Politics

It was back to business as usual at PMQs today. Gone was Miliband’s effort to raise the tone, which Cameron ruthlessly exploited last week, to be replaced by an old-fashioned, ding-dong with a bit of class war thrown in. The result: Labour MPs leaving the chamber in far better heart than they did last week. listen to ‘PMQs: Cameron and Miliband – Labour is the ‘anti-jobs, anti-business, anti-growth party’’ on Audioboo

Labour will not support Dominic Raab’s Immigration Bill amendment on the deportation of foreign criminals. A party source tells me that ‘if the government are saying that something is illegal, then we can’t support it’. Which will come as a relief to the whips, given the level of support for the proposal. I also hear that the Tory whips seriously intend that the amendment never reaches a vote in the first place, using the plethora of government amendments and ministers talking until the time limit on debate for the legislation is reached. This will cause uproar, but well-placed sources tell me the whips are determined that this amendment is not

Chuckle not, it exists. Wealthy Nation, a new grouplet formed by the eminent historian Michael Fry, is making the case that Scotland can be an admirably prosperous little country after independence provided, that is, she casts off the soft-left Caledonian consensus that remains wearily orthodox thinking north of the Tweed and Solway. Fry, whose new history of Scotland from Waterloo to Mons I commend to you without reservation, set out his case in The Scotsman earlier this month. If Scotland is to be free, she must be rich and she will not be rich unless her politics moves to the right. As he put it: On blogs and websites I

You just knew Lembit would make an appearance sooner or later, didn’t you? I only noticed this morning, reading back through some of the weekend papers I’d missed. Anyway, as the Rennard scandal spreads ever wider within the Liberal Democrats, step forward minxy Hannah Thompson, a former ’schoolgirl activist’. According to Hannah, when she was seventeen Lembit Opik somehow acquired one of her shoes and, referring to her as ‘Cinderella’, wouldn’t give it back until she kissed him. Who’d a thunk it. On another occasion he also invited the young lady to share a mudbath with him. Who could resist that? A mudbath with Lembit? And also – of course

‘[T]he old tax havens have no place in this new world. We now call on all countries to apply international standards,’ said Gordon Brown back in 2009 when he was prime minister. Mr Steerpike only mentions this because Brown’s philanthropist wife Sarah has made an odd choice of home for her charity. Sarah Brown is the founder and Executive Chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education – a charitable organisation whose members include heavyweights such as Accenture, Chevron and Tata. The organisation admirably aims to bring ‘the business community together to accelerate progress in delivering quality education for all of the world’s children and youth.’ But the GBCfE is based

Gurus are dangerous beasts in politics mainly because they tend to say awkward things (something Ed Miliband, who has Lord Glasman as his on-off guru, can attest to more than others). But the row over Arnie Graf’s immigration status, sparked by the Sun’s front page today, shows that gurus are dangerous in many, many ways. Like the Church of England discovering it was investing in Wonga while also crusading against it, it’s surprising that the Labour party didn’t think to make sure all was tickety-boo on the immigration status front before launching a tougher strategy in this area. Still, it has given the Conservative attack machine something to do, with