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.
You’re an ambitious backbench Labour MP with a weighty constituency caseload, legislation that you’re interested in improving, and a few personal campaigns to right various wrongs and make the world a better place. You get a spot on the order paper for this week’s Prime Minister’s Questions. What could you possibly ask your party leader
Kemi Badenoch had an odd line of attack at Prime Minister’s Questions: she chose to pursue Keir Starmer over what he knew about Louise Haigh’s fraud conviction. It is not a story that has any impact on people outside Westminster, but it did still highlight how much Starmer has become like the politicians he used
The debate on assisted dying, which culminated in a victory for those in favour, hasn’t been long enough – we knew that from the start – but it has been a very good one. There have been some very powerful arguments on both sides. There has also been a division between those who think that
What are MPs actually debating today? Some of them seem a bit confused. We have had two hours so far of the debate on the second reading of Kim Leadbeater’s Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, and a number of them seem to be talking about entirely different things. Some are poring over the detail of
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In the small hours of this morning Louise Haigh resigned as Transport Secretary following the revelation that she had pleaded guilty to a criminal offence in 2014. Haigh admitted fraud by false representation at a magistrates’ court after she incorrectly told the police that a work mobile had been stolen in 2013. She was then
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MPs are set to vote on the legalisation of assisted dying this week, the first such vote in almost a decade. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill was tabled by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater and follows a campaign by broadcaster Dame Esther Rantzen and others. The biggest change since the last vote in
Unconventional as ever, Kemi Badenoch used her third ever Prime Minister’s Questions as Conservative leader to call on Keir Starmer to resign. The Tory leader was half speaking in jest, telling the Prime Minister that ‘if he wants to know what Conservatives would do, he should resign and find out’. It was her latest riposte
Normally when MPs criticise the uncertainty around the government’s relationship with another country, they are referring to the constant chopping and changing around how to engage with China, not Israel. But where the UK stands on both countries is in flux at the moment, and today’s Foreign Office Questions in the Commons didn’t help much
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Today is the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) conference, at which Rachel Reeves has laid out her plan to ‘Get Britain Working’ and prove Labour as the party of business … despite what the recent Budget and the employers national insurance increase might suggest. What’s the mood of big business today? Also on the podcast,
Should Shabana Mahmood be allowed to ‘impose’ her religious beliefs on everyone else? Lord Falconer doesn’t think so, arguing yesterday that the Justice Secretary was ‘motivated… by her religious beliefs’ in her opposition to assisted dying. He added: ‘I respect that religious belief but I do not think it should be imposed on everybody else.’ It’s
Angela Rayner was so keen to get out of the traps with her criticism of the last Conservative government at today’s deputy prime minister’s questions that she almost forgot to welcome her new sparring partner. Alex Burghart is not yet a household name: in fact, he isn’t even Rayner’s direct counterpart, as Kemi Badenoch hasn’t
Will there be more resignations following the departure of Justin Welby as Archbishop of Canterbury? The Church is, as on everything else, split on the issue, with some bishops saying that there needs to be wider accountability, and the Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell saying that no more resignations are necessary. Given part of the
Kemi Badenoch didn’t have the best start at today’s Prime Minister’s Questions: she asked a question that had apparently already been answered, allowing Keir Starmer to mock her early on. But the Prime Minister ultimately had the tougher session. That repeated question first came from Lib Dem Christine Jardine at the very start of the
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Justin Welby has announced he is resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over his handling of serial child abuser John Smyth. In a statement, he said ‘it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024’. He says he believes stepping aside ‘is in
You don’t need to have a strong opinion either way on assisted dying to be concerned about the latest attempt to legalise it: from a scrutiny perspective, Kim Leadbeater’s bill leaves a lot to be desired. It was published last night, 38 pages long, and will be debated in just under three weeks’ time. Most
In the past few minutes, Justin Welby has announced he is resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over his handling of serial child abuser John Smyth. In a statement, he said ‘it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024’. He says he
MPs are getting involved in the row over Justin Welby’s position as Archbishop of Canterbury, with Conservative MP Nick Timothy requesting an urgent question in the Commons today. Pressure for Welby to resign has been building from various quarters within the Church of England’s General Synod and the wider church. As in politics, some are
Justin Welby has said he considered resigning as Archbishop of Canterbury over the findings of the Makin Review into the serial abuser John Smyth. That report, which emerged this week, found the Church of England had, from 2013, missed opportunities to bring Smyth to justice: from that point onwards, Welby and other senior figures knew
What difference has Kemi Badenoch’s victory made to the way the party talks about education? Badenoch doesn’t want to make policy straight away, having stood on a platform promising a fundamental rethink of what the Conservatives stand for. Today’s Education Questions in the Commons suggested that in the meantime, she wants her frontbenchers to put
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Kemi Badenoch is the new leader of the opposition, and we have an early indication of who will make up her shadow cabinet. She has already chosen her chief whip in loyalist Rebecca Harris; Nigel Huddleston and Dominic Johnson will be party chairman; Laura Trott will be shadow education secretary; Neil O’Brien will be shadow