Politics

Open House have afforded Ed Davey a plaform from which to deliver his version of yesterday’s events.  Unfortunately – yet predictably – he uses it peddle the Lib Dem’s ludicrous line on Europe.  One passage leapt out at me:  “It’s not unusual for Liberal Democrats to be squeezed out of parliamentary debates by the other parties seeking to maintain their cosy establishment arrangements. True, but this was different.  First, all the parties fought the last election on referendum pledges, so there is a democratic obligation for a debate. Second, it goes to the heart of the disagreements between the parties over EU reform. Third, we had undertaken an unprecedented amount of preparatory

The Information Commissioner is wrong to order that the minutes of the Cabinet meeting where the legality of the Iraq war was discussed be published. If Cabinet Minutes can be released so soon after the event, no one will speak their mind in cabinet anymore; it would effectively mean the end of Cabinet government. As Sam Coates puts it:  “Cabinet Ministers need somewhere they can discuss, debate and disagree about policy in private. This is surely sensible (if they did not have a chance to raise concerns, how can they exercise collective responsibility?) and this is why Cabinet discussions and the minutes are secret.” One of the things that all the various

Why would anyone want to be the “heir to Blair”?   It’s a question that’s popping up numerous times in the comments on Michael Gove’s latest piece for the Spectator. And I’m sure it enters many people’s heads when they hear either Brown or Cameron laying claim to the title.   A short, simple answer might be: “because Blair was right about some things (not everything, but some things)”. For instance – and Gove makes much of this – he was right about the academies programme. That much is made abundantly clear by Richard Tice’s report for the think-tank Reform today. As the Chair of Governors at Northampton Academy, Tice is reporting from the front-line

Northern Rock has not fatally wounded this government and Gordon Brown is slowly getting back on the front foot. The government, it appears, will not lose the next election all by itself. So how should the Tories should try and win it? Here, the divide is between the tortoises and the hares—or, the infantry and the light horse as I would put it. Today, Iain Martin and Tim Montgomerie, the two most eloquent hares, make the case for boldness. Iain makes the crucial point that the election will likely be decided by returning voters drawn to the polls by the fact ‘their vote will matter’ for the first time in

Today’s Economist poll on Northern Rock is a belated birthday present for Gordon Brown. Only 5 percent believe the government is most responsible for the crisis and people are more impressed with Brown and Darling’s handling of it now than they were a month ago. But what will really cheer up the PM is that almost 60 percent of the public think the Tories are playing politics with the issue and only one in five say that David Cameron and George Osborne would have done any better. However, this doesn’t mean that the danger has passed for Labour. There are still, as The Economist points out, a whole bunch of