Politics

The striking thing about the phone hacking debate is that Ed Miliband is sitting on the Labour front bench, a statement of how seriously the Labour leader is now taking this issue. Miliband nodded vigorously when Chris Bryant declared that if Rebekah Brooks had a single shred of decency she would resign. Dominic Grieve is currently replying for the government and is taking a consensual line. I suspect that Grieve, unlike many ministers, has no great love for News International. His career has never recovered from his clashing, when Shadow Home Secretary, with Rebekah Brooks over how the tabloids report crime. It is said that from that day on, Andy

The political plates on phone hacking are shifting rapidly. The story has now ‘gone mainstream’ following the accusations about how the phones of Milly Dowler and the parents of the Soham victims may have been hacked.  Politicians are racing to catch up. Ed Miliband is rapidly moving into a more robust position. The Labour leadership doesn’t want to appear vindictive, to turn this into Labour v. Murdoch. But they are now prepared to openly question the future of Rebekah Brooks and Ed Miliband’s language this evening about how ‘it is up to senior executives at the News of the World and News International to start taking responsibility for criminal activities

Say what you like about Jose Manuel Barroso, he’s a wily old card. The European Commission president makes public demands for Britain to surrender its rebate in European Union membership fees. The government refuses. Then, hey presto! Headlines suggesting that Brussels has been seen off. “Brussels bribe to buy off UK rebate,” says the Daily Mail. “Britain’s rebate is fully justified and we are not going to give way on it,” a Treasury spokesman tells the media. The quotation is true, Barroso did indeed offer £23 billion to tweak the UK funding formula, and a short-termist like Gordon Brown might have accepted. But the battle for Britain’s EU spending was

The government has stuck to its guns on overseas aid, promising to donate 0.7 per cent of our national income to other countries. In the Chancellor’s words, the government will not balance the books on backs of the world’s poorest people. In fact, as the criticism of the policy was at its highest the Prime Minster hosted a development summit in London and pledged £814m to help vaccinate children around the world against preventable diseases like pneumonia. On this issue, David Cameron does not seem for turning — however many letters he receives from the Defence Secretary.   But Liam Fox is not alone. A slew of recent polls show

The news, via a leaked letter, that Boris Johnson now opposes high-speed rail will come as little surprise to the government. Boris has been moving to this position for quite some time and the Department for Transport resigned itself to the mayor coming out against the scheme earlier this week. Recently, one of Boris’ senior aides visited the Department for Transport and said that the mayor would only support the scheme if there was an additional tube line from Euston as part of it. But when the Department for Transport pushed for details of where this line would go to, and how it would be engineered it became apparent that