Politics

Ed Miliband’s housebuilding announcement today is rather a re-heated announcement of his conference pledges on housing. Eric Pickles has already set out on Coffee House his belief that these new ideas are ‘more of the same high-tax and top-down policies that led to their housing boom and bust’. The announcement certainly allows for a bit of a knockabout between the two parties, neither of which has much to boast about when it comes to housing, but there’s one point that’s worth noting about the Labour leader’s announcement today. Over the past few months, the party’s Shadow Communities and Local Government Secretary Hilary Benn and policy review chief Jon Cruddas have

Now that the economy is recovering and George Osborne has overtaken Ed Balls in the polls for having the best economic policies, he may be forgiven for wondering if wider rehabilitation is next. The Chancellor’s allies have long seen him as the man who will succeed David Cameron, perhaps in 2018, and imagine that his problem — looking too young — will remedy itself and that his personal popularity will recover along with the economy. Today’s polls suggest this isn’t happening – at least, not yet. While the Chancellor’s professional reputation is recovering from the omnishambolic 2012 budget his personal reputation is still pretty low. In today’s Independent on Sunday,

At last week’s Spectator energy conference Michael Fallon appeared to steer government policy away from green ideology and in a more business and consumer-friendly direction.   But there was to  be a nasty sting in the tail.   Shortly afterwards Ed Davey’s Department for Energy and Climate Change  changed the rules on something called Final Investment Decision (FID) enabling.   The direct result is that the UK could lose a Yorkshire power station which is responsible for generating 4% of the country’s electricity.    Given that the reserve margin between maximum generating output and peak demand is projected to fall to just 2 per cent in the winter of 2015/16,

David Cameron’s declaration that prisoners “damn well shouldn’t” have the right to vote is a reminder that this issue hasn’t gone away. Cameron was emphatic that the final verdict on this question should rest with the British parliament not the European Court of Human Rights. But this is not the current situation as Cameron admitted with his line that “we need to clip [the court’s] wings”. But it is hard to see how Cameron can do that while keeping Britain under the jurisdiction of the court. The attempt to reform the court that Ken Clarke launched as Justice Secretary didn’t get very far. So, it is hard to see what

In Dublin, where I am writing this column, people are watching the Scottish referendum campaign more closely than in London. Despite the polls, they almost expect a Yes vote, but most do not want one. People fear that Yes would weaken the UK and therefore make it a less useful ally for Ireland in the EU. They also think that an independent Scotland might overtake Ireland as a cute little place for foreign investors who like the combination of kilts, bagpipes and general Celtic carry-on with tax breaks and commercial access to the Anglosphere. Finally, they worry that Scottish independence would reopen the Irish question. At present, the Republic enjoys