Politics

Since Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, few critics have been more persistent than Louise Mensch. The former Tory MP — and Heat Street journalist — has regularly become the ire of Trump supporters over her reports and theories relating to the relationship between the new leader of the free world and Russia. Today Mensch appeared on the Sunday Politics to discuss her claims. Alas, when asked by Andrew Neil what evidence she had to prove that Trump’s team were complicit with the Russians, Mensch appeared to come up short: LM: There’s a mound of evidence. You could start with him saying ‘hey Russia, if you’re listening

Throughout David Cameron and George Osborne’s six-year double act, we seldom heard of serious arguments between them. Both were keen to avoid a repeat of the Blair-Brown psychodrama and prided themselves on their indivisibility. Same with their respective teams. You would never pick up the Sunday papers and read the sort of No. 10 vs No. 11 insults that we see this morning. The Sunday Telegraph splashes on ‘Cabinet war over Budget shambles’ and describes how even the Cabinet were not told that Philip Hammond was about to break their manifesto commitment not to raise National Insurance. Most of the Cabinet is hopping mad: one member last week told me that Hammond’s breaking

You might argue that the self-employed enjoy less security than the employed, so it’s fair they contribute less; you might argue that the ‘sharing economy’ is a nifty pocket-money source for hard-pressed families, and that tax grabs will swiftly kill it. But revenue-starved Chancellor Hammond will retort that all income and commerce, however novel in form, must be taxed unless specifically exempted, otherwise government can’t make ends meet: tax should keep pace with changing patterns of life and technology. Thus Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently proposed that if robots are replacing humans in business, then companies operating robots should pay income tax on their behalf. Back in 1991, Chancellor Norman

I’m very sceptical of the idea that the younger generation are more conservative than their elders, and that this makes conservatism somehow cool, which it isn’t. There have been times where the kids are more reactionary than their parents but generally only as a result of religious movements – and Britain is as atheistic as can be. Young Brits are very liberal and cosmopolitan, even compared to their peers in other European countries. In polls they express low levels of pride in their country and an unwillingness to fight in any theoretical war. The Brexit vote, and the big gap between old and young, showed just how liberal the young are.

Philip Hammond is under pressure over his National Insurance contributions hike. More than a dozen Tory MPs have so far criticised the plans and Downing Street has refused to rule out a rethink. But the Chancellor does still have some allies; the IFS has just thrown its weight behind the plans. Here’s what its director, Paul Johnson, had to say: ‘Spring Budgets seem to be going out with something of a whimper. Yesterday’s was one of the smallest I can remember in pretty much every dimension – number of policies, scale of policies and size of fiscal impact. I’m not complaining, mind. There will be another Budget in November and the whole

As Philip Hammond faces a slew of negative headlines and fields accusations that he is a liar over his decision to backtrack on a 2015 Tory manifesto pledge and raise National Insurance for the self-employed, the Chancellor has been thrown a lifeline by the Institute of Fiscal Studies. At today’s IFS Budget briefing, Paul Johnson offered his verdict on Hammond’s first Budget. While he raised concerns about the government’s sluggish plan to balance the books (warning that it could be delayed past 2025), he welcomed the controversial NIC raise as ‘baby steps in the right direction’: ‘A tax system which charges thousands of pounds more in tax for employees doing the same job