Politics

David Cameron’s speech today was, in many respects, the one he needed to make: the clean-break speech, which trashed Labour’s record on the economy while also outlining how the coalition would deliver us to the sunny uplands. As it happens, it was also quite effective: a blend of policy specifics and punchy rhetoric.  And while we’d heard many of those specifics before – corporation tax cuts, reduced regulation, carbon capture, etc. – they cohered here as they rarely have done before. The most earcatching apsect of the speech, though, was the emphasis Cameron placed on government intervention.  Yes, there was a solid core of small state fundamentals.  But the PM

Wondering why David Laws put in such a convincing performance when defending the government’s cuts at the dispatch box on Wednesday?  This little detail from Allegra Stratton’s excellent profile of him might help explain: “A friend confirmed that for the past six months, as the official Lib Dem party line decided on by Vince Cable was no cuts, Laws had been telling friends he believed the markets wouldn’t tolerate it. ‘He has been saying privately the cuts have to start straight after the election,’ they said.”

All kinds of hoohah about last night’s Question Time, for which Downing St refused to put up a panellist because of Alastair Campbell’s involvement.  If he was replaced with a shadow minister, they said, they would happily get involved.  But, as the excutive editor of Question Time explains here, the Beeb wasn’t prepared to go along with that.  So Campbell got to lord it up in front of the cameras. For the reasons outlined by Guido and Iain Dale, it was probably a slight mis-step by the coalition – but not one, in itself, that will have any important rammifications for them or the public.  For while it’s not the

So, three weeks in and Vince Cable has resigned his position of deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats – ostensibly because he will be “too busy” to undertake the non-duties demanded by the post. Do you swallow that? I’m not sure that I do. Meanwhile, David Davis has emerged with guns blazing over the proposed hike in capital gains tax, with a clever statement which roots his objections in traditional Tory terms; don’t punish hard-working middle class people in order to make things easier for the feckless, overweight, shell-suited, Big Mac munching skag addled untermensch (or words to that effect). Mr Davis knows that there are many, many angry and

Point six of ten on the Conservative-Liberal agreement reads as follows: “We will work to promote stability in the Western Balkans.” William Hague will get a chance to show what this means when he joins fellow European foreign ministers at a summit in Sarajevo on 2 June. As I argue in a new brief about Balkan policy, the meeting could not come at a better time. The region is beginning to look dicey once again. Though Balkan countries were asked by the West to proceed along the reform-laden route towards EU accession, which entails reforming their economies, making friends with erstwhile enemies and adjusting their constitutions, there is now uncertainty

So, did Cameron say anything particularly noteworthy during his interview on the Today programme?  In truth, not really.  Most of the answers were of the “let’s wait and see what in the Budget” variety.  The ratio of spending cuts to tax rises: wait and see.  Plans for hiking capital gains tax: wait and see, and so on.   The only answers that weren’t determined by the Budget seemed to be his racing tips for the sports bulletin.  You can hear them here. But that isn’t to say the interview wasn’t revealing.  For much of it, Cameron was quizzed about the objections that David Davis and John Redwood have raised to the

The results of the 1922 elections show that Conservative backbenchers are distinctly right-wing and keen to assert independence. In the race for chairman, Graham Brady — the only man to resign under David Cameron’s leadership on an issue of party policy — romped home by 126 votes to 85. This result suggests that Brady would have beaten Richard Ottaway even if Ministers had been allowed to vote. Brady’s margin of victory suggests that the new intake are an independent bunch as it was the worst kept secret in Westminster that Ottaway was the leadership’s preferred candidate. Indeed, one member of the new intake told me that he thought his colleagues

Graham Brady is the new chairman of 1922 Committee. He beat Richard Ottaway by 126 votes to 85. You can read Fraser’s interview with Brady in last week’s magazine here.

Wags may term them ‘Osborne and Little’, but David Laws is emerging as one of the government’s star performers. Laws was instrumental in constructing the coalition, and now he has the unenviable job of identifying cuts. Being the axeman and taxman is hard work enough, but the opposition have weapons at their disposal.        Labour can say what it likes in this parliament’s infancy. Credibility comes later, with the election of a new leader for instance. Harman and Darling may have spurned the investment versus cuts line, but today Darling revived the conceit that all cuts are inherently bad: ‘During the election campaign the Conservatives did not say they were