Politics

It’s committee chairmanship season in Westminster, and there are two noteworthy battles. Michael Fallon and Andrew Tyrie are scrapping over the Treasury Select Committee. The FT summarises the pros and cons of both. Fallon, who served as John McFall’s deputy, remains the front-runner, but the cerebral Tyrie has an impeccable record as an economist, committee member and constituency MP – I grew up near Chichester and Tyrie deserves credit for tackling the city’s perennial flooding problems; and, for what it’s worth, he won the Spectator’s backbencher of the year award again last year. I understand that Tyrie has the requisite number of backers, as well as ties with Nigel Lawson,

This brightened the day. Alastair Campbell, courtesy of his complete diaries, on Ed Balls: “Ed Balls spoke drivel, a never-ending collection of words that just ran into each other and became devoid of meaning.”

It’s John Prescott’s birthday – or Lord Prescott, as he will soon be. How odd of JP to don the ermine, given that he is on record saying that he hates titles, flunkery and ‘flooding’ the House of Lords with appointees – a practice in which he and Blair excelled as it happens.  He appeared on the Today programme this morning to defend his lordly person and was emphatically unintelligible. Listen to it; it’s a classic. You know Prescott’s the EU’s environment ‘rapporteur’? Terrifying.   John Humphrys objected to Prescott’s hypocrisy, but if Prescott doesn’t want to retire from public life then he must sit in the Lords. Which is an argument for

There’s something Galsworthian about Danny Alexander, the man of property. A downy press secretary for the Cairngorm National Park bought a south London hovel in 1999, re-designated it his second home in 2005 when he became an MP, and the Bright Young Thing then sold it in 2007 for £300,000. The dashing Cabinet Minister’s recent mortgage claims of £1,100 per month suggest an existence amid more salubrious environs – Volvos, delicatessens and Oxfam. Alexander didn’t cheat his way to Cheam, or wherever he lives. ‘There is no suggestion that Mr Alexander has broken any tax laws,’ opine the authors of this morning’s expenses expose. Alexander was liable for capital Gains Tax courtesy

David Cameron has made his first podcast since becoming Prime Minister. There are a couple of noteworthy points: he didn’t name-check any Lib Dems (a slight if perhaps telling oversight); and he reiterated his call for a ‘transparency revolution’, allying accountable public services with a new style of open politics. The coalition will ‘rip-off the cloak of secrecy… and rebuild public trust in politics.’  Oh the difference a day makes. Recorded on the train down from Yorkshire yesterday, pithy catchphrases such as ‘by the time we’ve finished, they (politicians) will have far, far fewer places to nowhere to hide’ sound a little insensitive today. But I’m nit-picking. It’s an excellent spiel: clear,

Four weeks into the new government and the National Security Council machinery is still being put in place and ministers are still getting read into their briefs. The visit by William Hague, Andrew Mitchell and Liam Fox to Afghanistan was important, despite the brouhaha over the Defence Secretary’s comments. Such a visit was simply not imaginable under the Brown government. On the other hand, insiders say there is no real difference yet from the NSID committee that Gordon Brown created and the National Security Council that David Cameron has convened – except that the latter meets weekly, producing a torrent of tasks for officials. Permanent Secretaries are meeting regularly to