Politics

Frantic deal-making over the weekend appears to have clinched a $2.4 trillion US debt ceiling deal, with $900 billion in initial spending cuts and the rest to be determined by a committee over the autumn. The White House has the official statement here.  There’s still a chance the deal will fail in the House, but Republicans are sounding bullish. And Democrats will probably fall into line — not the least because the expiration of the Bush tax cuts over the next couple years could balance the current ‘all-cuts’ proposal.   Of course, negotiations could breakdown over the next 48 hours, but it’s now clear that, despite their rhetoric, US politicians

At last, signs that Washington’s lawmakers may have scrabbled together a debt deal after all. According to the overnight wires, the White House and Congressional leaders have alighted on a package that would raise the ceiling by $2.4 trillion, so long as the deficit is reduced by at least the same amount over the next ten years. There are more details here, but the key claim is that around $1.2 trillion of immediate spending cuts have already been agreed upon, with a Congressional committee to recommend further deficit reduction measures by the end of November. And although these proposals will still have to pass through the corridors of Congress, leaders

Are the seeping knife wounds healing at last? This morning’s Guardian reveals that Ed Miliband has offered his older brother a role as Labour’s “unofficial ambassador on university and college campuses”, and that David Miliband has accepted. Although party sources tell the paper that “this should not be seen as a sign that [MiliD] is being lined up for an early shadow cabinet return,” it surely is a sign that the two brothers are repairing their damaged relationship. From barely speaking to each other to mutually preaching the Labour gospel to a bunch of students. It’s progress.   Putting aside the fraternal aspects of the story, it is also an

Westminster, today, is all a-titter about an anecdote contained within this FT article about Steve Hilton. It is, it must be said, a good ‘un: “Mr Hilton’s crusade against employment legislation also saw him suggest that Mr Cameron just ignore European labour regulations on temporary workers, prompting an exasperated exchange with Jeremy Heywood, Downing Street’s permanent secretary. ‘Steve asked why the PM had to obey the law,’ said one Whitehall insider of a meeting in March to discuss the government’s growth strategy. ‘Jeremy had to explain that if David Cameron breaks the law he could be put in prison.'” From there on in, the article rattles through some of Hilton’s

Aside from Boris’s exhortations to George Osborne, one of the most ear-catching lines of the day has been uttered by Jeremy Hunt. “I think the relationships between politicians and the media got too cosy,” said the culture secretary on Radio 5 this morning. He’s certainly not the first to make the point, but he is one of the most prominent Conservatives to do so. The words, I suspect, were chosen to cool the heat rising from yesterday’s lists of meetings between ministers and media organisations. Hunt himself, it was revealed, has met seven times with News Corp types since the general election. Hunt’s admission also opens the prospect of a

What a difference four months of air sorties make. Back in the early days of the Libya intervention, David Cameron was unequivocal when it came to Muammar Gaddafi remaining in the country: there was “no future” for the dictator within its borders, he said. But now, on top of comments by William Hague yesterday, the Prime Minister is thought to be softening his stance. As the Independent says today, he has decided that “the time has come to find a way out of the conflict and back a French proposal to allow Gaddafi to stay in the country as part of a negotiated settlement with rebel forces.” So, from no

It has mostly been a weekend of terrible and grisly news, especially with the details emerging from Norway about Anders Behring Breivik and his murderous brand of politics. But there was also, behind it all, a slight rebalancing of the British political debate. After weeks of grandmaster-like focus on the phone hacking scandal, our politicians have started talking about the economy again. With the GDP growth figures for the second quarter of this year due out tomorrow, they’re all trying to get their spin in early. There were a number of intriguing interventions, not least George Osborne’s hint that he will cut “very high tax rates” in his Pre-Budget Report

Andrew Neather of the Evening Standard was — and, for all I know, still is — a decent man. Although he worked as a speech writer for Jack Straw around the turn of the millennium, by the time I knew him he in the late 2000s, he had sensibly decided that bicycling was more interesting than politics. I could never have imagined him at the centre of a political controversy until 2009, when Neather wrote an article that sparked a conspiracy theory. As Joe Murphy, the Standard’s political editor, reported a week later: “Pressure was growing today for an independent inquiry into claims that immigration was encouraged by Labour for