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Read about the latest UK political news, views and analysis.

Wednesday

Sebastian Payne

Britain is dangerously vulnerable to crippling cyber attacks

Ill prepared, ill suited and irrelevant — that’s the conclusion a new report on Britain’s cyber defences. In a scathing analysis, the House of Commons Defence Committee’s demands the government take the cyber threat more seriously: ‘The Government needs to put in place — as it has not yet done — mechanisms, people, education, skills, thinking and policies which take it into both the opportunities, and the vulnerable, which cyber presents. It is time the government approached this subject with vigour.’ The constantly evolving threat from hackers has left the government struggling to stay one step ahead of hackers. Their last initiative — the Cyber Reservists — is less bringing in highly

Tuesday

Steerpike Steerpike

Sherlock Heywood will face the mob

Not long ago Westminster wags nicknamed Sir Jeremy Heywood, Downing Street’s top Sir Humphrey — ‘Wormtongue’ after Tolkien’s poisonous power behind the throne in the Lord of the Rings. Since being tasked with investigating the Andrew Mitchell affair (and managing to miss the glaring differences between the CCTV footage and the police notes long before the tapes were sent to Channel Four News) the Cabinet Secretary — disliked by many at the best of times — has earned a new nickname from Tory types. Watch out for that eagle-eyed Sherlock Heywood. Now it emerges that the forensic inspector will be making a rare public appearance in front of the Public Administration Committee

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

David Miliband is out of exile: but what happens next?

Reports of his return to frontline politics certainly seem to have woken up David Miliband. He has given a very energetic speech in the Commons this afternoon in the Welfare Uprating Bill: so energetic, in fact, that he managed to steal poor Sarah Teather’s rebellious thunder, speaking directly after the former Lib Dem minister. Shortly afterwards, he was spotted at the top of the Portcullis House escalators shaking the hand of admiring Labour MPs who passed by. As Dan Hodges points out on his blog, the Blairite MP was perfectly happy to attack the Welfare Uprating Bill from the Left, calling it ‘rancid’, and arguing that it undermined the Tories’

Steerpike Steerpike

Follow Lynton’s yellow brick briefing

The benefits debate in Westminster will rage on long after today’s vote in the Commons. It’s not just a straight row between the government and opposition over who is really on the side of hard working people, nor is it just a debate within the two governing parties. It seems that divisions are now opening in the higher echelons of the Tory machine over just how hard to push the rhetoric. More outspoken MPs — like Dr Sarah Wollaston — have taken to the airwaves to decry the term ‘scroungers’ and ‘skivers’, but most surprisingly even Lynton Crosby, who Labour are desperate to paint as a rather rash and extreme

Jonathan Jones

Ed Balls reverses over his own progress on fiscal responsibility

The battle-lines over the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill — which faces its second reading in the Commons this afternoon — have been drawn. Labour has tied its opposition to the Resolution Foundation’s analysis showing that the bulk of the policy will hit working families. As Ed Balls put it last week, ‘Two-thirds of people who will be hit by David Cameron and George Osborne’s real terms cuts to tax credits and benefits are in work.’ They’ve labelled the move a ‘strivers’ tax’, a continuation of the divisive rhetoric from both them and the Conservatives that seeks to pit ‘hardworking families’ against ‘people who won’t work’ (as a recent Tory ad

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Is the boundary Black Swan dead?

One of the amusing inclusions in yesterday’s otherwise anodyne Mid-Term review document was the promise that the government ‘will provide for a vote in the House of Commons on the Boundary Commission’s proposals for changes to constituencies’. If yesterday was a renewing of vows, some of them have been rather watered down since the Coalition Agreement, as its pledge for legislation for providing for fewer and more equal-sized constituencies has now simply become a ‘vote’. Today at Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions, Chloe Smith was quizzed by opposition MPs on whether the government might just drop the boundary changes. She said: ‘The boundary commissions are continuing with the boundary review in

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Tories make hay with Labour’s welfare stance

The Welfare Uprating Bill won’t fall into difficulty when it has its second reading in the Commons today, but with around five Lib Dem MPs expected to vote against or abstain on the 1 per cent rise in benefit payments, it’s going to be a lively debate. The Conservatives are focused on making the debate less about Sarah Teather and other angry colleagues in her party and more about Labour’s welfare stance. Grant Shapps has a new, bald poster campaign today on six sites in London. Shapps’ new posters simply read: ‘Today Labour are voting to increase benefits by more than workers’ wages. Conservatives: standing up for hardworking people.’ Iain Duncan

Monday

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

David Cameron reads blog comments

The Cameron/Clegg press conference did not teach us very much — save that the chemistry between the two is as good as ever, that they can still finish each other’s sentences and exchange bad jokes. The Prime Minister’s bad joke related to one of the comments under his interview with Matthew d’Ancona yesterday where he (in effect) said he wanted to stay in No10 until 2020. When asked about this today, the PM replied that a commentator on the Telegraph Online complained: ‘It’s already 20:51 and you’re still here.’ The assembled journalists treated his joke with the same respectful silence that they did to Clegg’s ‘unvarnished truth’ joke. ‘You’re all

Douglas Murray

The Ralph Miliband lectures remind us how stupid ‘clever’ people can be

For anybody who needs reminding of how stupid ‘clever’ people can be, can I recommend Guido’s post on the Ralph Miliband lecture series?  Each year the London School of Economics still holds an annual commemoration of the dead Marxist now best known of as the father of David and Ed.  Much that has gone wrong with our universities can be learnt by briefly considering these events. This year the lectures will include the blogger Laurie Penny talking about ‘Women, protest and the nature of female rebellion’.  She will be doing this in LSE’s Sheikh Zayed Theatre. But best of all is to recall the 2010 lecture given by LSE alumnus Saif Gaddafi. 

Jonathan Jones

Fisking the coalition’s deficit-reduction boast

‘We have reduced the deficit by a quarter in just two years’ — the coalition’s mid-term review. True. But when Gordon Brown proposed to do precisely the same in Labour’s last budget, George Osborne criticised him for not moving fast enough and endangering the economy. The ONS shows that public sector net borrowing was down 24 per cent from 2009-10 to 2011-12. But George Osborne cannot claim to have stuck to his deficit reduction plan. That has been torn up. The below graph shows Brown’s plan (in the middle), Osborne’s original plan (at the bottom) and his current plan (at the top): As you can see, Osborne is now cutting

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Mid-term review: A return to the rose garden?

‘David Cameron and Nick Clegg get coalition better than anyone else in the government’ one Downing Street aide remarked to me recently, and watching the two men at today’s press conference you could see what they meant. Us hacks who came looking for disagreement or awkward body language went away disappointed. As they both talked about how the coalition had come together to deal with long-term challenges and, to quote Cameron, the ‘positive benefit’ of two parties working together on these issues, I wondered if they thought that a second term of coalition might be needed to deal with Britain’s long-term problem. Intriguingly, when asked Cameron refused to say that

Nick Cohen Nick Cohen

A coalition of the complacent

I don’t like to think that I am rich. In theory, I know that in comparison to the vast majority of the world’s population, I am. But perhaps because of my politics, or perhaps because of journalists’ perennial pretence that we are tribunes of the people, I cannot see myself as wealthy, and would protest if others said that was just what I was. And in everyday dealings with others, I don’t feel as if I’m rich. I don’t have a car. My wife and I watch what we spend at the shops. I wish I could wine and dine every night, but, alas, I cannot. So I go on

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Sarah Teather dents the Coalition’s unity message by announcing her benefits rebellion

Coupled with Lord Strathclyde’s resignation over the way the Coalition worked in the House of Lords, Sarah Teather’s announcement that she will rebel against the government tomorrow is extremely poor timing. Today was supposed to be about unity, the Coalition working well together in the national interest. Now there are suggestions that this unity isn’t visible in the Upper Chamber, and that senior Lib Dems aren’t quite as ecstatic about key policies as Nick Clegg might try to argue. Ever since she went AWOL on the day of a vote on the benefit cap, Teather was a rebellion waiting to happen. She had already expressed public opposition to that cap

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Lord Strathclyde resigns over frustration with Lib Dem peers

Lord Strathclyde was a skilful leader of the House of Lords. An immensely charming man, he was — generally — able to coax legislation through a chamber where the government has no majority. But he was becoming increasingly frustrated at the behaviour of some Liberal Democrat peers. Shortly before Christmas and as Liberal Democrat Lords rampaged against the Cameron-Clegg compromise on secret courts, he remarked to one colleague that the ‘coalition had already broken down’ in the House of Lords. The lack of a government majority in the Lords and the fact that Liberal Democrat peers tend to hail from the left of the party means that even with Lords

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Hacked Off produces its own ‘clean’ Leveson legislation

It is no great surprise that Hacked Off director Brian Cathcart believes the government can’t be trusted to implement Leveson: the Prime Minister made very clear on the day of the report’s publication that he didn’t believe governments could be trusted to regulate the press via statute. But what is interesting about the draft bill that the media reform pressure group has published this morning is that it claims to be the most faithful implementation of the Leveson recommendations: more faithful, even, than that proposed by the Labour party. Ed Miliband has thus far managed to paint himself as the brave little David standing up to the media Goliaths on

The Spectator

David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s joint foreword to the Mid-Term Review

Two and a half years ago, our parties came together in the national interest and formed a coalition at a time of real economic danger. The deficit was spiralling out of control, confidence was plummeting, and the world was looking to Britain with growing anxiety about our ability to service our debts. This Government’s most urgent job was to restore stability in our public finances and confidence in the British economy. In just two years we have cut the deficit by a quarter and have set out a credible path towards our goal to balance the current budget over the economic cycle. Dealing with the deficit may have been our

Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

While the Coalition celebrates proalition, the two parties are still making their differences public

The Coalition reaches its proalition peak today with the publication of the mid-term review, but Downing Street strategists are keen to spin out the good feeling for as long as possible. David Cameron and Nick Clegg will launch the review in their first joint appearance in Downing Street since December 2010, but the details of many of the measures on childcare, transport, housing and pensions won’t come today. Instead, we’ll see a trickle of announcements over the next couple of months. The leaders have already published a foreword to the review document, which starts by restating the Coalition’s central mission: deficit reduction. This is the area where the two parties

Sunday

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron readies childcare package

David Cameron and Nick Clegg will launch the coalition’s mid-term review tomorrow. There will be some announcements in it. But I understand that some of the most interesting, new coalition policies are being held out from it. The government wants to keep some of its powder back for later. There are also some final details to be worked out in certain areas. I’m informed that there’ll be a Quad on childcare this week. The coalition is close to agreement on a package which, as I say in the Mail on Sunday, would see working mothers receive thousands of pounds of help with childcare costs for the under fives. This will

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

How Oliver Letwin lost his Kyoto bet with Nigel Lawson

Not that anyone has noticed, but the Kyoto Protocol expired on 31 December, with  carbon emissions up by 58pc over 1990 levels – instead the 5pc cut the signatories envisaged. All that fuss for worse-than-nothing. Kyoto has not been replaced, because a new era of climate change rationalism is slowly taking root. As Nigel Lawson predicted, the hysteria of the last few years is cooling. There’s no point legislating for change that’s not going to happen. No point taxing the poor out of the sky (or off the roads) if it won’t make the blindest bit of difference to the trajectory of global warming. To be sure, countries responsible for

James Forsyth James Forsyth

In a preview of David Cameron’s 2013, Europe dominates his New Year interview

David Cameron’s New Year interview on Marr was dominated not by the economy but by Europe. In a sign of what the promise of a speech setting out his European strategy has started, Cameron was repeatedly asked about what powers he would like back. He didn’t give much away, repeatedly telling Andrew Marr he would have to wait for the speech later this month. But two interesting things did emerge. First, Cameron indicated that he wanted to toughen up the way that the free movement of people is applied. I presume this means that only those with work or a clear means of support could come here; Nick Boles and