David cameron

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Miliband the eurosceptic? Not yet

Ed Miliband is not naturally a eurospectic, but he certainly sounded like one during his appearance on ITV’s Daybreak show earlier. ‘I’m very concerned about what David Cameron has done,’ he said in reference to the PM’s equivocation over Europe yesterday. ‘He’s sold us down the river.’ Whether this is Miliband committing towards the sort of euroscepticism that is being urged on him by some of his colleagues, it’s too early to say. It’s only words, after all. But my guess is that — just as when Miliband attacked Cameron for not signing up to the latest treaty, but couldn’t say whether he’d have signed it himself — this is

Monday

James Forsyth

Modernisation 2.0

One of the flaws of Tory modernisation was that it was never interested enough in pounds and pence. Social issues, the environment and public service reform were what the modernisers specialised in, not economics. But tonight’s Macmillan lecture by Nick Boles, one of the most intellectually influential modernisers, is devoted to the subject of how Britain’s global competiveness in the global economy can be improved. His argument is that: ‘What really threatens the general wellbeing of the British people is the stalling of productivity growth and the certainty that the next 20 years will expose them to competition that is vastly more intense than anything we have ever seen. If

Peter Hoskin

Cameron softens his stance on Europe — but who benefits?

‘We will insist that the EU institutions — the court, the commission — that they work for all 27 nations of the EU.’ So said David Cameron, back in December, suggesting that he’d block Europe’s ‘fiscal compact’ countries from using EU-wide institutions to enforce their, er, fiscal compact. But now this component of his ‘veto’ appears to have come to naught, and that veto is looking all the thinner for it. On the Today Programme this morning, William Hague confirmed that Britain wouldn’t block the use of EU institutions, such as the court, for the fiscal union. ‘We’re not intending to take action about that now,’ is how he put

Sunday

James Forsyth

Peston: Hester will not take bonus

Stephen Hester’s decision to waive his bonus, revealed by Robert Peston just after 10 o’clock, will be a source of great relief to David Cameron and George Osborne. A story that could have dragged on for weeks, undermining their argument about fairness has just lost most of its potency. Ed Miliband, though, will be able to claim — with some justification — that it was the threat of a Commons vote on the matter that led to Hester renouncing his bonus. But this isn’t quite the end of this business. There’s now the question of what happens to the bonuses for other members of staff at RBS and then there

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

A skewed response to a skewed question

‘A clear majority of people in Scotland now back independence, according to an exclusive poll for the Sunday Express. Using Alex Salmond’s preferred referendum question, the Vision Critical survey found 51 per cent would vote ‘yes’ with 39 per cent against. If such a dramatic result were repeated in the autumn of 2014, the First Minister would have an absolute mandate to negotiate an end to the Union with England.’ So runs the story. CoffeeHousers may have spotted two of the snags: the poll uses Salmond’s laughably loaded question, and seems to have been conducted by a chain of opticians. Further inspection gives a sample size of around 2,000 people,

Peter Hoskin

The government’s Hester problem intensifies

First there was Fred Goodwin, now there’s Stephen Hester. The chief executive of RBS is fast becoming the bête noire of the British banking system, thanks to his roughly £1 million share bonus which, we learn in the Sunday Times (£) this morning, may be topped up with an extra £8 million over the next few years. Little wonder that Iain Duncan Smith admitted on the Marr show earlier that there may be a severe public backlash, and that the government could suffer from it. He suggested that it would be better, for all concerned, were Hester just to forego the million. It’s one of those debates where it’s easy

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Osborne needs to come up with radical growth policies, and soon

When it comes to defending the free market, and making the case for fiscal sanity, there’s scarcely anyone better than David Cameron. He was on superb form in Davos yesterday, giving much-needed blunt advice to the continentals. ‘Eurozone countries must do everything possible to get to grips with their own debts,’ he said. And he’s right. The snag, as I say in my Daily Telegraph column today, is that Cameron’s definition of getting to grips with debt involves increasing it more than Labour planned to, more than France, Germany, Italy or Portugal. On the first sign of trouble, his government gave up on its deficit reduction timetable – it will now

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Let’s talk about Qatar

The rise of Qatar has been one of the most remarkable developments in the recent history of the Middle East. How this small, oil-rich Gulf state built Al Jazeera and parleyed the TV station’s influence into a diplomatic role across the region is an insufficiently explored issue. The list of the monarchy’s achievements is impressive, even putting aside how they secured the football World Cup for 2022. Qatari diplomats have mediated in Lebanon, helped rejuvenate the Arab League, led condemnation of Bashir al-Assad and joined the fight against Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. In a way, Qatar has become one of the region’s lynchpins, second only to Saudi Arabia as the West’s

Peter Hoskin

Dave in Davos

Reading Cameron’s speech to the suits in Davos, one thing stands out: he’s in no mood to stop ‘lecturing’ the eurozone, as Nicolas Sarkozy would put it. The whole thing is saturated with firm advice for our European brethren, from generalities such as ‘Tinkering here and there and hoping we’ll drift to a solution simply won’t cut it any more,’ to specific policies that the Continent should introduce so that it can ‘recover its dynamism’. He even found space to attack the ‘madness’ of a Tobin tax, as well as to hawk the coalition’s deficit-reduction plan. It’s the sort of advice that could, of course, put Cameron further at odds

Wednesday

Lloyd Evans

Miliband delivers for once, but Cameron’s left unharmed

Incredible events in the chamber today. An absolute sensation at PMQS. For the first time since last summer, Ed Miliband got through the session without triggering talk of a leadership crisis. There was gloomy news aplenty to dwell on. Debts soaring; growth flat-lining; dole queues snaking back through blighted high streets and bankrupt business parks. The Labour leader chose to wallop Cameron with a well-prepared attack on the NHS. Quoting the prime minister’s vow, ‘to take our nurses and doctors with us’, he asked why the government had stopped listening. The prime minister’s reply was frivolous and desperate. He giggled and smirked like a teenager at the despatch box and

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Both leaders left smiling after PMQs

Today was one of those PMQs when you sensed that both sides were fairly happy with how it had gone. Ed Miliband turned in one of his stronger performances, cleverly splitting his questions and so allowing himself to have a go at both the economy and the coalition’s troubled NHS reforms. Cameron, for his part, got through what was always going to be a difficult session for him after this morning’s negative growth numbers.   Strikingly, there were four planted Tory questions on the benefits cap. The Tories know that Labour’s vote against it compounds one of their biggest vulnerabilities, the sense they are the party for people on benefits

Monday

James Forsyth

A Chris Huhne prediction that didn’t come true

Chris Huhne attacked David Cameron for the EU veto in Cabinet back in December. At the time, one Cabinet minister told me that part of Huhne’s critique was that Cameron had scuppered the chances of a Liberal Democrat MEP, Sharon Bowles, being reelected as chair of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, which deals with financial services.   But Bowles has been reelected. In a Lib Dem press release welcoming this, Nick Clegg declares that: ‘As party leader, I am proud that we have a leading Liberal Democrat in such a prominent and powerful position on the international scene. As UK Deputy Prime Minister, I am delighted and

Friday

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s capitalism

Ever since Ed Miliband’s ‘predatory capitalism’ speech at the Labour Party conference, the future of capitalism has been a subject that has much occupied our MPs. Clegg made his speech on Monday, and Cameron delivered his yesterday. I have had plenty to say about the coalition government’s inadequate economic policy, and its inability to stoke growth. But Cameron’s speech was impressive, and it’s worth going into in some detail. I look at it in my Telegraph column today. Much rot is spoken about capitalism. It is not an ideology, there is no rule book you can tweak: it is simply the name given to the system where people trade with

Thursday

James Forsyth

How Cameron sees the economy

Today’s speech by David Cameron is one of those ones that give you a real insight into how he sees the world. Cameron said that he wanted to see an ‘insurgent economy, where we support the new, the innovative and the bold’. He talked about the need to ‘encourage the adventurous spirits who challenge the status quo and declared that he admires ‘more than almost anything the bravery of those who turn their back on the security of a regular wage to follow their dreams and start a company’. This reveals something important both about Cameron personally and how he sees the economy. The people that Cameron respects are not

Peter Hoskin

Miliband’s proximity problem

Ed Miliband is on unusually assertive form this morning. His observation in the FT that ‘my speech to Labour’s annual conference was not — I think it is fair to say — universally well-received’ is not, I think, intended self-deprecatingly, but rather self-congratulatory, as though he were the only politician calling for a ‘responsible capitalism’ at the time. And he’s repeated that suggestion elsewhere: in a short statement for Which?, and in a Labour briefing document — entitled Who is he trying to kid? — that has been filtered around the crowd at David Cameron’s speech. Ed is trying to crash Dave’s party, and bring it crashing down. Like I

Peter Hoskin

Lansley’s health problems return

Another day, another exercise in obstructionism from the unions. Only this time it’s not Ed Miliband that they’re complaining about. It’s Andrew Lansley and the government’s health reforms. The Royal College of Nursing and the Royal College of Midwives have said that the entire Health Bill should be dropped. They have shifted, as they put it rather dramatically, to ‘outright opposition’. Which must be annoying for Lansley, given how he took time to ‘pause, listen and engage’ last summer, and adjusted his Bill accordingly. That whole process was meant to anaethetise this sort of disagreement, but the tensions clearly persist and could indeed get worse from here. It’s telling that

Wednesday

Camilla Swift

Cameron’s fight over the Falklands

Thirty years on from the Falklands War, and the hostility between Britain and Argentina persists. And it was that hostility that delivered the most striking moment of PMQs earlier. Not only did David Cameron, at the insistence of Andrew Rosindell, describe the Argentinian attitude towards the Islands as ‘far more like colonialism’ than that of the British, but he also confirmed that the National Security Council yesterday discussed the simmering situation in the south Atlantic. As he put it himself, he wants to send out a ‘strong message’ to Argentina, after the recent sabre-rattling actions of their President, Cristina Kirchner — which Daniel has blogged about here. The question that’s

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

The lesson from today’s PMQs? Unemployment makes Cameron uncomfortable

What’s the point of Ed Miliband? Does the Opposition leader have any purpose in life other than to provide ritual entertainment for the Tory wrecking crew at PMQs? Having spent the New Year listening to lethal attacks from his dearest supporters, Mr Miliband has now seen his leadership shrivel to a pair of policy statements which rival each other in desperation and barminess. The first, outlined by Liam Byrne this morning, is a fantasy tax on banking, ‘to create 100,000 jobs’. The second is Labour’s new position on the government’s austerity programme. This would baffle the dippiest and trippiest resident of Alice in Wonderland. We hate the cuts. We back

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron endures his monthly unemployment grilling

Downing Street is painfully aware that one PMQs in four is going to be about unemployment. Today, with the monthly figures having come out this morning, Miliband led on the subject. The Cameron-Miliband exchanges were not particularly enlightening. Miliband said ‘it really is back to the 1980s’ and Cameron mocked Miliband for being ‘so incompetent, he can’t even do a U-turn properly’. In the backbench questions, Cameron wasn’t put under much pressure. The news of the session came when he said in response to a question from Andrew Rosindell that the National Security Council had devoted a whole session to the Falklands yesterday. At the end of the session, there