Alan duncan

The pledge to almost double Britain’s international aid budget was made in the boom years, when the government actually had money. In the bust, there is something deeply strange — almost perverse — about borrowing money from China and giving it to India. It’s time to reassess Britain’s aid commitment, and The Spectator is having a debate about it tomorrow night. I hope CoffeeHousers will be able to come because it is, I think, a crucial issue. Alan Duncan is the man to thanks — or blame, depending on your point of view — for the Tories committing to spend 0.7 per cent of economic output on foreign aid. He

On Any Questions, Alan Duncan—a minister of state at the Department to International Development and a longstanding ally of the Foreign Secretary William Hague—has just predicted a partial Greek default. He told the programme that ‘I guess what’s going to happen is there will be a partial default and some kind of agreement’. There have long been rumours in Westminster that the British government’s position was now to—in private—push for an orderly default. Indeed, George Osborne’s comment in his Telegraph interview today that the eurozone “need to end this endless speculation about Greece — they have got to come to a decision and stick to it” implied that. But ministers

Junior ministers rarely get to influence high-level policy or be seen publicly to have done so. So Development Minister Alan Duncan must feel particularly pleased that his brainchild, the so-called “Libya oil cell”, was set up to block fuel supplies to Tripoli; and that its work – as well as the Tory MP’s role – has now become public. On the day that David Cameron jets off to the Paris Conference no less. The BBC reports that a six person team was set, taking in people from the Cabinet Office and the MoD, but working out of the Foreign Office. The team focused on depriving Gaddafi’s regime of oil by

The official conference guide announces that at 2pm tomorrow “Alan Duncan, Shadow Leader of the House of Commons” will be speaking in a session entitled “Reforming politics: Transparency”. Of course, he won’t be. He is no longer shadow leader of the House. Ironically, it was this appointment that sealed his fate. It was thought that it would be a PR disaster to have someone who had complained that MPs were living on rations speaking on this topic and so Duncan was demoted to be shadow Prisons Minister and Sir George Young moved into his job and speaking slot. I suspect that a proof reader somewhere will be getting an earful

So was the “rations” video a gaffe too far?  The news has just come in that Alan Duncan has been demoted from the shadow cabinet, going from shadow leader of the Commons to shadow prisons minister.  Having spoken to various Tory sources, I understand that the decision was made in an “amicable” meeting between Duncan and Cameron – where the former acknowledged he has become a “lightning conductor” for public anger over expenses – and that, apparently, Duncan is “relaxed and relieved” to be working under Dominic Grieve. Some people might be surprised at the timing: many expected Cameron to hold off until next year, so as not to rile

There’s plenty to be sceptical about with this #welovetheNHS Twitter campaign – not least the manner in which it’s falsely polarising the debate into “lovers” or “haters”, given that 140-character “tweets” hardly allow for nuanced arguments.  But, as Fraser pointed out last night, there’s little doubting that it’s a spot of good luck for Gordon Brown: a campaign by the left, for the left, which he managed to seize on with uncharacteristic speed.   Indeed, Brown beat David Cameron to the punch for perhaps the first time in months, and has put the Tory leader on the defensive.  Hence Cameron’s blog post last night, which set out his own #reasonsforlovingtheNHSbutstillwantingittoimprove,