Economy

The Labour vs. Conservative battle of economic plans is heating up. Ed Miliband is launching a 79-page Better Plan for Britain’s Prosperity today, which appears to be his latest alternative on the Conservatives’ robotic chants of a ‘long-term economic plan’ for ‘hardworking families’. But this isn’t the first time they have launched their plan for the economy. Here are seven previous occasions where Labour has made a fuss about some new plans, pledges or promises about the economy: 1. December 2014 – five election pledges. At the end of last year, Miliband announced that Labour would go into the election with five election pledges that constituted ‘a long-term plan to make

The Green party has been likened to a watermelon: green on the outside and red on the inside. But that is to do a huge injustice to generations of socialists and communists. Misguided though they were in many of their ideas, nobody could accuse them of actively seeking to make society poorer. That, however, is the unashamed aspiration of Natalie Bennett and what has become the fastest-growing political party in Britain. It is quite possible that a good proportion of the 9 per cent of the electorate who say they are planning to vote Green in May are unaware of this, but it is there in black and white (‘policy

These days George Osborne is rarely seen in public without a hard hat and a hi-vis jacket. But he used to take pride in being recognised as a political insider through and through — a member of the guild of politicians, in his own phrase. He revelled in writing detailed articles about the lessons Westminster could learn from American politics. Several of these were written for The Spectator when Boris Johnson was the editor, which shows how far back the relationship between the Chancellor and the Mayor of London goes. (Osborne was at Oxford as the same time as Johnson’s younger brother Jo, now an MP and the head of

David Cameron and George Osborne addressed Tory MPs this evening. The meeting was to update the Tory parliamentary party on the economy and its place in the party’s election strategy. Cameron told them that whatever the question was, the answer was that you can only have it with a strong economy and urged them to repeat this message as much as possible. He said, ‘Boring is good’. Addressing the assembled MPs, Osborne emphasised that the economy was the heart of this debate. He argued that this was first time since 1992 that Labour and the Tories had gone into an election with different spending planes. Most of the questions were

There’s 121 days to go till the General Election and the two main parties have released reports attacking each others plans for the economy. You can read them both here: A Cost Analysis of Labour Party Policy The Tories Claims Don’t Add Up  The Conservative’s document outlines how a Labour government would increase spending by £27.1 billion in its first year alone. In his introductory remarks, George Osborne puts forward the ‘simple choice’ facing the British people in May: ‘Ed Miliband’s Labour Party that offers more spending, more borrowing and higher taxes – or David Cameron leading the Conservatives as we continue to work through a long-term economic plan that

In 2010, David Cameron stumbled in his first New Year broadcast interview over the Tory plans for a married couple’s tax allowance. This slip-up knocked him and his party off course and was a harbinger of the disastrous Tory campaign to come. Today, there were no such mistakes from Cameron as he appeared on Andrew Marr. Instead, he stuck to his competence versus chaos message and tried, fairly successfully, to avoid making any other news. In this campaign, we will see a more disciplined Cameron than the one who fought the 2010 election. The Tories are this time, in contrast to 2010, certain of what their message should be. One

Today’s PMQs was the last one before the holidays. But there was not much Christmas cheer on display. Cameron and Miliband clashed on the economy, with the Labour leader keen to drive home his line that the Tories are intent on taking Britain back to the 1930s. Cameron had prior notice of Miliband’s first question because someone had seen the question on the Blackberry of a Labour staffer on the train and put it on Facebook. Armed with this knowledge, Cameron tried to defuse the attack by pointing out that he was only planning to return spending to, in real terms, 2002/2003 levels. He also had plenty of references lined

David Cameron is talking about the ‘great, black, ominous cloud’ that Labour’s economic plans would put over the British economy. Labour is talking about its immigration policies while trying not to talk about a document that suggests it shouldn’t talk for too long about them. The Lib Dems are complaining that the Tories would damage children’s futures. It’s beginning to feel a lot like a general election, even though we’re still quite a way away from it. This is one of the benefits for political parties of the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act that is sucking all the life out of Parliament itself. They are now permanently on the campaign trail, even

Tomorrow, in a sign of how keen the Tories are to keep the political debate focused on it, both David Cameron and George Osborne will give speeches on the economy. Cameron will announce that he is bringing forward a scheme to offer first-time buyers under 40 a 20% discount on 100,000 new home. This scheme had originally been slated for the Tory manifesto but will now be up and running before May. Inside Number 10, they hope that this scheme will help demonstrate that there are tangible benefits for voters to sticking with the Tories and their long term economic plan.   Later on, Osborne will use an address in

Ed Miliband’s speech on reducing the deficit has attracted a fair bit of criticism for not telling us very much that’s new. It was supposed to be a Big Speech, and Big Speech normally means Big Announcement, but there wasn’t one. There wasn’t even really any bigger attempt to tell us what Labour would do after the General Election. The Labour leader spent a fair chunk of the question-and-answer session afterwards telling the audience that he had been ‘clear’, which is what politicians end up having to say when they haven’t been clear, often deliberately. But it’s unfair to say that this was a useless speech as it did articulate

In the last few days, George Osborne has moved to close down three Tory vulnerabilities ahead of the election campaign. First, there was the decision to put another £2 billion into the NHS. Osborne has always believed that support for the NHS is the most important feature of Tory modernisation and this extra money has rather undercut Labour’s commitment to spend another £2.5 billion on the health service. The Tory hope is that this extra money, and the party essentially signing up to Simon Stevens blueprint for the NHS, will prevent health from becoming the major election issue that Labour need it to be. Second, Osborne has tried to neuter

Two things have stuck in Tory MPs’ minds from their away. The first, that painting of George Osborne. The second, Jim Messina’s presentation and his confidence that the Tories would win.   Messina managed Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election effort and last year, the Tories announced that they had signed him up to advise them. At the time, most people—including several senior Cabinet ministers—regarded it as a press release hire, a good way of tweaking Labour but not much more. But Messina has, perhaps prompted by his great rival from the Obama campaign David Axelrod joining up with Ed Miliband, got more involved in recent months. He was over for Tory

Ed Miliband chose one of his medleys of things that have gone wrong for today’s Prime Minister’s Questions. There were plenty of those to choose from, and the Labour leader started with the almighty row in the Tory party over the European Arrest Warrant. He accused David Cameron of delaying the vote because of the Rochester and Strood by-election, and offered the Prime Minister next week’s Opposition Day debate to hold it, where he said Labour would support him to get the measure through. Cameron was having none of that, though, and pledged that the vote would be held before Rochester. He claimed Miliband’s questions had collapsed. listen to ‘PMQs:

Ken Clarke is one of the biggest beasts left in the Tory jungle. He had been a fixture in every Tory government since Ted Heaths time until Cameron retired him at the last reshuffle. But Clarke is clearly deeply concerned with Cameron’s strategy at the moment.   On Tuesday night, at a meeting of the Tory parliamentary party, Clarke warned Cameron that by talking up immigration so much, he was only helping Ukip. He argued that the public have an ‘insatiable appetite’ for clampdowns on immigration and so the Tories could never match Ukip on this. He said that, instead, the Tories should be talking about their strongest suit, the