Politics

4 months overdue, Gordon Brown today outlined a new national security strategy. Was it worth the wait? Not particularly. It’s little more than a collection of proposals that we knew about already, combined with some loose “direction of travel”-type thinking (e.g. that Britain will “seek agreement on tougher controls aimed at reducing weapons and preventing proliferation”). All-in-all, the Tory criticism is pretty-much spot-on: it’s more a “list than a strategy”. And one component of that list is particularly underwhelming. Brown talks about maintaining “strong, balanced, flexible and deployable armed forces”. But what are his new ideas for doing so? In answer: “There will be increased commitment bonuses of up to

There are two PMQs: the one seen from galleries in the Commons chamber, and the one on television. The more I go to the former, the more convinced I am the best view is in the latter. Pretty much the whole press gallery jumped to its feet to see what Ed Balls was doing when Cameron teased him (he sat underneath us all). And I couldn’t see – but I imagined – Labour MPs squinting as they read out their planted questions, as if wondering at the brazenness of the text. Anyway, from my perch, it seemed a clear win for Cameron. Not because any of his questions were knock-outs.

An intriguing item in the Ephraim Hardcastle diary in The Daily Mail this morning suggests that cash for honours will soon come back to haunt Gordon Brown: “LORD Levy’s book about being Tony Blair’s Middle East envoy-chief party fundraiser – and the ‘cash for coronets’ police inquiry in which he was twice cautioned and questioned – is about to see the light of day. What does it say about Blair? Forget Blair, say friends of Michael Levy. The former pop music promoter blames Gordon Brown for stirring up the honours row as part of a campaign to destabilise Blair and replace him as prime minister. Even though it was a

Now the Fed has cut US rates by another quarter, what’s next? The City expects UK rates to fall to 4.75% by year-end. Now and again, Gordon Brown likes to boast that he is able to reduce interest rates – unlike the Tories in early 1990s. One of Magician Brown’s favourite tricks is the “false proxy” – saying “base rates are falling, so homeowners can rest easy.” But as I have blogged before, the distinguishing feature of this credit crunch is the decoupling of the base rate from de facto mortgage rates, as the graph below from John Charcol shows. We are entering new territory, and the old financial relationships are

With Philip Hammond suggesting that the Conservatives won’t cut taxes until a second term in government, there’s a lot of great reading material on the Tory tax debate in today’s papers and across the political blogosphere. The Telegraph’s Janet Daley is among the commentators who want the Tories to be bolder on tax.  Here are some key passages from her article today: “Mr Osborne had committed the party, as it were, to being uncommitted on the question of tax cuts: there would be no promises now of “upfront, unfunded” tax reductions, just a cautious wait-and-see-if-we-can-afford-it-at-the-time approach. Reducing the tax burden was, of course, an “aspiration” but it was an open

Who’s laughing now? Boris has stormed ahead in the polls today, with a 12 point lead over Ken in the Standard’s YouGov survey. With 45 days to go, 49 per cent versus 37 is a strong position – and quite remarkable for a Tory candidate in a city that Livingstone has run (to use his own phrase) as a “personal fiefdom” on and off for more than a quarter century.  The especially good news is that Our Man is ahead on second preference votes, although here the margin is narrower (20 to 17). But the evidence is clear both that Ken’s City Hall scandals and Boris’s star quality are bringing