Politics

Some of George Osborne’s targets – like balancing the books – are always five years away; he never has to meet them to claim success, as long as he plans to achieve them. But having a falling cash-terms deficit he can be measured on. In March, the OBR forecast that borrowing for 2013-14 would come in just half a billion pounds under last year’s total. It now looks like Osborne will easily meet his target. Public borrowing for September this year was £1 billion lower than for the same month in 2012. For the government’s financial year so far, Osborne has borrowed £6 billion less than at the same point

Yesterday’s agreement between the French state-owned company EDF and the UK Government regarding the ‘strike price’ for the electricity that will be generated by Hinkley C should be welcomed by everybody who cares about our environment, our economy and the security of our energy supplies. It’s taken three political parties, three Prime Ministers and two governments eight years to reach this point. Over this period, David Cameron has gone from espousing an investment-deterring policy of nuclear generation as ‘a last resort’ to welcoming the environmental and economic benefits of the industry in the shape of the deal that should pave the way for the construction of Britain’s first new nuclear

After every reshuffle, sacked ministers choose to tread a number of different paths. Some go rogue, either to the extent that Tim Loughton has since losing his job last year, or at least in publicly criticising their party’s policy, as Jeremy Browne has since being sacked in this year’s round. Others go to ground, receive appreciative applause in the Chamber when they ask very anodyne questions about the local incinerator in their constituency, but don’t bother their former bosses. And a very small number decide to offer some quiet thoughts on how things might be better. Sacked housing minister Mark Prisk seems to have gone down the third route. I

Alas, it looks like the return to third class travel won’t happen. The papers had got terrifically excited about what seemed like a rolling back of 56 years, when British Rail finally ditched its working class fare. The story was on the back of the privatisation of the East Coast Line from Aberdeen to London, for which it seemed at least one of the bidders had envisaged another tier of fares, though it appears the Department of Transport has been thinking along the same lines for the last year. But of course it wouldn’t have happened, a return to third class tickets. At least, not described in that dramatically honest and comprehensible way. What

The Department for Education has just released a statement about free schools, which can be translated as saying: Oi Clegg! Free schools: clue’s in the name. They don’t have to listen to what you or any other politician thinks about the curriculum and they’re as free as private schools to take on staff who have not gone through the QTS teacher training programme. So speculate as much as you like, Cleggy, about the liberties you’d like to extinguish after 2015. The genie of school freedom is out of the bottle and won’t be put back in under this government. (My understanding is that David Laws is at one with Michael

After Nick Clegg decided to have a grump about free schools in a paper whose own polling suggests they are popular with the public (more on this from Fraser), the Education department has hit back, reminding those who are frightened of that over-used word ‘ideology’ just what the big idea behind free schools really is: ‘Free schools are raising standards and giving parents more choice. They are run by teachers – not local bureaucrats or Westminster politicians – and are free to set their own curriculum, decide how they spend their money and employ who they think are the best people for the job. This Government is not going to