Politics

Nick Clegg used his monthly press conference this afternoon to deliver a strongly worded attacked on Labour over its energy price freeze and lengthy, unsolicited defence of what the government is doing to tackle the cost of living. There were some mildly interesting points from the Deputy Prime Minister on energy bills, as he insisted repeatedly that he was a ‘pragmatist’ about how the money for low income and vulnerable households is raised and that talks over how some green and social taxes and levies could be removed from fuel bills were going to continue between now and the Autumn Statement. He also hit back at sacked Lib Dem Minister

Oh dear. As I explained yesterday, the most likely thing the Coalition parties could do to defuse Tristram Hunt’s troublemaking teaching qualifications debate this afternoon would be to table an amendment to the Labour motion which acknowledges the differences that both sides have, while supporting current government progress on education reform. This was the amendment that ministers came up with, signed by David Cameron, Nick Clegg, Michael Gove and David Laws: Line 1, leave out from ‘House’ to end and add ‘notes that this Coalition Government is raising the quality of teaching by quadrupling Teach First, increasing bursaries to attract top graduates into teaching, training more teachers in the classroom

Yesterday marked the first reasonably good day that agitators for HS2 have had in a while. Northern business leaders started the day with a call to David Cameron to hold firm on the project, followed by Labour leader of Birmingham City Council Sir Albert Bore warning Labour of ‘protracted public conflict’ in the run-up to the general election if it continued to ‘put out such a negative message on HS2’. This morning’s Guardian story that Labour will support HS2 provided the project’s chairman Sir David Higgins is given the power to bring down its costs appears to be damage limitation. But party sources are today rowing back from that line,

A select committee meeting with the Big Six firms would attract attention in any year when the companies had announced such eye-watering price rises. But it is the political frisson added by Ed Miliband’s energy price freeze pledge that makes this afternoon’s hearing quite so interesting. Labour had a swing in its step anyway as it feels it has successfully spooked the Coalition parties, but it carried out private polling last week, seen first by Coffee House, that underlined this. 70% of voters surveyed by YouGov for Labour thought the government should introduce a price freeze, with 17% rejecting it. When asked whether the the freeze was workable, 68% said

Alistair Campbell began his career as a journalist. He started working for The Daily Mirror in 1982 and then moved onto Today, a former British leftwing tabloid. In 1994 Tony Blair asked him to become his press secretary, and Campbell worked on Labour’s media campaign, where he helped them achieve a landslide victory in 1997. That same year he became both the Prime Minister’s Chief Press Secretary and Official Spokesman. In Labour’s second term he took on the role of Director of Communications for the party. Campbell has just published The Irish Diaries (1994-2003). The book describes the various ups and downs of the Northern Ireland peace process over a

Ministers’ attention is now firmly focused on arguing that to abandon HS2 would be a sign that Labour is ‘playing politics with prosperity’, as Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin is set to say later today, or ‘abandoning the North’. Yesterday the Prime Minister slipped in a joke about Ed Balls being absent from the Commons because he was trying to work out what his party’s policy should be on the new line. Today Julian Smith is batting for CCHQ, predicting that ‘if Labour oppose HS2 they’ll be dismissing the long-term future of the country for a short-term political gamble’. As James explained last night, this is all part of an attempt