All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Who’s in the ascendant this morning? As Pete noted earlier, David Cameron’s barnstorming morning stalled on the Today programme when pressed to cost his National Insurance tax cut. The government went to it press conference scenting blood – understandably vague Tory tax pledges can be easily represented as indicative of general incoherence. Mandelson was in
The latest issue of the Spectator is out today. Here are my top five features: 1. Can Catholicism save British Christianity? It’s our Easter issue this holiday weekend, so we’re trying out a new artist on the cover (left). And in the magazine is one of the very best pieces we’ve run since I’ve been
Want some more David Cameron? Well, the Tories are happy to oblige. After their party leader’s speech yesterday, he is interviewed in the FT and appeared on the Today programme earlier. The FT interview was certainly the more comfortable of the two. In it, Cameron stikes a confident note – saying that his party have
For months now Lord Mandelson has been encouraging his friend and former colleague Tristram Hunt to continue the quest for a safe Labour seat. Indeed, there was a furore last month when Labour supporters in the Leyton and Wanstead constituency – a Labour stronghold – objected to the support Hunt was receiving from Downing Street
Michael Scholar: hero. The newish head of the UK statistics authority is finally coming to the aid of the statistics nerds who have been protesting that Gordon Brown makes things up. Normally, the ONS do not censure Mr Brown when he misrepresents their data: that’s not their job. But as head of the Statistics Authority,
This morning, David Cameron and a large chunk of the Shadow Cabinet were talking in some detail about how the Conservatives will enable a Big Society. To do that, they are going to have to stop state-run organisation crushing community initiatives. Take the case of MyPolice. This website was set up to let people
In Britain, a lot of people think Parliament has either become useless, venal or both. Few would look to it for moral guidance. Not so in Serbia, where the nation’s legislature has condemned the 1995 Srebrenica murder of 8,000 Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina – Europe’s worst atrocity since World War II – for the first time.
Via the excellent C4 FactCheck blog: A pdf with explanatory footnotes can be found here.
I have heard two examples of government waste this morning which make you realise just how much money there is to be saved. The first was of a £1000 photocopier that cost £35000. The second was of a toilet worth £10000 bought for £50000. Both of these examples of waste come from the education budget.
The PCC adjudication seems to me bizarre and incoherent. The statement of mine which provoked the complaint was that an “overwhelming majority” of gun crime, knife crime, street crime robbery, sexual violence were committed by young black males. Let me add the point – which I made in both my blog and on other blogs
Last week, it was all doom, gloom, debt, the deficit and austerity from the Tories – and rightly so. But, this week, they’ve returned to the sunny uplands. First, we had George Osborne’s tax cut for seven out of every ten people. And, today, we had David Cameron’s closing speech at the Tory Big Society
The Tories have just distributed the policy document to go alongside their event today. There’s stuff in there about new funds for social enterprises, a recruiment drive for community organisers, neighbourhood grants, and so on. But it’s the last page of the document which caught my eye… Apparently, the Tories would introduce an annual, national
One of the main problems with the Tories’ Big Society/post-bureaucratic/responsibility agenda is how to sell it to the public. At the moment, it all sounds a bit too metropolitan, a bit too vanilla latte, a bit too wonkish. How do you better convey the often solid thinking that lies behind the management consultancy speak? Well,
Philip Hammond gave the first presentation at this Big Society event, and he admitted something that the Tories don’t admit too often. First, he attacked Gordon Brown for doubling the national debt. And then he added that, “unfortunately, we’re on a trajectory where the national debt will double again over the next few years.” Hammond’s
Michael Gove is always worth listening to when he speaks on schools reform – offering passionate rhetoric supported by detailed policy. But this morning he excelled himself. If you want a clear sense of what the Tories have in mind for making “opportunity more equal,” then I’d recommend you track down a copy of his
Yesterday, David Cameron offered a punchy response to Tony Blair’s return to the frontline of British politics, saying: “It’s nice to see him make a speech he’s not being paid for”. But I reckon the more stinging rebuke might come today. Nestled in the schedule at today’s Tory ‘Big Society’ event are two video messages
There it is. The Tories’ premier weapon emblazoned across the front pages of the Guardian and the Telegraph: Brown could stay on as PM in a hung parliament, even if the Tories win more seats. To be fair to Brown, the headlines are misleading. It is his duty to remain in office until it is
Who knows how bad Wayne Rooney’s ankle injury is? Not since Metatarsal Watch in 2006, however, has there been such troubling news for the England camp. One mobs’ rain is another lots’ sunshine however and the Agony of Wayne’s Ankle is a gift to our never under-excited press. We can expect Fleet Street to
Blair’s return will be worth a good 2-3 points to the Tory lead. Like Mandelson, he can dazzle journalists who admire his tradecraft. Like Mandelson, he is loathed by the public who see a snake oil salesman. Blair mis-sold the country a project in 1997, and delivered none of what he promised (and it was
On the other hand, this tripe is also ridiculous: It is impossible to write about Nelson Mandela these days and not compare him to another potentially transformational black leader, Barack Obama. The parallels are many. … And while it took twenty-seven years in prison to mold the Nelson Mandela we know, the forty-eight-year-old American president
How should one measure political success? That was my first reaction to Julia Pettengill’s Standpoint article headlined Is the Obama Presidency Failing? Sensible, I suppose, for Standpoint to present this as a question to be debated, not a verdict that had already been delivered. And it’s bad luck on Ms Pettengill that her piece should
During the last Tube strike, a couple of lines kept going. As I made my way home by a rather circuitous route, I was intrigued that all the anger on the platforms was directed not at Transport for London or the new mayor but the unions. The general sentiment was that all the strikers should
Tomorrow’s Word of the Day is ‘Big’. That is to say: the Tories are holding a Big Event, on the theme of the Big Society, and they’ve got all their Big Hitters out for the occasion. In all, there’ll be presentations from eleven shadow Cabinet members, followed by a speech from David Cameron. You don’t
Those of you who have been following the fortunes of my New Deal of the Mind project with a mixture of interest and scepticism will perhaps wish to read the report we have published today with the Arts Council. Creative Survival in Hard Times is an attempt to grapple with the issue of employment in
Tomorrow, I’ll blog the first of a couple of pieces in response to the Press Complaints Commission’s bizarre adjudication (and indeed its self-important breast-beating). All those figures in full. Right now I’m thinking of taking the Press Complaints Commission to the Press Complaints Commission for a decision which they were unable to support with hard
Oliver Letwin is often mocked for putting things in over-complicated language, for talking about ‘a shift in the theory of the State from a provision-based paradigm to a framework-based paradigm’. But in his interview with the Wall Street Journal Europe, Letwin sums up the Cameron vision for public services with admirable clarity: ‘Hospitals compete for
In this post-expenses election, there is going to be a considerable vote going for the none of the above party. The Lib Dems are clearly determined to try and tap into this vote. At PMQs in recent weeks, Nick Clegg has constantly sought to attack Labour and the Tories as different sides of the same
Yep, you guessed right: Tony Blair was doing his bit for the Labour cause this morning, with a speech in his old constituency. In truth, there was little in it of any note – or that we haven’t heard countless times from his successor. Thus the Tories were derided as either the “old Tory party,”
James Macintyre asked yesterday, in response to a speech Davis made at the Bristol Chambers of Commerce. The question should enter John Rentoul’s entertaining list of questions to which the answer is No. Macintyre takes Davis’ comments out of context: ‘First, he [Davis] praises the post-war Labour Prime Minister Clement Atlee, who is credited with
Labour’s plans for a national care service aren’t looking too sharp this morning. Andy Burnham is expected to announce a cap on residential costs for the elderly later today – to be funded by freezing inheritance tax bands, raising the statutory retirement age, and (lo!) efficiency savings. But the full, free-for-everyone-at-the-point-of-use service will have to
I think Osborne’s main victory tonight would be to reassure those who thought him a clueless idiot. The left demonise him, and it’s easy for the right to despair at him too (yes, guilty). But the figure we saw tonight was calm, collected and assured – and I reckon this was his achievement. He allayed
I’ll spare you the nitty-gritty, but suffice to say that three separate polls tonight record growing leads for the Tories – of 7, 7 and 10 points, respectively. One of the 7-point leads is from the YouGov Daily Tracker, which has been hovering around the 4 point mark for the past few weeks. You could
Well, in one sense, yes of course they do. By putting Vince Cable and, later, Nick Clegg up against their Conservative and Labour peers the Lib Dems are granted a status and respect they never achieve in other circumstances. So in terms of exposure and credibility then yes the debates help the Liberal Democrats. The