George osborne

The best thing that can be said for David Cameron’s current predicament is that he has been here before. His career has been punctuated by moments when the polls and the pundits have said he was done for. In 2007, with the new Prime Minister Gordon Brown enjoying a honey-moon and considering a snap election, this magazine pictured him on the cover with a noose and the headline ‘Get out of this, Dave’. He did. At times, even he has thought his leadership was over. On election day last year, he spent the early evening rehearsing his resignation speech to his closest aides. Hours later, he was hailing the ‘sweetest

George Osborne has angered Tory MPs today by suggesting a vote to leave the European Union could trigger a series of tax rises. 57 Conservative MPs have signed a letter saying that they would not support such a motion in Parliament in a move which left Osborne flailing during a tetchy interview on the Today programme this morning. So why did the Chancellor run the risk of winding up those on the Tory backbenches? And will it do anything to scare people into backing ‘Remain’? On today’s Coffee House Shots podcast, Isabel Hardman joins Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth, who says: ‘I think the aim of this was to shift

All sides of the Remain campaign are turning their fire on Boris Johnson at the moment. But these attacks are, I argue in The Sun today, a mistake by the Remainers. First, it makes Boris, the most popular politician in the country, the face of the Out campaign when the IN campaign’s strategic aim is to make voters think that Nigel Farage embodies the Out case. Second, it means that the whole referendum is seen through the prism of the Tory leadership. This is not only bad for Tory party unity post-referendum, but also makes it harder for IN campaign to get the support of Labour party voters as it

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. The EU referendum on June 23rd looks set to be one of the most important political moments in a generation. But if Britain does vote out, what would the next 100 days actually be like? The Prime Minister has predicted disastrous consequences, saying Brexit would plant a bomb under the economy. And we’ve been warned that house prices will crash and everything from air fares to ice cream will cost more. So, would Cameron step down straight away and watch the pound tumble?

  Coffee House Shots James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss George Osborne’s performance Abridged transcript of George Osborne’s interview with Andrew Neil. AN: Now you claim the European Union could cause armed conflict if we leave, could put a bomb under our economy if we leave – the Prime Minister’s words: hurt pensioners, collapse house prices. Why are you risking all that with a referendum? GO: Well, I don’t think it is ever a risk in a democracy to ask the people. And all my lifetime this issue of Britain’s membership of the European Union has hung over our economy and our security and I think it’s right that the

This EU referendum is a particularly difficult contest to poll and after the general election we all should be wary of treating them as gospel. But there’s no getting away from the fact that the mood in Westminster—and on the two campaigns—is heavily influenced by the polls. The recent good numbers for Leave have put a string in its step. They have also ensured that Vote Leave’s focus on immigration in the last few days isn’t seen as the last roll of the dice but as an attempt to focus on one of its strongest areas. Interestingly, influential figures on the Remain side privately accept that the referendum appears to

Although George Osborne is currently lagging behind Boris Johnson in favourability polls, he can take heart that an intervention by an unlikely figure could hamper his rival’s leadership appeal in certain Tory circles. Caitlin Moran — the Times columnist who led a 24-hour boycott of Twitter in 2013 — has pledged to run for Parliament if BoJo ever becomes Prime Minister. Yes, Moran, who was one of Russell Brand’s loudest cheerleaders — describing his turn on Question Time as ‘brilliant’ — during the comedian’s ‘revolution’, has her sights set on the Commons if Boris is successful in his leadership bid. Speaking at the Hay Festival, she said that while she prefers to work from the sidelines

To subscribe to The Spectator’s weekly podcast, for free, visit the iTunes store or click here for our RSS feed. Alternatively, you can follow us on SoundCloud. Are David Cameron and George Osborne using the same techniques of deceit deployed by New Labour in the run-up to the Iraq war? In his cover piece this week, Peter Oborne argues that’s just what is happening. He says that in their EU campaign, the Chancellor and Prime Minister have put dirty tricks back at the heart of government. But Matthew Parris in his column says that in politics there’s no point complaining about being lied to. That’s the cry of the bad

If you’ve become fed-up with half-baked Treasury statistics, the start of the purdah period is welcome news. The ban on Government and Civil Service resources being used to put forward the case for ‘remain’, means there will be no more of those. But with ‘remain’ having pushed ahead in the polls over the last few weeks, will this now help level the playing field? Based on how the Government has tried to press home the advantage of using its huge resources right up until the last moment, it seems that there are certainly jitters about that happening. Its rather cheeky report put out yesterday evening which suggested that Brexit would

The one thing that can be said with certainty about what will happen at Westminster post-referendum is that David Cameron will find governing even harder than he does now. His majority is already the thinnest of blue lines and opposition from Tory backbenchers has already forced the government to u-turn on a host of policies. This problem will get even worse after the referendum. There are bound to be some irreconcilable Tory MPs who will take every attempt they can to thwart Cameron and Osborne’s legislative agenda. The result: ‘a zombie parliament‘, in the words of one member of the payroll vote, with hardly any bills being passed. Cameron will,