Coalition

By-elections are notoriously hard to call. But everyone who comes back from Eastleigh says the same thing, UKIP are the party with forward momentum. This morning’s Populus poll bears that out. They are in third place with 21 per cent, with the Tories second on 28 and the Lib Dems ahead with 33. But, as the indispensable UK Polling Report points out, if you don’t reallocate some of the undecides to the party they voted for last time, UKIP are doing even better. The numbers then are UKIP 25%, Tories 26% and Lib Dems 31%. As I said in the magazine this week, UKIP are picking up support from all

The United Kingdom’s triple A rating is now lost with one credit rating agency, Moody’s. This is a politically difficult moment for George Osborne. Back in February 2010, he set keeping the triple A rating as one of the key tests of a Conservative government’s economic policy. His opponents will delight in pointing out that he has failed the test he has set himself, while nervousness on the Tory benches about the coalition’s economic strategy will be heightened by this news. Economically, though, I doubt that this will have much impact. In recent weeks, Britain’s debt has been trading more like that of France, which has lost its triple A

It seems I rather underestimated Labour when I said their forthcoming Opposition Day vote on the mansion tax would be boring and unlikely to attract any Lib Dem support. The Staggers reported last night that Labour sources were planning to make the vote as amenable as possible to the Lib Dems by dropping any awkward references to 10p tax rates or any other wheeze that the junior coalition partner disagrees with. Meanwhile Lib Dem sources are saying they are waiting to see the wording before ruling anything out. But the point that this is not a crunch vote that will interest the public still stands, so why are the Lib

The state owning banks is not a good thing. It is, as the annual row over bonuses at RBS demonstrates, very difficult to keep politics out of the running of the business. So, it’s encouraging news that the Treasury is moving to sell the government’s 82 percent stake as soon as possible. Today, the Mail and The Independent report that George Osborne is considering simply handing over the shares to taxpayers, who would then be able to sell them when they at a time of their choosing. As I wrote earlier this month, Osborne is very keen to avoid a row over RBS bonuses in February 2015, just three months

So the Lib Dems got their way in the end, teaming up with Labour and minor parties to delay the changes to constituency boundaries until 2018 by 334 votes to 292. There were Tory rebels, too, and here, thanks to the Press Association, are their names: John Baron Philip Davies David Davis Sir Richard Shepherd The minor parties also voted with the Lib Dems and Labour: only the Alliance’s Naomi Long voted with the Tories. Nadine Dorries, who remains suspended from the party, also supported the Conservatives. Tempers ran high in the debate itself, with Tory Penny Mordaunt MP accusing the Libs of casting ‘flirtatious glances’ across the Chamber at Labour

Nick Clegg was careful in his interview on the Marr show today to leave the door open to a Lib-Lab coalition – which bookmakers regard as more likely (4-1) than another Con-Lab coalition (6-1). It was interesting that so much of his description of coalition referred to himself: He told Sophie Raworth: ‘I’ve never, ever seen any of this as an issue about what one individual thinks of another individual. It is really all about what the British people think about the parties who are asking for their votes. David Cameron and I said lots of disobliging things before the last general election, disagreeing with things you’ve just highlighted. We

Cabinet Secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood has signed off on an agreed breach of collective responsibility in the boundaries vote, but what does that mean for the way the government works from now on? The Prime Minister’s official spokesman argued this afternoon that this did not in any way set a precedent for the way the two coalition parties vote on other policies. He added: ‘The Cabinet Secretary was consulted. It has been formally agreed but only in this specific instance. Having consulted the Cabinet Secretary, they recorded their agreement to set aside collective responsibility on this occasion. The rules with regard to this allow for the setting aside on very

The Europe debate is raging in the Sunday papers ahead of Cameron’s speech on the matter. There’s mounting concern among Tory Cabinet Ministers that the speech will not go far enough and will simply inflame the situation. One told me, ‘It would be better to make no speech than to disappoint.’ But I suspect that Tory spin doctors will be concerned about a second Europe story this Sunday, Eric Pickles’ confirmation under questioning from Andrew Neil that the government has a number for how many Romanians and Bulgarians are expected to move here from December 2013 when EU transition controls come to an end: listen to ‘Eric Pickles on housing

Bearing in mind that the mid-term review was originally conceived as means of boosting Coalition morale after the collapse of Lords reform, it hasn’t done enormously well. With two more very awkward stories stemming from the review hitting the papers today, the exercise has left Downing Street in reactive mode, rather than functioning as the proactive promoter of proalition politics. These are the main problems with the review: 1. In trying to manage headlines about the review, Downing Street inadvertently created a slew of negative coverage by withholding the ‘audit’ of coalition achievements. The audit turned out to be a very boring and badly applied gloss (Ronseal quality control would

Finally, the copper-bottomed, unvarnished Programme for Government Update, aka the Secret Audit, has landed. You can read the full document here, but in summary, it’s not immediately very helpful. It is laid out as a point-by-point ‘analysis’ of how the government is meeting its pledges in the Coalition Agreement, but the wording is such that you can’t actually tell whether there are any areas on which it has failed. Reading this document, you’d think everything was pretty hunky-dory with the government as there is no assessment of whether each pledge is completed, underway, or forgotten. This is the assessment of the House of Lords reform pledge: We published a draft

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