All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
The Bahraini regime will not yield peaceably before protest, as Hosni Mubarak did. This morning, Bahraini police opened fire on demonstrators with live rounds; four people were killed. There were also reports that Saudi Arabian troops were involved, which would mark a clear change in the Arab establishment’s tactics following Mubarak’s fall. In the uncertain
Caroline Spelman has just told the Commons that ‘I am sorry. We got this one wrong.’ The forests u-turn is now complete. Rachel Johnson has successfully duffed up the government. The coalition is trying to make the best of the situation, stressing that this shows that this is a ‘listening’ government. But there’s no getting
Good stuff from Ross Clark in last week’s magazine about the extraordinary amounts of money wasted by our local councils, largely – as every newspaper has subsequently reported – on themselves. In a sense while the humungous salaries of the chief executives are indeed infuriating, it is the massive increase in salaries lower down the
In January 2009, Nature magazine ran the a cover story (pictured) conveying dramatic news about Antarctica: that most of it had warmed significantly over the last half-century. For years, the data from this frozen continent – with 90 percent of the world’s ice mass – had stubbornly refused to corroborate the global warming narrative. So
Tomorrow’s New Statesman speculates that David Laws is about to return to government. Kevin Maguire reckons that it is significant that Laws is turning down invitations to events after an unidentified date in mid-March. Laws is still awaiting the verdict of the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner, but he is expected to be exonerated. Preparing for a
Today’s entertainment in the Irish election is generously provided by Ned O’Keeffe who, thoughtfully, warns that the Irish army may be poised to take over the country. The outgoing Cork TD (Fianna Fail naturally) may be on to something. Perhaps there is a pro-coup constituency that, sure, wouldn’t be thinking a military regime would be
Too much time at the barbers. That’s the opposition’s problem. Ed Miliband showed up at PMQS today after a long morning lounging in the chair having his hair coiffed and burnished. His darkly gleaming scalp now looks like the kind of thing toffs scrape their boots on after a morning’s shooting. And that’s precisely what
Enough is enough. The British Bill of Rights is set to return: a consequence of the government’s running battle with parliament over the European Convention on Human Rights. Recent days have been filled with clues and suggestions of imminent reform: Dominic Grieve, a former advocate of the ECHR, went so far as to assert that
PMQs today contained a rare moment: the Prime Minister admitting that he wasn’t happy with government policy. Ed Miliband, who split his questions up this week, asked Cameron if he was happy with his position on forestry and Cameron replied, ‘the short answer to that is no.’ The answer rather drew the sting from the
VERDICT: It was, comparatively, a quieter session than last week. Miliband was not as effective and missed the bus on the forestry u-turn. His attack on the government’s growth agenda was more spirited (Miliband is better with statistics than jokes). Even so, he concentrated on youth unemployment, which has been a long-term problem in Britain.
Though this blog has tried to ignore the fact, there are elections to the Scottish Parliament this year. In just over ten weeks time in fact. I’ve ignored the subject because, frankly, the idea of Iain Gray – he’s the leader of the Labour party in Scotland – becoming First Minister is too depressing to
As we wait for the result of tonight’s ping pong between the Lords and the Commons over the forty percent threshold, there is one point worth noting about the row over the court ruling on the sex offenders’ register. The court that ruled that sex offenders sentenced to two and a half years cannot be
Youth unemployment in the UK has hit another record. More 16 to 24-year olds are out of work than ever. The unemployment rate in this group is now a shocking 20.5 percent, which amounts to nearly a million young people out of work. Of those, 600,000 have never had a job since leaving school or
Rumours abound that General David Petraeus will leave his post as commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. Early editions of The Times quoted Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell saying that “General Petraeus is doing a brilliant job but he’s been going virtually non-stop since 9/11 [and] he can’t do it forever”. According to The Times,
It was the snow wot done it. The new unemployment figures have been published and the headline figures are that unemployment increased by 44,000 to 2.49 million between December 2010 and January 2011; the claimant count also went up by 2,400 to reach 1.46 million. It’s disappointing news, especially as figures from Germany are markedly
The normally chummy Eric Pickles was in a black mood on the Today programme. Despite councils’ brazen politicking, Pickles has been deferential in recent months, a stance bemoaned by his allies in local government. But he cut loose this morning. Ostensibly, he was on the programme to defend his policy that councillors vote, in open
Today the NO to AV campaign has published research showing that the change to AV will cost the UK an additional £250 million, and – judging by the Yes campaign’s panicky reaction – this charge has hit home. Our estimate represents the additional cost of AV. The government stated the referendum would cost over £90
Gerry Adams, appearing on the Irish radio station Newstalk this afternoon, denounced the proposed Universal Social Charge (ie, tax) as being little more or less than “an act of gross terrorism”. He also complained that Micheal Martin’s suggestion that Adams’s past membership of the IRA might prove a problem for some voters was a “slur”.
Westminster has bent its collective knee in cooing supplication to Larry, Downing Street’s new cat. The slinky feline is already three times more famous than Mrs Bercow – no crude double-entendres please. Meanwhile, Politics Home has been sent a photograph of a van in Smith Square.
Iain Martin is surely right to suppose that unveiling celebrities and luvvies who support changing the voting system is a good way for the Yes to AV campaign to lose support. But it’s not as if the No campaign is playing a blinder either. Today’s Dreadful Argument for Retaining First Past the Post argues that
When Ed Miliband won the Labour leadership, there was much speculation that he’d be ‘Kinnocked’ by The Sun. His brother David had been the favoured News International candidate and ‘Red Ed’, as The Sun dubbed him, offered a fair few targets. But the paper has been giving the Labour leader a hearing in recent weeks.
Perhaps it’s because it’s a coalition and this novelty is too subtle a thing to be grasped by Fleet Street, but it’s still strange how unpopular this government has become. Not with the public; that was to be expected given the decision to stress nothing but deficits and cuts during the Camerlegg ministry’s first few
I once vowed never again to mock celebrities who endorse political campaigns as if they were advertising two-for-the-price-of-one offers in supermarkets. But today’s announcement that the Yes to AV campaign has recruited Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth is testing my resolve. It is not that I believe that celebrities should keep away from politics.
Yesterday, the coalition said it would try and overturn all four of the Lords’ amendments to the AV bill. But today it announced that it would accept the one saying that the Isle of Wight should not be combined with anywhere on the mainland. But—and this is where the controversy comes—the Isle of Wight will
Diplomats are often seen as stuffy characters from a different century, men who often appear lost in today’s chaotic world. Nobody could be further from that caricature than Mark Sedwill, the former British ambassador in Kabul and outgoing NATO Senior Civilian Representative to Afghanistan. For more than a year, Sedwill has been, first, General Stanley
What a pleasure it was. Last night, I spent forty minutes in Westminster Great Hall – one of London’s few remaining Romanesque buildings, the largest single vaulted wooden ceiling in the world and the judicial setting for the trial of Charles I. Why was I there? Another failure of the big society, of course. I had
The news that serving soldiers have been given notice by email has been met fury from ministers. Liam Fox has answered questions in the House about this story and why 100 RAF pilots discovered they were redundant in yesterday’s newspapers. Fox was both livid and contrite, decrying the ‘completely unacceptable’ practices and reiterating the MoD’s
Now that today’s inflation figures are up, to a predictable and predicted 4.0 percent on CPI and 5.2 percent on RPI, we can expect the usual response. Nothing from the government (even though the declining standard of living will eclipse cuts as the no.1 problem of 2011); plenty of shocked news stories; and, then, the
CPI inflation running at four percent, twice the bank’s target level is a problem for the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee which remains set against a rate increase. I suspect we’ll hear much about how this rise is partly prompted by the one off effects of the VAT rise and the role of global commodity
I was invited to Somerset House on the Strand yesterday as part of the Big Society Network to watch David Cameron take questions for the best part of an hour on his pet subject. My organisation, New Deal of the Mind, has been helping deliver two welfare-to-work contracts since last year and, along with most
It was predictable that Labour would use the outcome of the judicial review last Friday to try and re-heat the Building Schools for the Future row. Andy Burnham was in florid form in the House of Commons on the subject. He demanded that ‘Michael Gove apologise to the communities who suffered from the devastating effects
It is odd to think that in just a few months we’ll be having only the second nationwide referendum in our history and no one is particularly excited about it. This is largely because the plebiscite is on AV, an unloved voting system that is a half-way house between first past the post and a
Last week’s civil liberties bill was hardly perfect but it’s still a step in the right direction. And, frankly, it’s bonny and startling in equal measure to have a Deputy Prime Minister who says things like this: “I need to say this – you shouldn’t trust any government, actually including this one. You should not
As James has noted, Downing Street has turned its energies to the big society. Op-eds are being written, airtime used and speeches made. This morning saw the centrepiece: a former Labour donor, Sir Ronald Cohen, has joined the campaign and Cameron devoted a speech to what he described as his “political mission”. Cameron was fluent
