David cameron

Haven’t had a chance to follow the day’s political events and interviews? Then don’t worry: here, The Spectator, brings you the best of today’s audio clips in one place for you to listen to. David Cameron defended the Government over its handling of the Syrian refugee crisis after being criticised for refusing to accept 3,000 unaccompanied child migrants into Britain: He also said he was ‘very clear what he meant’ when he referred to a ‘bunch of migrants’ in Calais during yesterday’s PMQs: The PM’s original remarks can be heard here: Meanwhile, George Osborne said the sale of Lloyds shares would be delayed until financial markets had calmed down: Speaking

There will have been gales of laughter in Downing Street and the In campaign this morning as they read Sam Coates’s account of the attempted coup in the No campaign. This Eurosceptic infighting is a huge gift to David Cameron for three reasons. 1). It will deter serious people from politics and business getting involved with the NO campaign. Few will want to sign up with a campaign that is already riven by infighting. Ministers and Tory MPs who were on the fence about what to do come the referendum, will be that much closer to sticking with the Prime Minister this morning. 2). Campaigns that win aren’t arguing about internal

David Cameron wants to get the European Union referendum over with quickly — and understandably so. Things are still going well for him, and his political opposition is in disarray. The ‘in’ campaign will draw heavily upon his personal authority and the public is not (yet) fed up with him. Ideally, he wants to start campaigning next month — and many of his allies are at it already. Opinion polls show a large number of undecided voters. So this may very well be a campaign where a great many are open to persuasion and hoping for a high-quality debate. They will have been disappointed so far. The ‘in’ campaign has

David Cameron has today come under fire after he used the phrase ‘a bunch of migrants’ to describe the refugees Jeremy Corbyn met on a recent trip to Calais. Various politicians and columnists have since claimed Cameron’s words were ‘divisive’ and ‘dehumanising’. Alex Salmond has gone one step further and accused him of making the controversial comment on purpose as part of a ‘dead cat strategy‘ to distract from the government’s ongoing Google tax row. However, Anna Soubry has leapt to Cameron’s defence claiming the phrasing was a slip in the heat of the moment — adding that anybody who says that it was scripted is ‘being silly and playing cheap politics’. Yet this wouldn’t

Today’s PMQs was an opportunity for Jeremy Corbyn to embarrass the government and align himself with public anger over how little tax some multinationals pay. But he missed this opportunity. By going on HMRC’s deal with Google in isolation, he allowed Cameron to point the finger of blame at the last Labour government. Indeed, Cameron even dragged Corbyn into defending the record of the Blair and Brown governments on corporate taxation. A far more effective tactic would have been to contrast the British deal with the French and Italian ones. Why have these governments managed to get more tax out of Google than our own? Another problem with Corbyn at

It’s fair to say that David Cameron’s answer to John Baron at last week’s Prime Minister’s Questions, in which the Tory leader basically confirmed to his backbench colleague that he was ignoring him, hasn’t exactly helped relations with the eurosceptics in the Tory party. The row was splashed across the front page of the Sunday Telegraph this weekend, and I now understand that Baron has secured a Commons debate that will take up the issue he has been trying to raise with the Prime Minister. Baron’s debate will be in a backbench business session on 4 February, and has a rather spiky motion for discussion: ‘That this House believes in the

What does David Cameron mean when he says, as he did today, that he’s happy to wait a bit longer for a deal in his renegotiation of Britain’s relationship with the European Union? The Prime Minister told the Davos summit today that ‘if there isn’t the right deal, I’m not in a hurry’ and that ‘it’s much more important to get this right than to rush it’. The expectation in Westminster has been that Cameron would get a deal at the European Council summit in February, but the Prime Minister has been dropping hints that he is prepared to let the timetable slip at the same time that his colleagues

This week David Cameron has warned that migrant spouses who fail language tests could be made to leave the UK. While many have since accused the Prime Minister of stigmatising Muslim women over his call for immigrants to take language lessons, Mr S is more concerned that he is not au fait with the age-old adage that ‘people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’. Speaking on Today on Monday to announce his plans, Cameron’s Eton education appeared to escape him entirely as he used a double negative to describe the problem: ‘There are 38,000 Muslim women who don’t speak hardly any English at all’ While he could perhaps be forgiven for

David Cameron is giving a speech in Davos later today with a message for British business: he wants to enlist them in his campaign for Britain to stay in the EU. Not that he puts it in such terms. We’re still in a phoney war where, in theory, Cameron is still negotiating, and might very well say that he wants Britain out of the EU. But in practice, the campaign has begun. He has a series of meetings with other EU leaders. He hopes for a deal next month and a referendum in June or July. Any doubt that the campaign has begun should be dispelled by the tone of