an ‘influx of overseas investment’. The motion was amended slightly,
The Lib Dems haven’t really announced many enormous policies so far at their party conference. Yesterday’s speech from Vince Cable was more notable for its loyalty than it was for its focus on ‘bolstering’ apprenticeship pay and ‘clarifying’ and ‘enhancing’ workers’ rights. But unless they’re planning to go for the 2013 Tory strategy of not
In the past few years, Nick Clegg has come to blows with his party activists at his annual conference question-and-answer session over the policies his party has had to support while in government. The Deputy Prime Minister has, at times, grown rather grumpy as the grassroots harangue him on issues they wish he’d show more
The Lib Dem conference is always a chance to see which side of the party is winning the debate internally. Normally, the Left dominates the grassroots – which is why the party leadership always makes a bigger deal of criticising the Tories than it does although last year the economic liberals in the party tried
Though they didn’t call them ‘red lines’, the Liberal Democrats did spend yesterday making clear the things they won’t accept if they have to work with the Tories in another coalition after the 2015 general election. Today’s Financial Times sets out a line that the party is apparently happy to cross: the EU referendum that
Danny Alexander clearly wanted to come across as casual and jovial for his speech to the Lib Dem conference. He wasn’t wearing a tie. His top button wasn’t done up. Neither were his cuffs because the Chief Secretary to the Treasury had, after years of politicians using it as a figure of speech, rolled up
The Lib Dems are in an amusingly sweary mood this weekend at their conference, with Danny Alexander telling the Sun on Sunday that he’s p****d off with the Tories for stealing his tax policy, and Lord Ashdown talking about shits and bastards last night. Vince Cable today promised ‘more colourful language’ about his coalition partners
Lib Dem conference rallies are always a little like spending Christmas with a family you don’t know: quite baffling but rather endearing. There’s the uncle who tells the same jokes every year (Paddy Ashdown, telling the conference that he’d been asked in the street by a ‘little man’ whether he ‘used to be Paddy Ashdown’
Does it matter that the Tories can’t spell out how they’d fund the tax cuts they announced at their party conference this week? Labour has launched a clock which monitors how long it’s been since David Cameron promised these cuts without any detail on how they’d pay for them. But last night on BBC This
One of the biggest pledges of the Conservative party conference wasn’t actually made at the Tory conference. It’s being set out today by Chris Grayling and is the Tory plan to strip European judges of their powers over British laws. The Conservatives will scrap the Human Rights Act and introduce a British Bill of Rights
