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.
Theresa May might have won every Brexit vote in the House of Commons so far, but it’s getting trickier now. The House of Lords this week rejected the plan to trigger Article 50 without offering assurances to EU nationals, knowing that most MPs are sympathetic. I understand that the Tory whips are working hard to
What is Labour’s priority at the moment? Normally the sensible answer for an Opposition party would be that it needs to focus on policy, and particularly on talking about next week’s Budget. But it is very difficult for a party polling so far behind the one in government and that is so divided to have
In the past few minutes, the government has lost a vote in the House of Lords on a key aspect of Brexit: the status of EU nationals. Peers are at the Committee Stage of the bill that allows the government to trigger Article 50, and despite attempts by Home Secretary Amber Rudd to reassure them
Prime Minister’s Questions is now regarded in Westminster as being even more pointless than it used to be before. The general weakness of Jeremy Corbyn and his parliamentary party’s ongoing but powerless dissatisfaction with the Labour leader means that it is rarely a session where the Opposition lays a glove on the Prime Minister –
The final Treasury Questions before a Budget or Autumn Statement always reveals not just what the Opposition plans to attack the government on, but also where the government is feeling particularly vulnerable. This week’s session suggested that ministers are rightly quite nervous about social care funding – and that they realise they will have to
Shami Chakrabarti and Peter Whittle would probably furiously deny playing by the same political rules. But this morning on the Andrew Marr Show, the Labour peer and Ukip politician were both using suspiciously similar scripts to try to excuse poor performances by their party leaders in Thursday’s by-elections. First up, Peter Whittle on how Paul
Labour’s famously vocal moderates have been awfully quiet today, given one of their number – Jamie Reed – has just been replaced by a Tory in a hugely embarrassing by-election defeat for the party. The centrist wing of the party, now almost exclusively a backbench club, has taken a vow of silence because it doesn’t
So what went wrong for the Labour Party in Copeland last night? There’s no understating the scale of the defeat – the worst by-election performance by an opposition since 1878 by some measures. It lost a seat it has held since 1935 to the Conservatives because the local MP, Jamie Reed, quit politics for a
Isabel Hardman discusses the by-election results with Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth: The Tories have won the Copeland by-election with 13,748 votes – a clear 2,107 votes ahead of Labour. The Tories needed a 3.3pc swing to win: they got double that, making this the best by-election performance by a governing party since 1966. And
If ever you wanted to understand what Theresa May’s relationship with her top ministers is like, today’s Cabinet meeting provides some insight. The ‘majority’ of the session, which lasted more than an hour, was taken up with a discussion about the importance of the Union. Not a discussion in which any of the problems raised
Theresa May has been visiting Stoke-on-Trent today ahead of the ‘really important’ by-election in the city on Thursday. That the Prime Minister is bothering to pitch up to a campaign in a Labour heartland suggests that the Tories at least think they are in with a fighting chance of winning the seat – otherwise it
MPs are finally making their way out of Parliament – or staying for Ed Miliband’s late night adjournment debate – after the first day of Committee Stage of the Article 50 Bill. As explained earlier, the real fireworks are expected tomorrow, and any flashes of drama today came from MPs complaining about the lack of
MPs will shortly begin their Committee stage of the Article 50 Bill in the Commons. Before that begins, Theresa May had one more chance to try to reassure colleagues who are considering voting for amendments to that Bill by giving a statement to the House on the informal EU summit in Malta that took place
If a home was built for every new initiative, speech or newspaper article about “fixing the housing crisis”, our housing stock would be in much better shape than it is as a result of the past few decades of political failure on the matter. This week, there’s another attempt – the first from Theresa May’s
Is the government trying to avoid scrutiny of its Brexit policy? That’s the charge that MPs on the Labour and SNP benches are levelling at ministers today as the White Paper on leaving the European Union is published. Keir Starmer told the Commons this afternoon that he and his colleagues were being hampered in their
The debate over the Bill allowing the government to trigger Article 50 has been surprisingly good-natured, so far, given the stakes. There have been some impressive speeches from all sides, and even some humour. We have learned very little about what the Bill entails and have been largely unsurprised by what each MP has said:
MPs are now debating the government’s European Union (notification of withdrawal) Bill, with a warning from Theresa May and Brexit Secretary David Davis that to try to block the legislation would be to thwart the will of the British people. The Prime Minister said last night that ‘I hope when people look at the Article 50
Theresa May’s visit to Washington to meet President Trump last week was seen, before it happened, as being beneficial to both sides. The Prime Minister’s allies in government thought this was an excellent opportunity for May to show the new President how it was done – and to send a message to the world that
Just a year ago, the phrase ‘Brexit rebels’ denoted Tory MPs like Peter Bone who had a distinguished pedigree of pushing the government to be as Eurosceptic as possible, with the odd eccentric comment along the way. Today, it means former Cabinet ministers such as Nicky Morgan, who are trying to push the government away
The Government may be accepting its defeat in the Supreme Court graciously overall, but David Davis was in a rather dismissive mood when he responded to Labour’s questions about the ruling in the House of Commons this afternoon. The Brexit Secretary gave a statement to the House explaining that ministers would publish ‘within days’ a
