There’s a pattern emerging to George Osborne’s autumn. He gives a big domestic set piece speech on growth and then immediately leaves the country for a meeting of European finance ministers. It is what he did straight after his conference speech last month and what he will do after the growth review on 29 November.
For months now, the whole idea of the Leveson inquiry into press standards has been dimly reminding me of something. Only recently did I figure out what it was. You know when anthropologists descend upon some almost-doomed Patagonian tribe, desperate to document their language, costumes and strategies for spear-throwing, nose-boning and rat spit-roasting before the
Not a lot of people know that Douglas Alexander is the shadow foreign secretary, but his speech this week about the euro shows that Labour is at last thinking like an effective opposition. Mr Alexander has noticed the danger of being the status quo party. He wants Labour to hand that honour to the Conservatives.
The Bank of England was expected this week to slash its growth forecast for the current year and next to around 1 per cent, down from previous forecasts of 1.5 and 2.1 per cent — but that’s still optimistic according to a European Commission report which projects no better than 0.7. Official figures were also
