Tonight’s another very important night for the Republican presidential hopefuls, with primaries in Arizona and Michigan. Mitt Romney seems assured of a decent win in the former, where the latest two polls put him 16-17 points ahead of Rick Santorum. But Michigan is looking incredibly close — with the poll results of the last two
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgNJBdTaKE8 The Republican primary is dragging on longer than Mitt Romney had hoped — and it’s hurting him. His poll ratings have begun to plummet, and his war chest is feeling the pain too. In January, he spent a whopping $18.8m while raising just $6.5m. His campaign still has $7.7m ‘cash on hand’, but you
Will there be further changes to the Health and Social Care Bill? Liberal Democrat President Tim Farron certainly wants some, as he told ITV’s Party People last night: ‘If the new competition introduced through this Bill is removed, then I think it’s better on the books than it is off it… What I want is
With all these tax cut suggestions kicking about — and with the British economy desperately in need of some oomph — it’s worth asking: which would help growth the most? It’s not of course the only consideration, but it is clearly an important one as we struggle to find our way out of recession.
On the Today Programme this morning, Employment Minister Chris Grayling defended the government’s Work Experience programme in light of the recent controversies around it. Here’s a full transcript of the interview: Evan Davis: Well how can work experience get such a bad name? A string of high profile companies have pulled out of one government
Nick Clegg, Ed Balls, Liam Fox, David Davis, the Centre for Policy Studies, the Centre for Social Justice and the Sun. It seems almost everyone thinks George Osborne should cut taxes in his Budget next month — the only disagreements are over how. Here’s a quick guide to the main proposals so far: There will
Set your TiVos. At 6.55 tomorrow evening, BBC1 will air the Liberal Democrats’ latest party political broadcast. For those of you who can’t wait, here’s a sneak preview: In the video, Nick Clegg describes his proposed increase in the income tax personal allowance as ‘a £700 tax cut for ordinary working people — that’s an
The rejuvenation of Barack Obama’s re-election hopes continues apace. He’s added seven points to his approval rating since November, improving it from the low 40s to around 50 per cent now. After months of polling neck-and-neck with Mitt Romney, he now boasts a six point lead. Just four months ago, the bookies thought he was
The Health Secretary confronted by former Unison rep June Hautot as he arrived for this afternoon’s NHS summit at No.10:
The run-up to last year’s Budget was all about fuel duty. This year it’ll be all about direct taxes. The Lib Dems are determined to put their manifesto pledge of raising the income tax personal allowance to £10,000 front and centre. They already managed to turn this promise into government policy in the Coalition Agreement,
William Hague has gazed into his Middle Eastern crystal ball and doesn’t like what he sees. In an interview in today’s Telegraph, he says of Iran: ‘It is a crisis coming down the tracks, because they are clearly continuing their nuclear weapons programme… If they obtain nuclear weapons capability, then I think other nations across
The Times has a fascinating interview (£) with former Soviet leader, Nobel Laureate and two-time Man of the Year Mikhail Gorbachev. He strikes an optimistic tone about the future of democracy in Russia, praising the ‘Moscow Spring’ protesters and saying ‘This is the right moment to start creating as part of this new situation a
Having reclaimed the mantle of ‘Anti-Romney in Chief’, Rick Santorum is now surging in the polls. He’s moved into a narrow lead at the national level and – more importantly – looks likely to win two of the next big states on the primary calendar: Michigan and Ohio. Of course, that makes him the new target
The employment level has risen since the election, according to today’s figures — albeit only slightly, from 29.0m to 29.1m. But unemployment’s up too: from 2.46m to 2.67m. So how come we’ve seen both more jobs and lengthening dole queues? Well, that’s because the ‘economically active’ population (people who are in work or ‘have been
Yesterday, Barack Obama set out his budget for ‘Fiscal Year 2013’ – that is, for the year beginning October 2012 (in the US, the fiscal year runs from October to September, rather than April to March as it does here). Of course, the federal budget has to be passed by both houses of Congress before being signed
This evening, we’ve dug out a fun piece from 2000, in which Matthew Parris gives an A-to-Z of the right-wing alternative to Political Correctness: Political Soundness. A lexicon of conservative cant, Matthew Parris, 19 February 2000 Are you politically sound? Are you sound on field sports, sound on the countryside, sound on immigration? Are you sound
Rick Santorum’s surprise clean-sweep of three states on Tuesday certainly suggests that the battle for this year’s Republican nomination will go on a fair bit longer than looked likely after Mitt Romney’s win in Florida a week earlier. But it doesn’t change the fact that Romney will, most likely, emerge the winner. But where it
It seems most of the public agrees with the need to improve our schools. A YouGov poll out this morning shows that 53 per cent think education standards have deteriorated over the past 10 years, while only 12 per cent think they’ve got better. 48 per cent think exams are too easy; just 28 per
By now, we’re all used to waking up to newspaper columns describing Ed Miliband’s flaws and proclaiming him unfit to lead the Labour party. But today, it’s David Miliband who’s under fire in two articles – one by Roy Hattersley in the Guardian and the other by Matthew Norman in the Telegraph. They’re both in
A very useful contribution from Lord Ashcroft this morning, in the form of a poll he’s commissioned on Scottish independence. What sets Ashcroft’s poll apart from previous surveys is that he asks three different questions to three different sets of around 1,000 Scots. The first is the question Alex Salmond wants on the ballot
