I was expecting drama when the Labour leadership circus called at Newsnight yesterday. Alas, the show whimpered and wheezed to a halt. A contest to determine the party’s future continues to gaze into the past. Assessing failure is essential to renewal, but the candidates are yet to offer anything substantively new. Ed Balls and
Alistair Darling has just forced George Osborne to the dispatch box to explain the regulatory measures that he will announce at Mansion House later today. Osborne confirms that some powers will return to the Bank of England and that an independent commission, under Sir John Vickers, will take into account competing views on capital, leverage
Stay tuned for coverage from 12:00 12:03: Cameron pays tribute to the 3 soldiers killed in Afghanistan this week. 12:04: Tory backbencher Phillip Davies opens proceedings by calling for prisoners to be denied access to Sky TV. Cameron’s response is true blue: too many prisoners, too many of them in Britain illegally and not enough
With ill-repressed horror, James Macintyre reports that the remnants of New Labour fear that Diane Abbott might win the Labour leadership, courtesy of the preferential vote. Mildly amusing I suppose. If Ed Balls would be a catastrophe of Footian proportions as leader what would Abbott be? There are no historical parallels. I can’t see
David Cameron has just told the House of Commons: ‘There is no doubt, there is no equivalence. The events of the 20th January were in no way justified…You do not honour the British army by excusing the unjustifiable.’ He apologised for the atrocity and the Wigery report. According to Lord Saville, there was no conspiracy
Simon Hughes is an experienced campaigner, whose reputation is deservedly blemished by a handful of duplicities – Peter Tatchell, denying a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and the like. Hughes has just appeared on the Daily Politics and, very subtly, split the Lib Dems from the Tories. It was very simple: the Tories are responsible
Theresa May has halted the national database of adults who come into contact with children. The innocent and law abiding majority can now volunteer without having to complete an extensive anti-pervert course – a heavy-handed and expensive bureaucratic requirement, typical of New Labour’s ‘nannying’ days. May acknowledges that acquiring the ‘Not A Known Pervert Badge’
Building on a peace process of compromises, Tony Blair called the Bloody Sunday inquiry to placate nationalists in Northern Ireland. But I wonder if he ever intended its findings to be published? The Saville Report was only ever going to re-open old wounds. With the greatest respect to Lord Saville, who is a distinguished lawyer,
David Cameron’s address to the House contained no surprises. NATO and its allies are 6 months into a strategy to stabilise Afghanistan. All sides of the House were agreed that Britain should fulfil its commitments, but remain in Afghanistan not a day longer than necessary. That date is unknown. Like Blair and Brown before him,
Life has imitated art – or Jilly Cooper in this case. The former chief executive of the National Pony Club, Caroline Nokes MP, 37, has been having a three year affair with a Tory toy boy, Councillor James Dinsdale, 27. Theirs was an affair of hotel-room assignations and steamy conference meetings – Bournemouth has little
Sir Jock Stirrup’s early departure was one of the worst kept secrets in Westminster. But the ‘resignation’ could have been better handled. The coalition has created a lame duck in Stirrup. And, rightly, Con Coughlin asks why Stirrup is overseeing the strategic defence review if he was sufficiently inept as CDS? It makes no sense,
As Fraser observed at the weekend, Alistair Darling has a point: it is not as bad as was feared. The new Office for Budget Responsibility agrees, reducing estimated public borrowing to £155bn 2010/11. Still, it’s hardly a picnic is it? And I wonder what response Darling will get if he presses Cameron and Osborne for
The Office for Budget Responsibility is expected to downgrade the previous government’s growth forecasts. Alistair Darling’s rosy prediction that the economy would grow by 3-3.5 percent in 2011 will be replaced by a conservative estimate of 2-2.5 percent, in line with other independent forecasters. Also, according to the Guardian, the OBR will ‘trim’ the Treasury’s
The Sunday Mirror contains a warning about the ‘mad axeman George Osborne’. It is terrifying read – a grim vision of future economic misery, a Dickensian catalogue of poverty, worklessness and social breakdown. The Mirror has attributed the piece to Danny Blanchflower, the legendary centre half and captain of Tottenham Hotspur’s 1961 double winning team who died in 1993.
Sweet news for David Cameron in today’s Sunday Times YouGov poll, which you can read here: the Tories have broken the 40 percent barrier for the first time since the first leaders’ debate. As the senior partners, the coalition was always going to suit the Conservatives more than the Liberal Democrats. Sure enough, the Liberal
Lord Tebbit poses the question on his latest blog, pointing out that Nick Clegg campaigned against Gary McKinnon’s extradition, and urged the government ‘to do the right thing’. Well, now he can and it would be a popular decision in the current circumstances. The US-UK extradition treaty should be unacceptable to any government that
Alistair Darling is about to retire to the backbenches, though he stresses (and hopes) that it’s a brief stint in obscurity. ‘I get bored,’ he tells the Guardian in an interview today. Darling is remarkable. He emerged from 13 years in cabinet and a hellish tenure as Chancellor with his reputation enhanced. There were rumours
I thought that Ed Balls would be a natural for opposition politics. But I’ve been struck by the naivety of some of his recent interventions – notably the Duffy-wooing immigration proposal. As James has argued, Balls’ plan to limit freedom of movement within the EU ia classic opposition politics. They are eye-catching, populist and but
Andrew Neil interviews Peter Hain for this week’s BBC Straight Talk. Mastering the obvious, Hain argues that Duffygate cost Labour dear: ‘PH: The damaging incident of course was the Duffygate incident. AN: In Rochdale, the old aged pensioner? PH: In Rochdale, and that had a palpable effect. I think we were just beginning to get
ConservativeHome conducted a poll into prominent, right-wing Tory backbenchers. Unsurprisingly, David Davis topped the poll. 70 percent of respondents hold that David Davis represents their views and 54 percent believe he articulates those views effectively. John Redwood and Daniel Hannan were some way behind as DD’s closest rivals. Davis’s chief weapon is communication. Plain speaking