Politics

George Osborne’s pitch at today’s Autumn Statement will be for voters to give the Tories another five years leading the government to finish the job of balancing the books. Today the Prime Minister’s official spokesman summed up the address from the Chancellor that we’ll hear in just over half an hour as ‘an Autumn Statement to stay on course for prosperity’. Presumably we’ll get something a bit snappier than that from Osborne himself. We’re still waiting to see what the political trap is that he appears to be laying for Labour, with no more clarity on that mysterious three-line whip vote on Thursday. There’s a business statement due after the Autumn

Post-war Labour Chancellor Hugh Dalton had to resign for letting slip the contents of his Budget speech before he delivered it. Nowadays, everyone leaks in advance, including PR people. The following press release was received from the Fire Brigades Union at 11 am, giving its ‘reaction’ to a speech which did not start until 12.30: ‘This government is promising more of the same – austerity for workers, so they can cut taxes for the rich. Firefighters want investment in the fire and rescue service, not more cuts. ‘Last winter we saw widespread flooding throughout the country, but still the Westminster government refuses to give the fire and rescue service a

A lot of focus today will be on how Labour would cut the deficit (and perhaps how George Osborne actually plans to get it done rather than just talking about it, given the Item Club warning that deficit reduction will plateau). Ed Balls has been arguing this morning that Labour would ‘balance the books in a fairer way’ but he’s got to show this afternoon when he responds to the Autumn Statement that Labour really can persuade voters to trust the party again on the economy, especially now that he and Ed Miliband rank behind Farage on this matter. But speaking of Farage, today is the first economic statement in

Is it acceptable for writers to sport their political allegiances publicly? In more sensible times you’d hardly need to consider the question since its answer would ordinarily be so bleedin’ obvious. These, of course, are neither sensible nor ordinary times. So it is with the fauxtroversy over whether or not it is acceptable – or, worse, appropriate – for Liz Lochhead to have joined the SNP.  This is a real thing, it seems and yet another example of how politics corrupts most things it touches. Lochhead, you see, is not just a poet she is Scotland’s Makar (or poet laureate) and therefore, god help us, it’s all very different. For some reason. People are

Say what you will about Gordon Brown — and plenty have over the last 24 hours — but there is one achievement even his harshest detractors can not critique: he broke the Oxford mould among modern Prime Ministers. Since the Second World War, Oxford University has produced the majority of Prime Ministers, outstripping the rest of the country’s institutions and even their arch rivals Cambridge. Aside from those who didn’t go to university (John Major, Jim Callaghan and Winston Churchill), Brown has so far been the only non-Oxford PM since 1945 — instead he went to Edinburgh: [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/CSz9t/index.html”] Despite Oxford’s long history of churning out Prime Ministers, it was not always

There is no love lost between UKIP defectors Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless and their old Tory colleagues. Catty Conservative MPs have for some reason nicknamed the Ukip twosome ‘Popeye and Olive Oyl’. Mr S will let you decide which is which.

Labour is very pleased with the amount of attention it garnered for its new private schools policy when Tristram Hunt unveiled it last week. So it was natural that the Shadow Education Secretary used this as his main line of attack at today’s Education Questions. He set the scene first using one of his shadow ministerial team Alison McGovern, who contrasted bankers’ pay rising by 7 per cent on average with a 1 per cent rise for nursery staff. It was clear that Labour was keen for a game of Us vs Them. Hunt then piggybacked onto a question from party colleague Ian Lucas about the public benefit of private

William Hague told the Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year awards last week that he was standing down from the Commons ‘to do some other things I’ve always wanted to do’. So far that seems to consist of expensive after dinner speeches. Accepting his lifetime achievement award at the Savoy, the one time Tory leader finally revealed the secret to how he used to get the better of Tony Blair every week at PMQs. Hague recalled how Tony had two big folders ‘that went from Aardvark at top of the first folder, to Zoology at the bottom of the second, so he could find anything to show how terrible 18 years

‘The biggest, boldest and most far-reaching roads programme for decades’ — or the biggest, boldest marginal constituency programme? George Osborne has magicked up £15 billion for 84 new roads, some 100 overall improvements, totalling 1,300 miles of new lanes across the country. Unsurprisingly for an overtly political chancellor like Osborne, a majority of these roads will benefit marginal constituencies. The Telegraph has figured out all of the MPs who will benefit from the road spending and has calculated as many of 2/3 of the proposed improvements will help marginal constituencies. These are the most marginal Tory seats who will benefit  from George’s marvellous marginal medicine: A34: Nicola Blackwood [datawrapper chart=”http://static.spectator.co.uk/j0UIo/index.html”] £50 million pounds of improvements to