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When it comes to defending the free market, and making the case for fiscal sanity, there’s scarcely anyone better than David Cameron. He was on superb form in Davos yesterday, giving much-needed blunt advice to the continentals. ‘Eurozone countries must do everything possible to get to grips with their own debts,’ he said. And he’s right.
Condemnation’s coming from all sides for the £963,000 bonus awarded to RBS’s Stephen Hester, on top of his £1.2 million salary. The most prominent denunciation came from Lib Dem Foreign Office minister Jeremy Browne on last night’s Question Time: ‘I think there’s a sort of question of honour. Even if there is a contractual opportunity
There are many reasons why Newt Gingrich remains a preposterous candidate for the Republican party’s presidential nomination. Among them the fact that just about anyone who has ever had dealings with him – including a majority of his wives – hate him. Here’s Elliott Abrams dredging up some gems settling some scores from the 1980s
Reading Cameron’s speech to the suits in Davos, one thing stands out: he’s in no mood to stop ‘lecturing’ the eurozone, as Nicolas Sarkozy would put it. The whole thing is saturated with firm advice for our European brethren, from generalities such as ‘Tinkering here and there and hoping we’ll drift to a solution simply
A reader writes asking if I wish to reconsider my past certainty that Mitt Romney is the Republican party’s presumptive nominee? No, not really. This is less a matter of Mr Romney’s strengths as a front-runner and more a question of the impossibility of selecting any of his rivals. Newt Gingrich’s resurrection in South Carolina
Nick Clegg, this morning, advocating closing loopholes for the rich to pay for raising the income tax threshold: ‘Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.’ Oh, all
One of the more tiresome aspects of the SNP’s vision for the future of Scotland is its fondness for breezily sweeping away awkward questions as though important elements of Scotland’s prospects as an independent nation were nit-picking details that need not delay anyone from setting out on the road to Independence. It sometimes seems as
Remember those Lib Dem calls for a mansion tax at the weekend? I said at the time that, ‘the Lib Dems appear to be drawing more attention to which of their own policies they are fighting for within government, whether those policies make it to the statute books or not.’ Well, now they’re at it
Just seen this in the latest copy of Private Eye, from its Pseuds Corner column: ‘I woke up with my wife and baby of six months on the small island of Burano in Venice where we have a lighthouse. We took our breakfast on the terrace of one of the best restaurants in the world,
It has been quite a few days for transparency in Westminster. First, Ben Gummer’s ten minute rule bill for tax transparency — which would see every taxpayer in the country receive a statement detailing what they owe and what the money’s being spent on — earned itself a second reading in the House. And now, today,
The rise of Qatar has been one of the most remarkable developments in the recent history of the Middle East. How this small, oil-rich Gulf state built Al Jazeera and parleyed the TV station’s influence into a diplomatic role across the region is an insufficiently explored issue. The list of the monarchy’s achievements is impressive,
Has Britain become a nation of immoral, lying, cheating, scumbags as the increasingly pious Peter Oborne seems to suggest in his latest article? Peter, who writes for such unblemished upholders of truth and decency as The Daily Mail, suggests that these days, if people found money lying about in the street, they wouldn’t hand it
Diane Abbott has, the BBC reports, walked away from the all-party talks on abortion because of the government’s proposals on counselling services. But others involved in the talks claim that Labour’s public health spokeswoman was not a particularly active participant. Abbott, who is not always the easiest of people to work with, had already irritated some
Newt channels JFK, sorta, in Florida last night: Although, sadly for moon colonists (and Jurassic Park enthusiasts), Romney has now pulled level with Gingrich in most of the Florida polling — and is now, slightly, the favourite to take next week’s primary.
It is now four years since recession hit the UK. It took just over three years for GDP to return to pre-recession levels in the much milder downturns of the ‘70s and the ‘90s. Even after the Great Depression of the 30s, the economy had fully recovered by this point. By contrast, economic output in
As Pete says, Obama fired some well-aimed arrows in the direction of Mitt Romney in his State of the Union address. But it was also a clear attempt to outline Obama’s re-election message, which would, I think, be the same no matter who he faces in November. The idea is to stress that Obama, unlike
So now we have it: the ten words which Alex Salmond hopes will end Scotland’s 300-year-old membership of the United Kingdom. ‘Do you agree that Scotland should be an independent country?’ The First Minister unveiled his consultation paper on an independence referendum today and, to the surprise of many, actually did what David Cameron has
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics about lying. The University of Essex has today published a study about dishonesty in Britain, and its conclusions are prompting some concern. The ‘ethics and integrity project’ found that our society is far more relaxed about the truth than it used to be — only one person in
So, the game is afoot. The Scottish government today published its consultation document on an independence referendum to be held in the autumn of 2014. You can read it all here though I should warn you that most of it is entirely unobjectionable. If Mr Salmond is the salesman he hopes he is, the next
Incredible events in the chamber today. An absolute sensation at PMQS. For the first time since last summer, Ed Miliband got through the session without triggering talk of a leadership crisis. There was gloomy news aplenty to dwell on. Debts soaring; growth flat-lining; dole queues snaking back through blighted high streets and bankrupt business parks.
Today was one of those PMQs when you sensed that both sides were fairly happy with how it had gone. Ed Miliband turned in one of his stronger performances, cleverly splitting his questions and so allowing himself to have a go at both the economy and the coalition’s troubled NHS reforms. Cameron, for his part,
The political implications of today’s growth numbers are complex. On one level, a contraction in the economy should provide Miliband and Balls with an opportunity to make their economic case against the government. Indeed, Balls is already out with a statement calling the GDP figures a ‘damning indictment of David Cameron and George Osborne’s failed
I’m still of the mind that Westminster fusses too much about these quarterly growth figures, particularly when parts of the country have been in economic decline for decades. But there’s no doubting that they have the capacity to shift the political mood, both here and around the country. There is something disheartening about the idea
More here.
ARK Schools, one of the leading City Academy providers, has just released another amazing set of results with GCSE passes 11 percentage points higher last year than were achieved in 2010. This is staggering progress, given that these schools are serving the same neighbourhoods with the same demographics as the council-run schools which they replaced. It
Apparently it is all but compulsory for London-based observers to note that Alex Salmond is “wily”. Those possessing an Anglo-Scots dictionary may add that he’s “sleekit”. By this they really mean he’s not a numpty and this, given the pressures of the times and all of that, is as much of a compliment as any
PMQs 25 January
A Romney-seeking missile. That was what much of Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address amounted to last night. He didn’t mention the Republican presidential challenger by name, of course. That would have been too obvious. But he did dwell on those sorts of issues around taxation and jobs — including his ‘Buffett Rule’, by
With the EU agreeing a new round of sanctions on Iran – outlawing European oil and gas purchases from Iran in six months, freezing Iran’s Central Bank and banning trade in gold and other precious metals with any state-related bodies – tensions between Iran and the West are increasing. An Iranian MP has – again
Cartoonists like to portray Alex Salmond as a modern-day Braveheart preparing to charge the English enemy. But, in truth, Salmond’s strategy is far more subtle — and dangerous — than that. The SNP leader’s piece in The Guardian today — a preview of the Hugo Young lecture he’s delivering tonight — downplays what a
Britain’s national debt rose to over £1 trillion last month, and will never return below this threshold. George Osborne is increasing net debt by 61.5 per cent in real terms over this parliament, more than the 59.9 per cent which Labour proposed when it fought the last election. Here’s how the OBR’s current projections for debt
Why are you never served by a Londoner in a London branch of Pret A Manger? I asked this in the Telegraph recently, and yesterday’s Evening Standard had a great piece tracking down four who applied, and were rejected without an interview. Some suspect there is a bias in favour of immigrants: if your name
The government’s welfare reforms seem to be staggering on, despite the concern from the Lords that they’ll harm those who need help most: children and the disabled. But before the Bill goes back to the Commons, and everyone becomes more agitated, let me put the case for the Bill from the perspective of someone it
Finally, grudgingly, Mitt Romney has released his tax returns for the last two years. After much um-ing and ah-ing — and a lot of prodding from Democrats, Newt Gingrich and the media – he has disclosed that he paid $3 million in tax on his 2010 income of $21.7 million, and $3.2 million on the