David cameron

Monday

Matt Cavanagh

Missing the target

It has been a mixed week for Parliamentary Select Committees: they have regained some of their bite, but recent events have also served to remind us of their supine performances in the past. Yesterday it was the turn of the Defence Committee to seek our attention, briefing their latest report on the British military campaign in Helmand to the Sunday Telegraph. Under the headline ‘British Force Was Too Weak to Defeat Taliban’, we read of ‘a devastating report’ which is ‘deeply critical of senior commanders and government ministers’. But, the Committee have got some fairly crucial things wrong. They conclude that the task force was ‘capped at 3,150 for financial

Sunday

James Forsyth

Stephenson kicks Cameron on the way out

Sir Paul Stephenson’s resignation statement contains three paragraphs that hand plenty of political ammunition to Labour: “Now let me turn to the reported displeasure of the prime minister and the home secretary of the relationship with Mr Wallis. ” The reasons for not having told them are two fold. Firstly, I repeat my earlier comments of having at the time no reason for considering the contractual relationship to be a matter of concern. Unlike Mr Coulson, Mr Wallis had not resigned from News of the World or, to the best of my knowledge been in any way associated with the original phone hacking investigation. “Secondly, once Mr Wallis’s name did

David Blackburn

Miliband the hero

Garlands go to the conqueror. The Observer has interviewed Ed Miliband about his response to the News International crisis, and it’s as if Caesar has returned home after crushing the traitor Pompey. Miliband told the Spectator in an interview with James Forsyth in this week’s magazine that Murdoch’s spell on British politics has been broken. He reiterates that sentiment with the Observer and adds that Murdoch’s endorsement will be a “double-edged sword at the next election”. When speaking to James he was careful to insist that there was nothing personal in his burgeoning crusade against Murdoch; he is not so careful now.  “I think he has too much power over British public

Saturday

David Blackburn

The Lib Dems try to exploit phone hacking

The phone hacking saga continues interminably.  Simon Hughes appeared on Sky News earlier in the day to discuss the latest revelations. He refused to condemn David Cameron for entertaining Andy Coulson at Chequers and turned on Tony Blair instead. He said: “I’m much more critical of the fact that under the Blair era we knew, and this will all come out in the public inquiry, we knew that Blair flew just before the 1997 election to the other side of the world to meet Murdoch, we know that Tony Blair, three times in the ten days before the Iraq war was declared, was in touch with Rupert Murdoch” The Iraq

Friday

David Blackburn

At the PM’s pleasure…

Here is the list that James referred to earlier in full: Guests to Chequers from May 2010 to present Government guests and senior media guests: Danny Alexander MP and Rebecca Alexander Lord Ashdown Tony Baldry MP Greg Barker MP and George Prassus Lord Terry Burns and Lady Ann Elizabeth Burns Rebekah Brooks (June 2010 and August 2010) Brigadier Ed Butler and Sophie Butler Ian Cheshire and Kate Cheshire Ken Clarke MP and Gillian Clarke Nick Clegg MP Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles Brigadier James Cowan Air Chief Marshall Sir Stephen Dalton Alan Duncan MP and James Dundeath James Fergusson Stanley Fink and Barbara Fink Daniel Finkelstein and Nicky Finkelstein Liam Fox MP

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron comes clean

Later on today, Downing Street will reveal all of David Cameron’s meetings with newspaper / media proprietors and editors since the election. This is a welcome move, transparency is the best disinfectant and by getting the information out there it will end speculation about precisely how close he was to various people in News International. But one detail has already leaked out and will cause controversy: Andy Coulson was a guest at Chequers several months after he quit the government. In some ways this is no great shock, Coulson — as Cameron said at last Friday’s press conference — is a friend of the Prime Minister and someone whose advice

Wednesday

Jonathan Jones

Britain’s euroscepticism hardens

With the European financial crisis rumbling on, anti-EU sentiment in Britain is deepening. Two polls — one by YouGov for PoliticsHome and the other by Angus Reid — show that 50 per cent of the public would vote for Britain to leave the EU if there was a referendum.   Of course, this is nothing new. Brits have long been the most eurosceptic of Europeans, as Fraser noted a couple of months ago. In fact, we’re the only country where more people think our membership of the EU is bad than think it’s good: The hardening of eurosceptic sentiment does seem to be due to current events: 34 per cent

Daniel Korski

Will the defence budget rise, fall or stay constant post-2015?

As British helicopters pound away at Libyan targets, another battle is being waged inside the Ministry of Defence’s fortress-like building. The fight is over the post-2015 budget, and it is an arduous one. After the uniform-creasing settlement the MoD got in the Spending Review last year, the Prime Minister said in the House of Commons on 19th Oct 2010 that while the precise budgets beyond 2015 would be agreed in future reviews, his “own strong view” was that the MoD would see “year-on-year real-term growth in the defence budget in the years beyond 2015.” So far so good — the MoD budget may have to fall now, in line with

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

A day like no other

Was there ever a PMQs like this? The mood was like a revolutionary court. On the central issue – the judge-led inquiry into the hacking affair – there was general agreement. But the doors of justice have been flung open at last and hosts of other crimes are rushing in to receive an airing. Ed Miliband arrived convinced that he had a killer question for Cameron. Assuming his favourite expression of indignant piety he asked about a specific warning given to Cameron’s chief of staff last February that Andy Coulson, when News of the World editor, had hired an ex-convict to bribe the cops. The effect was feeble rather than

James Forsyth James Forsyth

News Corp withdraws its bid for BSkyB

Two things struck me about PMQs today and the Prime Minister’s statement on the forthcoming public inquiry. First, the Prime Minister took a very different approach to Andy Coulson than he did at his press conference last Friday. Today, all the emphasis was on how angry Cameron would be if the assurances given to him turned out to be false.   The second was that Cameron rowed away from suggesting statutory regulation of the press. He stressed that he favoured ‘independent’ not ‘statutory regulation’. This should be more acceptable to the press.   But, as so often in this scandal, these events have now been overtaken by the dramatic news

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live | 13 July 2011

A change from the Coffee House norm for this last PMQs before the summer recess. Instead of the usual live-blog, we’ll be live-tweeting the session, and our tweets will appear in the special window below (you may be familiar with it from Guido’s PMQs coverage). Tweets from other political types may also appear. And you can add your own remarks to the live-stream not in the comments section, but in the space below the window. Anyway, it should all be fairly self-explanatory. It might work, it might not. In either case, do let us know what you think. End of term PMQS

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron on the back foot

This has been another difficult morning for David Cameron. He’s now taking flak for having said he would take part in the BSkyB debate this afternoon and then deciding not to. But what should, perhaps, worry the Prime Minister more than this criticism is the evidence that the Liberal Democrats are siding with Labour to portray Cameron as being behind the curve on this issue. The FT, the Lib Dems’ paper of choice, reports that Clegg and Miliband pushed Cameron for a wide-ranging public inquiry. The paper details how Clegg is demanding an end to the practice of politicians, and particularly Prime Ministers, meeting newspaper proprietors but keeping the meeting

David Blackburn

Might Gaddafi shunt Murdoch from the front pages?

Loyal Tories and government types are hoping that the media will soon move on from Murdoch. And the unusually heavy briefings emanating from George Osborne’s office last night were perhaps an attempt to shift the spotlight. But it will take a very gripping story to displace the phone hacking saga, especially if yet more has-been politicians shuffle back into public life to settle old scores with Murdoch. With the British press immersed in this tempestuous revenge drama and the whirl of hypocrisy that surrounds it, you wouldn’t guess that the euro has embarked on a 72 hour ordeal that may decide its future.   But, Rupert Murdoch’s mugshots could yet

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

The euro’s death rattle

The end might be nigh for the euro. The currency has hit an all-time low against the Swiss franc, as individual eurozone government bond yields vaulted higher due to mounting concerns about the region’s debt crisis. To spell out what this means: in Spain, 12 billion euros of interest payments will accrue for every 100 point bond rise in Germany. That is more than Spain’s annual public investment in infrastructure (8.6 billion) and its entire defence budget (7.6 billion). At the same time, Greece is heading towards disorderly default or some form of devaluation. Or both. And now Italy looks vulnerable. Well, I say that the end is nigh but,

Daniel Korski

Karzai’s brother shot dead

The half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just been murdered outside his fortified compound in Kandahar. Ahmed Wali Karzai was the political kingpin in Kandahar province, formally serving as head of the provincial council. I am told by officials that he was killed by one of his bodyguards at a checkpoint; the killer was then shot dead by other bodyguards. A senior FCO official has said that David Cameron would want to give his condolences on a “personal basis” to President Karzai for his loss. That said, many people in the British government will not be all that unhappy with the demise of Wali Karzai – or “AWK”, as

Monday

Peter Hoskin

What didn’t make it into today’s reform paper?

“It’s like Blair and Brown — but without the acrimony.” So sayeth one Cabinet Office source, describing the prolonged build-up to today’s public services White Paper to me a couple of months ago. His point was that, although the yellow and blue halves of the Downing Street operation are genuinely chummy with one another, their differences can still put a block on reform. In his story, the Tories are like Blair, striving to go further, faster, stronger. Whereas the Lib Dems can occasionally stand in the way. So what has been blocked from the White Paper? Listening to David Cameron today, you wouldn’t guess that anything has been. “Let me

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Hunt flounders in very choppy water

Jeremy Hunt’s statement today confirmed that News Corps’ takeover bid for BSkyB was being referred to the Competition Commission. But the questions afterwards were dominated by Labour questions about Andy Coulson’s appointment. Hunt could not answer whether or not Coulson had been positively vetted. Nor, could he say when Cameron and Coulson last spoke. Indeed, Hunt initially claimed Cameron had not spoken to his former director of communications since Coulson stepped down, before quickly correcting himself. The Culture Secretary did do a decent job of sounding reasonable and bemoaning Labour’s tone. But without a proper line on Coulson, he was left floundering. There were two other things worth noting from

Sunday

James Forsyth

Major proposals on the future of Scotland

There have long been suspicions in Westminster that David Cameron uses John Major as an out rider, the last Tory Prime Minister advances an idea that allows the current one to gauge opinion on it. Certainly, Major and Cameron are close. Remember how Major was used by Cameron in the days following the indecisive general election result. So there’ll be suspicions that Major is out riding for Cameron with his speech, covered in the Sunday Telegraph, arguing that the Scottish Parliament and Executive should be handed powers over everything apart from foreign, defence and economic policy. In exchange for this, the Scots would accept a reduction in the number of

Peter Hoskin

Miliband primes his weapon of choice

There’s a lot to sift through in the papers this morning, even apart from history’s final edition of the News of the World. I mean, a report that Rebekah Brooks is to face police questioning over the phone hacking scandal; an interview with the assistant commissioner of the Met, who apologises and flusters over the original police investigation; and claims from Paddy Ashdown that he warned No.10 “within days of the election” about the Coulson-shaped trouble that was heading their way. But more politically significant is the news that Ed Miliband could push for a Commons vote, on Wednesday, to block News Corp’s takeover of Sky. The Labour leader outlined

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Roadblocked to death?

You may doubt that Downing Street is doing much politics beyond the phone hacking saga at the moment — but it is. The coming week will see the launch of the long-awaited, much-delayed public services White Paper, which is intended to set the framework for more or less every service we receive from the state. You may remember that Cameron heralded it with an article for the Telegraph back in February. Then, he suggested that private and charitable providers would be as privileged as state ones, writing both that, “we will create a new presumption that public services should be open to a range of providers competing to offer a