Politics

I’m afraid I did not detect a “new economic model” in George Osborne’s speech. He has said he will “eliminate “a large part” of the deficit (ie, the amount that debt goes up by) over the next parliament. In questions, he kept repeating this phrase: “a large part” – and which is woolier than Labour’s plan to halve it. When asked about this he said that he would do more than half it – but gave no indication by how much. It could be a lot, or a negligible amount. We still don’t know. Osborne said he will stick to what was, in my view, the root error of the

Voltaire praised the English for their boldness: “how I like the people who say what they think”. The slow and steady contraction of the polls continues, and Rachel Sylvester is convinced that the Tories must embrace risk and revoke ‘health-and-safety politics’. She writes: ‘Increasingly, his pronouncements seem designed to grab a headline rather than challenge the status quo — it’s bash-a-burglar, prison ships and PC-gone-mad, instead of hug-a-hoody, husky sleighs and general wellbeing. He drips out minor policy announcements on broadband and planning laws, while failing to confront a more important issue and force his biggest donor, Lord Ashcroft, to say whether he pays tax in this country.’ The sudden

Front page of the Independent: “Vote of no confidence in Tory economic policies”.  As headlines go, it’s one of the worst the Tories have had for a while – even if, as Anthony Wells and Mike Smithson point out, it’s kinda misleading.  Truth is, the Indy’s ComRes poll finds that 82 percent of people want “Mr Cameron to be clearer about what he would do on the economy”.  And 24 percent think the Tories would have ended the recession sooner, against 69 percent who don’t.  They’re hardly positive findings for CCHQ, but, by themselves, they don’t quite add up that that two-line scarehead. The main concern for CCHQ is how

Smarting from the savaging he received in Mo, Peter Mandelson characterised David Cameron’s “no swingeing cuts” comment as a u-turn, and compared Cameron and Osborne to Laurel and Hardy. This is a bit rich considering the government’s obvious confusion over the timing and extent of cuts, and that the immortal line “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into” should be the Tories’ campaign slogan. Cameron’s comments are a clarification, not a u-turn. As Jim Pickard notes, Tory policy has to respond to last week’s withered growth figures. Whilst still recognising that cuts have to be made now to avert a fiscal crisis, a distinction that the government fails to

There can be fewer more powerful untapped resources in Britain than the desire of parents to place their children in a good school. Every Sunday, pews of school-sponsoring churches are filled with atheist mothers and their kids. You read stories of parents giving up their kids to live with their aunt and uncle just to get a better school.   The single best reason to vote Tory is that they will set up a new system to harness this power, and allow anyone to set up a state school (by themselves or, more likely, in collaboration with the many companies offering to run new schools).  The Times today says that

David Cameron has said that “burglars leave their human rights at the doorstep” when they break into a house. He added that he wishes to see “fewer” prosecutions of homeowners who defend themselves or their property from intruders. He has not spelled out precisely how far we can go with burglars, whether or not we can tie them to a tree and bugger them, whooping and hollering. Nor has he made it clear what happens to burglars who climb in through an upstairs window; do they still have to leave their human rights on the doorstep, or could they perhaps put them beside the wheelie bin, near the gate? Either