Politics

Labour is often seen as having presided over the erosion of the British military, squandering money on Cold War equipment and sending under-equipped soldiers to far-away battlefields. But away from the public’s scrutiny an even greater lapse occurred – the nation’s cyberdefences were left undermanned while the threat grew daily. As William Hague will tell the Munich Security Conference: “Along with its numerous benefits, cyberspace has created new means of repression, enabling undemocratic governments to violate the human rights of their citizens. It has opened up new channels for hostile governments to probe our defences and attempt to steal our confidential information or intellectual property. It has promoted fears of

I wish I could tell you that the main topic of conversation in Westminster today is Egypt and the future of the Middle East. But it isn’t. It is those Sally Bercow photos.  But if it wasn’t the picture of the Speaker’s wife naked but for a sheet that MPs were talking about it would be IPSA, the expenses body, following the publication of their claims for September and October. MPs detest IPSA. They believe, with good reason, it to be arrogant and inefficient. So strong is MPs’ opinion on this front, that David Cameron told Tory MPs late last year that if IPSA hadn’t sorted itself out by April,

One yawn every minute. That’s how PMQs felt today. Foreign affairs dominated the session as Ed Miliband and the Prime Minister exchanged lofty words about the Cairo demonstrations and the spread of democracy around the world. Doubtless they felt they struck a suitably elevated tone but to the viewers they came across as a pair of prep school smart-alecs trying to sound like great statesmen disposing of liberated peoples after the fall of empires. Egypt and Afghanistan were both treated to a torrent of high-minded vacuities. David Cameron found the demonstrations ‘incredibly moving.’ Ed Miliband was impressed by the sight of ‘hundreds of thousands of people facing overwhelming odds to

Yesterday’s polls may seem like yesterday’s news – but it’s actually worth returning to YouGov’s effort from, erm, yesterday. It contained some distinctive questions, and results, all set around the left-right spectrum. How left wing is the Labour party? How right wing is David Cameron? That sort of thing. Of course, as Anthony Wells has already pointed out, the old labels of “left” and “right” are of decreasing relevance nowadays. But they do still tell us something about popular perceptions of the parties and their leaders. So here are the top line YouGov results in graph form:   From which, a few points stand out: Ed Miliband is regarded as

If the AV referendum is to take place on the 5th of May, the legislation paving the way for it needs to have passed by the 16th of February. But this bill is currently being held up in the Lords where Labour peers are objecting to the ‘Tory part’ of the bill which reduces the number of MPs and equalises constituency sizes. The coalition does not have a majority in the Lords, so all the talk of simply ramming the bill through was always slightly unrealistic. But the coalition’s concession that there can be public inquiries into the boundary review has created an expectation that Labour might now drop its

So Ed Balls has made his decision. In articles and a TV interview today, he has decided that, instead of apologising for his part in bringing Britain to the state it’s in today, he will deny what he did. It was the consensus that Britain had the biggest deficit in the G7 going into the crisis, because that’s what the facts show. Contrary to Balls’ assertions, Britain ran a structural deficit for the seven years running up to the crisis – the figures are right there in Labour’s own Budget red books. And it’s the consensus that Labour left the biggest deficit since the war, since it’s a fact. Given