Isabel Hardman


Isabel Hardman is an English political journalist and the assistant editor of The Spectator. In 2015, she was named Journalist of the Year at the Political Studies Association's annual awards.

Early life

Born in Camden, Isabel Hardman is the daughter of Michael Hardman, the first chairman and one of the four founders of the Campaign for Real Ale. She attended St Catherine's School, Bramley, and Godalming College, before graduating from the University of Exeter with a first-class degree in English literature in 2007. While at university, Hardman worked as a freelance journalist for The Observer. She completed a National Council for the Training of Journalists course at Highbury College in 2009.

Career

Hardman began her career in journalism as a senior reporter for Inside Housing magazine. She then became assistant news editor at PoliticsHome. In September 2014, GQ magazine named her as one of their 100 most connected women in Britain, and in December 2015, she was named "Journalist of the Year" at the Political Studies Association's annual awards. She is currently the assistant editor of The Spectator, and writes a weekly column for The Daily Telegraph.
She appears on television programmes such as Question Time, This Week, The Andrew Marr Show and Have I Got News for You, and is a presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Week in Westminster. She hosts The Spectator Podcast.

Personal life

In April 2016, Hardman tweeted that a male member of Parliament had referred to her as "the totty" and that she had reported him to the whips. She was not intending to name the man who was subsequently revealed to be the Conservative MP Bob Stewart.
Hardman has written about suffering from depression, and in October 2016 wrote that she had stopped working temporarily due to anxiety and depression. She was off work for two months.
Since 2018, Hardman has been in a relationship with John Woodcock, then Labour Member of Parliament for Barrow and Furness. Woodcock resigned from the Labour Party amid an investigation into claims of sexual harassment, continuing to sit as an Independent MP before joining a loose grouping of pro-European MPs known as The independents in July 2019.
In November 2019, Woodcock announced that he and Hardman were expecting a child, and cited that as the reason he would not be standing as a parliamentary candidate at the forthcoming general election.
Hardman gave birth to a son Jacob on 12 May 2020.