Politics

His apology earlier this week was a reminder of how Cabinet Ministers used to behave. Today’s cock-ups and crises have increased the pressure on the Education Secretary – two schools face cuts despite meeting the government’s criteria. Now Gove has penned a defensive article for the Sunday Express. He writes: ‘Reform is never easy, and certainly not when cash is tight… but school building will not stop under this government.’ Gove is, of course, right. Money is tight. But he must explain why reform is necessary in and of itself, and why his ideas should be adopted. There was an aloofness and arrogance about his performance on Newsnight on Monday, suggesting that Gove believes

John Rentoul, who knows a successful Labour leader when he sees one, is having palpitations about David Miliband’s latest hustings speech. Everyone seems to be in fact. I’ve taken a look, following the Berkeleian principle that if everyone thinks something is important it invariably is. It’s a good speech. At last, one of the Labour leadership contenders has attacked Gordon Brown. Under Gordon Brown, Miliband argues, Labour’s failings, spin and high-handedness intensified. An expression about Sherlock and excrement comes to mind, but the first stage in a party’s renewal is to admit defeat, acknowledge failure and offer contrition. David Miliband has begun that process, which can only serve him well.

Tim Montgomerie reports that the 1922 Committee is to launch its own inquiry into the Tories’ election campaign. This, as I understand it, is in addition to the party’s official inquiry, and therefore suggests that the backbenches want to assert their independence by criticising Steve Hilton and George Osborne’s strategy. After May’s ruptures between Cameron and the backbenches there is a chance that this story could snowball. There is a sense that some of the ’22 haven’t yet buried the hatchet. And the feeling’s mutual. Some Cameroons and modernisers are disdainful – ‘self-indulgent farts’ was how one put it. But the ’22 must assert itself and I welcome this review.

And so this morning’s Office for Budget Responsibility story rumbles on, with various Labour figures questions whether the organisation is as independent as it should be.  The most significant intervention, though, is from the government.  As the FT reports, George Osborne’s Treasury team is hanging onto its ability to select the next head of the OBR. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that the next OBR chief will be a placeman, sympathetic and mouldable to the Tories’ wishes.  In fact, my guess is that Osborne will go out of his way to find an uncontroversial, neutral replacement for Sir Alan Budd.  But with a PoliticsHome poll showing that only 16

“Aspiration” tends to be a convenient word for politicians, in the sense that any policy that they can’t implement now can be glossed over as something they want to do in future. But, if Vince Cable’s interview with the Times is anything to go by, it could become a troublesome word for the coalition. Speaking about the Lib Dem’s election promise to scrap university tuition fees, Cable says that: “It is an aspiration, but we’re highly constrained financially and we have got to try to work out ways of doing it. I’m not Father Christmas.” But nowhere does the coalition agreement say that scrapping tuition fees is an “aspiration”. Instead,