Politics

Today must count as one of the most encouraging days for the centre right in British politics in recent times. Labour’s apparent abandonment of universal child benefit is a massive blow to the 1945 settlement. It is akin in significance to when Labour began to accept the privatisations of the Thatcher era. Now, there’s no intellectual difference between declaring that better off pensioners won’t receive winter fuel payments and that better off mothers won’t receive child benefit. But in symbolic terms, the difference is huge. The winter fuel payment is a recent addition to the welfare state, introduced by the last Labour government. It is not fundamental to it. By

listen to ‘PMQs: David Cameron’s attack on Miliband’s U-turns’ on Audioboo

Until now, television coverage of Scotland’s independence referendum has largely been confined to news bulletins and specialist, late night, political programmes unwatched by most of the general public. In that sense, then, the campaign has hardly actually begun. It has not yet found a mass audience. But it will and moving the campaign to prime-time will change it too. That process began last night as STV broadcast the first episode of a three part documentary titled Road to Referendum (viewers in England can watch it here). It offered a potted political and social history of Scotland from 1945 to 1974. (The next episode will focus on the Thatcher Dragon and

David Cameron’s Commons statement today contained two blunt warnings. In a significant escalation of the argument over communications data, he warned that ‘we will suffer’ if we don’t make progress on the matter. He also declared that not intervening in Syria could boost extremism and mean that the situation there becomes a ‘tragedy for us too’. On communications data, I suspect that there’s a limit to how much progress he can make with his coalition partners. The vibe from the Clegg camp is that they have no desire to back down on this issue and feel that many of their critics are being opportunistic post Woolwich. However, it was Cameron’s

This morning, the government’s plans for a register of lobbyists were ‘ongoing’. This afternoon, they’re well on their way to becoming law. Number 10 has announced that it will be bringing forward a lobbying bill after all, and before the summer recess. Next time we hear the word ‘ongoing’, perhaps we won’t all be so cynical about a bill’s trajectory. Ministers have clearly decided to use a scandal about lobbying to crack down on the influence that trade unions hold over the Labour party, which is a non-sequitur. The weekend’s allegations were about MPs and peers behaving badly, not trade union influence, and the government may find that its desire

Ed Balls’s speech today is significant for two reasons. First, it implied that a Labour government in 2015 would not spend more on current spending. But, rather, it would borrow more to fund higher capital spending—what Gordon Brown used to calling ‘borrowing to invest’. This, I take it, means that a 2015 Labour government wouldn’t introduce the five point plan for the economy that Balls has previously outlined. The second was the announcement that Labour would stop winter fuel payments to higher and top rate taxpayers. This will save about a £100 million a year, which is hardly enough to give Labour a reputation for fiscal rectitude. But it does