David cameron

Tonight, it is still not clear how the Greek situation will be resolved. The European Central Bank–which is desperate to avoid being dragged into the politics of this situation–has chosen a middle way on its emergency assistance to Greek banks. It has neither ended it—which would have crashed the whole Greek banking system—nor extended it, which would have enabled the banks to stay open and eased the pressure on the Syriza-led government. Greek banks will definitely be closed tomorrow and probably until the referendum on Sunday. The next big question is what happens on Tuesday when the bailout programme ends and a payment comes due to the IMF which Athens

In PMQs today, there was no sense of the drama going on outside in Central Lobby as disability campaigners attempted to enter the Chamber. But the exchanges were far more revealing than usual. Harriet Harman asked Cameron about his plans to cut tax credits. Revealingly, Cameron didn’t deny that tax credits were going to be cut or tell Harman to wait until the Budget on July the 8. I think we can take that as something close to confirmation that tax credits will be cut as part of the government’s effort to make £12 billion of savings from the welfare Budget. Indeed, Cameron even endorsed the idea that tax credits

Dominic Cummings is the man drafted in to put together the putative No campaign for the EU referendum. Cummings has a tendency to surprise and he has done that today with a piece that pushes the idea that the No campaign should say that there would be a second referendum if Britain votes Out. This second vote would be on the terms of Britain’s exit from the EU. Cummings’ thinking is that this would de-risk voting No. People would be simply rejecting the deal that David Cameron had negotiated rather than voting to leave outright. Cummings sums up the advantages of a second referendum for No thus: This approach might allow NO to

David Cameron has never particularly warmed to the language of compassionate conservatism. In the past, that side of the conservatism has generally been represented by Iain Duncan Smith — with help from the Centre for Social Justice, the think tank he founded. But in light of the rapidly approaching £12 billion of cuts in welfare spending, the Prime Minister will give a speech today outlining why it is important to end the ‘merry-go-round’ of benefits: ‘When it comes to extending opportunity – there is a right track and a wrong track. The right track is to recognise the causes of stalled social mobility and a lack of economic opportunity. Family breakdown. Debt.

It is natural to assume that, if a majority votes No in the referendum on Britain’s EU membership, we shall then leave. It is not automatically so. After the vote, we would still be members. The government would then — morally at least — be mandated to negotiate Britain’s withdrawal. In theory, unlikely though it may currently seem, the EU could try to block this. Even assuming that it did not do so, the eventual terms of the withdrawal would not automatically be agreed by Parliament and would not necessarily correspond with the wishes of those who voted No. The context for our vote will be David Cameron’s presentation of a package

David Cameron appears to have made two concessions to his Eurosceptic backbenchers over the EU referendum. Firstly, the referendum vote won’t be next year. The decision against holding the vote in May 2016 was taken yesterday, against the will of some Downing Street advisers according to Newsnight’s Allegra Stratton. The signs coming from No.10 have been that the Prime Minister was keen to get the referendum out of the way as soon as possible — hence the desire to hold it on the same day as next year’s elections. Eurosceptics on the other hand have pointed out that rushing the referendum will make it harder for the Prime Minister to achieve substantive reforms,

Privately, senior Tories admit that winning the EU referendum, by which they mean securing a vote to stay in on Cameron’s new terms, is the easy part. The more difficult challenge, they admit, will be keeping the Tory party from splitting over the issue. But this realisation doesn’t seem to be informing how the government is actually approaching the referendum hence the row over the attempt to lift the normal purdah restrictions for the campaign itself. Cameron should be bending over backwards to ensure that the whole process is seen as ‘fair’ and to ensure that everyone on the Tory  bench has to accept the result. For as one senior

On Wednesday at Noon, George Osborne will rise to respond for the government at Prime Minister’s Questions. The symbolism of this moment won’t be lost on anyone on the Tory benches. It will be the start of Osborne’s audition for the top job. A few years ago, the idea of Osborne as Prime Minister was—as one of his backers puts it—‘a minority taste’. But now, he continues, ‘it is a mainstream assumption’. What has changed things is the economic recovery and the Tories’ surprise election victory, which has vindicated Osborne’s political strategy. Osborne, I argue in the Mail on Sunday, has also become a better politician in recent years; more