Politics

Harriet Harman began at PMQs by asking about the situation in Tunisia. The mood of the House was appropriately sombre as this issue was discussed and there was much agreement between her and Cameron. But then she turned to the Davies’s report and its recommendation that a third runway should be built at Heathrow, and party politics was resumed. Harman announced that Labour was now backing a third runway, and challenged Cameron to do the same. He dodged, hiding behind the threat of judicial review. Harman then cracked a series of good jokes at his expense, chastising him for ‘being bullied by Boris’ out of doing the right thing for the

Liz Kendall is continuing to push herself as the ‘change everything’ candidate for the Labour leadership. During a speech at Reuters this morning, Kendall called for the party to make a big shift on fiscal responsibility if it has any hope of winning the next election — a task some think is beyond Labour in its current state: ‘If we continue to stick with the politics that we had at the last election or, indeed, over the last seven or eight years, we will get the same result. Einstein said the definition of madness was to continue doing the same thing over and over again and expect to get a different result. We need

The question that will be on the ballot paper in Greece on Sunday is rather wordy, so European leaders have been trying to simplify it for Greek voters today. Their message has been vote Yes to the bailout deal to stay in the Euro and No for a return to the Drachma. Their logic is that however much Greeks may dislike imposed austerity, they don’t actually want to leave the Euro. It has become clear today that the Eurozone’s strategy now is not to try and put together a last minute agreement but to instead rely on a Yes vote on Sunday. This would lead to the fall of the

Tonight, it is still not clear how the Greek situation will be resolved. The European Central Bank–which is desperate to avoid being dragged into the politics of this situation–has chosen a middle way on its emergency assistance to Greek banks. It has neither ended it—which would have crashed the whole Greek banking system—nor extended it, which would have enabled the banks to stay open and eased the pressure on the Syriza-led government. Greek banks will definitely be closed tomorrow and probably until the referendum on Sunday. The next big question is what happens on Tuesday when the bailout programme ends and a payment comes due to the IMF which Athens

The Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has just announced that there will be a referendum on the proposed bailout deal next Sunday, July 5th. He will ask for the current bailout to be continued until then to allow the Greek people to have their say. The signs from Athens are that Tsipras will campaign for a No vote unless the creditors offer Greece a radically better deal at tomorrow’s meeting. This move from Tsipras will infuriate Greece’s creditors.  It will also, almost certainly lead to the introduction of capital controls for Greek banks until the referendum. If the creditors don’t blink tomorrow and improve the terms they are offering Athens,