David cameron

Adam Smith’s Leveson ordeal is now over. The testimony we’ve heard from Smith and Fred Michel has left Hunt’s position weaker in one key regard. The crucial allegation is that he misled Parliament when he said that he had not tried to influence the quasi-judicial decision on News Corp’s bid for BSkyB when it was Vince Cable’s responsibility. It is hard to see how this squares with Hunt’s memo to David Cameron in November 2010 warning of the consequences for the media sector of the bid being blocked. Labour is also attacking on the grounds that Hunt should never have been given responsibility for making this quasi-judicial decision given the

Ed Miliband had it easy at PMQs today. The government is bleeding in all directions. And a further haemorrhage has arrived in the shape of Adrian Beecroft, a government adviser, whose proposal to relax employment law has delighted the Tory right and incensed the soft-and-cuddly Lib Dem left. ‘A proposal to fire at will’, is how Mr Miliband described the Beecroft plan. Did the Prime Minister support it or did he agree with the Business Secretary who has covered it in scorn? Cameron didn’t so much duck the question as swan straight past it. He pretended it wasn’t there. Instead he cherry-picked some positive footnotes from yesterday’s IMF statement on

It’s no surprise that the Lib Dems aren’t keen on Adrian Beecroft’s proposals for hiring and firing. This intra-coalition disagreement has been rumbling on for months now, after all. But when Vince Cable spoke out against them yesterday, it wasn’t entirely clear whether this was his party’s line or just Vince being Vince. Other Lib Dems might have taken a more conciliatory approach. Today, however, it’s clear that they’re not going to. Nick Clegg himself has charged in behind Cable, saying that ‘I don’t support [Beecroft’s plan for “no-fault dimissals”] and I never have, for the simple reason that I have not seen any evidence yet that creating industrial scale

The publication of the Beecroft report on Thursday is a big moment for the coalition. The Lib Dems have long been dismissive of it but it is now a crucial part of any coalition grand bargain on growth. In recent days, those close to David Cameron and Nick Clegg have been talking about a more cooperative, coalition attitude to growth. There’s been a recognition that the two sides both need to make some concessions to give the coalition a more adequate growth strategy. As one senior figure puts it, the coalition needs to show ‘more radicalism and unity on growth’. This is what makes the publication of Beecroft on Thursday

Have you noticed the weird hold that François Hollande has over our politics? If you haven’t, then let me tell you: his name has been almost inescapable in Westminster over the past couple of weeks. Even in PMQs this week, David Cameron and Ed Miliband couldn’t resist of spot of Hollandery. Behind-the-scenes, too, there is much consideration being given to how the new French President should be treated. Political strategists recognise, as I’ve suggested before, that his election could be a significant moment in the life of the Eurozone and the European Union. Potentially, it’s the moment when the supranational consensuses of the past couple of years broke down, leading

I doubt that Angela Merkel is looking forward to the G8 summit very much. It will mostly consist of the other world leaders telling her to give ground on austerity. But I suspect that Merkel won’t budge much, if at all. She clearly believes that the Greeks can be whipped into line by telling them that the election is really a referendum on euro membership. Hence both her suggestion of a simultaneous referendum on election-day and her backing for the European Central Bank cutting off support to Greek banks which shows that while there’s no formal mechanism for ejecting a country from the single currency there are ways of doing

The Cameroons have long taken comfort in their belief that Ed Miliband will never be Prime Minister. They have seen him as a firebreak between them and electoral defeat. Three things have driven their conviction that the Labour leader will never make it to Number 10. First, their belief that he fails the blink test: can you see him standing outside Number 10? Second, the next election will almost certainly be fought on the economy, Labour’s weakest area. Their final reason was a sense that he would never get the full support of those on the Labour side who know how to win elections. But recent events suggest that this