All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
To understand the budget properly, read James Forsyth’s cover story in The Spectator today. Sure, it was about reducing the deficit – but within it lie several political strategies which explain how George Osborne hopes to win a majority Conservative government. James says that those around Cameron will not entertain this notion – they “have
How wrong I was. President Obama, lambasted by his critics for being ponderous, has acted with lightening speed: less than 24 hours after that Rolling Stone article, General Stanley McChrystal was forced out of his job in place of the only person that could pick up where he left off, namely General David Petraeus. In
In the end, Kevin Rudd didn’t even last to the leadership ballot. He agreed to step down as PM and Labour leader this morning and the party immediately replaced him with Julia Gillard, his deputy who announced she was prepared to stand against him yesterday. At the start of the year, Rudd was the most popular
Like James, I thought David Cameron performed well in his “Face the Audience” appearance explaining the budget yesterday. I also think the Prime Minister and his Deputy should do more of these “Meet and Explain” events and, yes, they should do them together. If Cameron was persuasive then Nick Clegg was also excellent, not least
David Cameron did particularly well in the Cameron and Clegg joint interview just now. He has a real ability to read the mood of an audience; the debates could have been very different if the audience hadn’t been required to be silent. The only news made during the interview was Cameron saying that he will
Yesterday there was some chatter that the smart thing would be for General Stanley McChrystal to offer his resignation but for President Barack Obama to decline it. That had the advantage of cuteness, but I’m not sure it was ever feasible and not least because, as best I can tell, the more military-minded an observer
NBC is reporting that President Obama has accepted General McChrystal’s resignation. McChrystal had offered it following the publication of a magazine profile in which him and his staff were reported deriding various members of the administration’s Afghan war effort. McChrystal’s own criticisms of the president were also part of the piece. The BBC is now
Remarkable developments in Australian politics as the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd faces a leadership challenge tomorrow. Rudd is being challenged by his deputy PM Julia Gillard, who would be Australia’s first female PM. Gillard’s strategy might be to try and replicate Bob Hawke who was elected leader of the Australian Labour party and then went
As we wait for Obama to announce the fate of General Stanley McChrystal, it’s worth casting your mind back to John C. Hulsman’s article in this magazine last week. Hulsman called the situation absolutely right — whilst other commentators (on both sides of the Atlantic) were excitable about the ‘mineral strike’ in Afghanistan, Hulsman spotted
Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester, has died aged 78. He served as a Cabinet Minister in both the Heath and Thatcher governments. He was what might be termed derisively as a ‘Wet’, and was a leading figure on the liberal side of the Conservative Party for thirty years. He was a founder member of
Might the coalition’s emphasis on fairness be making it harder to get people off welfare and into work? Not a question that I can answer with confidence, but certainly one which has been thrown up by the IFS’s Budget briefing. Take the government’s action on child tax credits, for instance. By increasing it at the
For those of you not watching the football (England 1-0 up at the moment, incidentally, and so just one blunder from being plunged back into the slough of despond) consider this question, asked by the Irish Labour MEP Nessa Childers: There has been an explosion in the usage of this online social networking tool across
An unfamiliar mood before the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Budget briefing today: many of the gathered journalists, economists and policymakers had decided that, for once, this wouldn’t be an exercise in spotting the Chancellor’s deceptions, because, quite simply, there aren’t many. And they could well be right. In his introductory remarks, Robert Chote, the director
The unthinkable has happened. I’ve started to admire Batty Hattie’s performances at PMQs. Her career may be over, her party may be trashed, her movement may drift leaderless, and her colleagues’ reputation may have been shot to pieces but Hattie always turns up and gives it everything. Nature has not overburdened her with talent. She
David Cameron was on punchy form at PMQs today. He jibed that in Harriet Harman’s case the Budget Red Book should be called ‘the unread book’ and called Labour backbenchers ‘dunces’ who didn’t know what the last government was planning. The Cameron Harman exchange was interesting. Harman had come armed with some classic follow-up questions
This is a slow-burning budget. Not because Osborne has concealed, like Gordon Brown did, but because the reverse is true. The budget is, as Osborne says, a third of the size but with three times the amount of information. It has layers: some policies and language are there just to assuage the LibDems. Some are
Have you been impressed by Labour’s response to their election defeat? Hmmm. Next question: is anyone listening to Labour’s complaints that the Liberal Democrats have “betrayed” themselves and everything that is nice and sweet and wholesome about this pleasant land? Best move on from that one too. Sunny Hundal makes a good argument that, at
I’m not quite sure where I stand on the subject of Chris Huhne and his new weird-looking quasi-lesbo missus, Carina Trimingham. I don’t entirely understand why Huhne has copped so much flak for having left his wife, divorce – as I know – being a sort of occupational hazard of the modern middle classes. Huhne
This is a balancing act Budget. At every stage and on almost every topic there’s a bit of good news and a bit of bad news for taxpayers. Spending cuts are (finally) on the way, but at over £30 billion by 2014-15 they aren’t large enough, and there is plenty of dead wood that the
The Taliban are expanding their area of influence, NATO allies are eager to leave Afghanistan, the forthcoming parliamentary elections are likely to be even more fraudulent than last year’s presidential election – in other words, how can it get any worse for President Obama’s AfPak strategy? Oh yeah, the man the US president has trusted
Well, that’s gone as well as can be expected for the coalition. Most of today’s newspaper coverage highlights the severity of George Osborne’s Budget – but, crucially, it adds that the Chancellor had few other options. The Telegraph calls it a “brave Budget”. The Times says that it delivers “the best of fiscal conservatism combined
When Jeremy Paxman grilled Danny Alexander on Newsnight yesterday he spent most of his time on politics, not economics. Fair enough. That’s what the media does and one wouldn’t expect it any other way. But it was the type of attack Paxman employed that was both mildly interesting and futile. This was because Paxman decided
George Osborne’s Budget today was the first dose of pain. The second will be the spending review in October, which I suspect will put far more of a strain on the Coalition than today did. Non-protected departmental Budgets, everything apart from health and DFID, are going to be cut by 25 percent on average. But
Today’s Emergency Budget announced the most ambitious fiscal consolidation programme in decades. It sets out a framework returning the government broadly to a state of fiscal solvency by 2014. To do this, George Osborne announced a deficit reduction programme amounting to just over £100 billion in real terms – entirely in line with our recommendations.
There is plenty of very good news in the Budget. A two year public sector pay freeze, the abolition of the Child Trust Fund and cuts in welfare spending are all longstanding TPA recommendations that will be absolutely key to getting the public finances under control. As a result of all the measures proposed, annual
Two weeks ago, when launching the Spending Review, George Osborne called for a once-in-a-lifetime debate about the shape of government in the UK. He implied that there is a right and a wrong way to cut the deficit. It would be right to cut spending by addressing the structural causes of the deficit – i.e.
By her usual standards, Harriet Harman was quite effective in her response to George Osborne’s Budget earlier. She was clear, direct and had a few gags at Vince Cable’s expense. And she also benefitted from what, on the surface, was a strong central attack: the Office for Budget Responsibility, she said, has downgraded its jobs
Debt may start falling as a share of GDP at the end of this Parliament (see p.2 here), but it’s still going up in cash terms. Here’s a comparison with Labour’s last Budget:
Well, that was excitingly unexciting. There was little in George Osborne’s Budget that we didn’t expect, either in terms of rhetoric or policy. But it still felt new and different nonetheless. Here we had a Chancellor setting out exactly how much spending he will cut, and putting plenty of emphasis on both our deficit and
Like many people, I’ve rarely been wholly convinced by George Osborne. So let it be said that this budget was perhaps his finest hour. Happily, there is something for everyone to complain about. It would be wrong if this were not the case. I suppose Osborne could have avoided putting up VAT (to 20%) had
1343, PH: Harman has sat down now, so we’ll draw the live blog to a close. I’ll write a summary post shortly. 1342, FN: I wish I could trash Harman’s response, but it’s actually quite good. Many a Tory would be secretly cheering her trashing of the LibDems. “The LibDems denounced early cuts, now they’re
The first Deputy Prime Minister’s Questions was the worst of the old politics. I’m all in favour of robust exchanges in the Commons but the Labour side was just shouting at Clegg today. As he was answering one question — and, I mean, actually answering — on Sheffield Forgemasters, one Labour MP tried to drown
Meanwhile, in other police news, Coppers in Birmingham are being armed with Tasers as a matter of course. Until recently, only firearms officers were so equipped. Sadly, this means that it’s only a matter of time before someone is killed by one of these things. That’s what happens when you start flinging 50,000 volt charges
In 2009, Britain borrowed more, as a share of its national income, than any country that isn’t being bailed out by the IMF and the Eurozone (Greece) or already making drastic spending cuts (Ireland). That huge deficit is the critical challenge to our economic stability that George Osborne needs to tackle with the Budget today.