David cameron

The list of things that will be Big Politics when Parliament returns from its summer break is growing all the time: growth, the post-riot clean-up, the undeserving rich, multiple squeezes, and so on. But few will have has much everyday resonance as another item on the list: rising energy prices. This has been a problem for some time, of course, thanks to a toxic combination of trickle-down green measures, oil price spikes, and financial effrontery from the energy companies. But it looks only to get worse. This morning’s Telegraph reports on an internal Downing Street document — entitled “Impact of our energy and climate policies on consumer energy bills” —

It is a sign of just how close the Blairs and the Murdochs were that Tony is godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s young daughters. But it is also a sign of the changed politics around Murdoch that this news will now be a major embarrassment to Blair. Wendi Deng Murdoch has, the Daily Telegraph reports, told the October edition of Vogue that Blair was present at the christening of her two daughters on the banks of the River Jordan last year. He is, the paper says, godfather to the elder one. The news of this deeply personal link between Blair and Murdoch will strengthen Cameron’s case when he tries to argue that it

You read it here first – four years ago. The Conservative Party looks like it will finally enact its plans to split, and the Scottish Conservatives will dissolve – at least if Murdo Fraser wins the leadership. The Sunday Telegraph has the news tomorrow: “Murdo Fraser, who is favourite to become leader of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party, will announce that he plans to wind up the party if he wins a ballot of members next month. He would follow disbanding the party by launching a new Right-of-centre party that would contest all Scottish elections — council, Scottish Parliament and Westminster. Mr Fraser, a member of the Scottish Parliament, believes the

Tripoli It would probably be stretching the truth a little to say that the British prime minister runs Allah a close second when it comes to expressions of gratitude at checkpoints on the way into Tripoli from the Tunisian border, but there’s no doubting his popularity. “David Cameron, veery, veeeery good!” is a typical reaction to the discovery that a vehicle is carrying a British journalist. “The Brits are number one among all the expat Libyans who’ve come back to join the revolution,” says Ahmed, recently returned from San Antonio. Although a Guards officer might raise an eyebrow at the ragtag lack of uniforms – hastily printed V for victory

Banking reform has always been one of those issues that was going to test the unity of the coalition. Indeed, it was the subject of the very first inter-coalition wrangle when back in May 2010 George Osborne and Vince Cable tussled over who would chair the Cabinet committee on banking reform.   To date, these differences have been held in check by the fact that the coalition is waiting for the recommendations of the John Vickers-led Independent Commission on Banking. But with the final draft of the Vickers Report being published on 12 September, these splits are starting to open up again.   Cable and the Liberal Democrats would like,

There’s a big coalition split coming down the road. Next month the Vickers’ review into banking reform, which is going to suggest a ring-fencing of the investment and retail arms of banks, will come out. The Liberal Democrats — led by Vince Cable — will push for the instant implementation of the report’s recommendations. The Treasury will argue that banks need to be given time to introduce these new rules. The result will be, as one senior Lib Dem source tells this morning’s FT, ‘a big fight’.   The tricky question for Cameron and Osborne is how do they win this argument when there’s a visceral desire for tough measures

The Observer has a cracking scoop: a brief document detailing a new Labour plan to attack Cameron. The memo has been written by Shaun Woodward, the former Tory MP and Labour cabinet minister who now heads Labour’s anti-Tory unit. He will report to the shadow cabinet in the next few weeks. He says: ‘At the last election we faced a Conservative party (and a Conservative leader in David Cameron) whose strategic goal was to decontaminate their brand, intending to present themselves as reformed, modern, centrist and pragmatic. Cameron was effective in promoting a perception [that] his party had changed. But here is the paradox: whilst the Tories made changes before

Nick Clegg laughed-off the dousing of blue paint he received in Glasgow yesterday, like one of Noel Edmonds’ unwitting victims. Today, Clegg has turned into the grinning douser: drenching his coalition partners in yellow paint by saying that the European Convention on Human Rights will not be watered down. Writing in the Guardian, Clegg says that the Conservatives are right to seek operational reform of the European Court of Human Rights, but the common ground ends there. He says that “the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights have been instrumental” in preventing injustices from council snooping to the misuse of DNA records and that the incorporation

Poor David Cameron. He pledged to reduce annual net migration from the current 240,000 to the “tens of thousands” and what happens? Net migration in 2010 was up by 21 per cent from 2009. In a way, he deserves the flak he’ll get because this was a daft target that could only have been set by someone poorly-advised about the nature of immigration. And the target allows success to be presented as failure. The inflow to Britain has stayed steady (see graph below), but the number emigrating from Britain has fallen. This is a compliment to Cameron: the most sincere vote people can make is with their feet. And in

“They’ll like us when we win,” the West Wing’s Toby Ziegler said of the Arab world. David Cameron might have said the same when public opinion was turning against the intervention in Libya. And, judging by today’s YouGov poll, he’d have been right. Public support for military intervention has mirrored the public’s view of how well the action is going. In the first two weeks, when optimism prevailed, the public were largely in favour. However, as that optimism wore off and people increasingly doubted that the rebels could succeed, more and more began to oppose our involvement. Before the weekend, just 26 per cent thought the intervention was going well,