Politics

As Britain’s train lines suffer in the wake of St Jude, the political storm over high speed rail continues to rage. The government and Labour are playing footsie with each other. Labour’s somewhat left-field idea to re-open the Grand Central Railway — at an estimated cost of £6 billion, compared to £43 billion for HS2 — has been matched by a fear-mongering government statements about the implications of not building a high speed rail line. The coalition’s ‘updated business case’ claims that, if Britain did not pursue the high-speed solution, a ‘patch-and-mend job’ would be necessary, which would be almost as expensive and mean 14 years of weekend closures. It

The good news for the Cameroons on energy is that it looks like they’ll get an agreement by the Autumn Statement to take at least some of the green levies off energy bill. The bad news is that this means that the debate sparked by Ed Miliband’s pledge to freeze energy prices for 20 months if elected is going to continue until, at least, December 4th. An agreement between Cameron and Clegg on energy bills does now appear to be close. The Lib Dem anger at Cameron using PMQs to try and bounce them into a set of concessions has been replaced by a fast-moving negotiation. As one senior Number

It is a shame that we will be losing Jack Straw at the next election. He has just announced his attention to stand down from a seat he has occupied for more than 30 years. I always rather liked him. He seemed – you know – sort of human, and his instincts were usually right, certainly over Iraq, even if he did cave in. So, we might add, did the majority of the country cave, at the time, under that welter of disinformation. He was misled as everybody was. He once came into the Today prog when I was still editor and, in the Green Room, I mentioned to him

In the days before Ed Miliband went all Marxist/brave on energy (delete as tribally appropriate), the debate around energy was more about fracking than it was about freezes. Shale gas has taken a back seat while ministers wonder what on earth they can do about bills to take the wind out of the Labour leader’s sails. But the political problems haven’t gone away. The debate is still about whether the incentives on offer are enough for local communities to accept fracking pads in their area. MPs whose constituencies sit atop the Bowland Shale don’t think the government is offering enough, and have continued to tell the Prime Minister that. He

The Lib Dems are cross this afternoon about David Cameron’s PMQs announcements on cutting back on green taxes in energy bills. They are mainly cross because they were only given 30 minutes’ notice of the new policy before MPs crowded into the Chamber for the session, and are insisting that ‘nothing concrete has been agreed’. A source close to Nick Clegg told Coffee House; ‘Generally you would hope that an announcement of government policy would not be handled in this way. There was a quad discussion about this but nothing detailed was put forward and nothing concrete has been agreed.’ The source dismissed briefings from Tory sources that ‘one way

Is Boris trying to imitate David Cameron? The Mayor of London usually likes to leave the Prime Minister wriggling awkwardly by stealing any show going, but today Boris seemed to be taking a leaf out of his rival’s book. Both men have recently fessed up to needing glasses, and at his select committee appearance today, the Mayor seemed to be emulating Cameron by awkwardly taking his new eyewear on and off throughout the session.