David cameron

Who will go where in the forthcoming reshuffle? Guido suggests that Michael Gove could be in for a move to party chairman, given all his major reforms have either been implemented or blocked by the Lib Dems. Number 10 has certainly told Gove that he will be playing an increasing role in the general election campaign: I understand this was made clear to him in the winter of last year, which would explain why David Cameron was quite so cross about the Education Secretary’s comments to the FT about Etonians. Cameron recognises that Gove is a smooth media performer who doesn’t wilt under the heat of the studio lights, or

David Cameron and George Osborne managed to garner more attention for their infrastructure announcement (or re-announcement) today by organising their first joint appearance alone together in four years – and making sure the media were aware that this was the case. The pair haven’t appeared together in public for a while partly because they fear doing so would suggest to voters that the government was run by two chaps from very similar backgrounds; better to dilute it by pitching up with other ministers, hopefully with vaguely different backstories. But it is also quite impressive that the two men haven’t felt the need to do these joint appearances after questions about

David Cameron has said Christians should be more evangelical “about a faith that compels us to get out there and make a difference to people’s lives”. In an article for The Church Times he said he wanted to infuse politics with Christian values such as responsibility, hard work, charity, compassion, humility and love. In recent years politicians have often been shy about talking about religion, reluctant perhaps to invoke the authority of God to score a political point. William Ewart Gladstone had no such anxiety, saying in 1832: “Restrict the sphere of politics to earth, and it becomes a secondary science”. In 1880, when he was campaigning for Home Rule

John Bercow doesn’t like Prime Minister’s Questions. He’s told the BBC in an interview that it is ‘so bad’—in other words, rowdy—that a bunch of female MPs no longer attend. PMQs is becoming particularly partisan with the approach of the election. Miliband has abandoned his attempts to change it just as quickly as Cameron did before him. But Bercow would do well to look closely at his own role in setting the tone of these sessions. From the chair, Bercow understandably tries to silence the hecklers. But, sometimes, he seems to be indulging in a bit of ‘Punch and Judy’ too. Often he moves into put-down mode, trying to get

My friend and critic Jonathan Portes obviously took exception to my remarks about Keynesianism having been disproven. His entertaining rebuttal claims to have exposed my misreading of data. That’s not quite how I see it. I agree with him that the appalling build-up of out-of-work benefits happened before 1997. The Tories badly miscalculated incapacity benefit; thinking it would be a one-off way to help those affected by deindustrialization. But, in fact, it created a welfare dependency trap, and the 1992 recession caught too many people in it. John Major had an excuse: a recession. Tony Blair had no such excuse. I wasn’t joking about a quarter of Liverpool and Glasgow

There are only five months to go to the Scottish referendum and the Cabinet is becoming increasingly agitated about the state of the Unionist campaign. At Tuesday’s meeting there was a frank and realistic discussion about its problems. The government’s concern is prompted by the fact that it has fired its biggest gun, telling the Scots there’ll be no currency union after independence, but the Nationalists are still standing. Indeed, they appear to have strengthened their position. The coalition now thinks that part of the problem is that there are not enough purely Scottish voices making the case for the Union. They fear that even Scots with Westminster seats are,

David Cameron launched his party’s European and local elections campaign in Manchester today. After weeks of polarised debate between Nick and Nigel, the PM had a task in suggesting that there could be some nuance between In and Out which involves a bit of shake-it-all-about. He repeated his line that both the Lib Dems and Ukip took an ‘extremist’ stance on the EU, saying: ‘Looking at the other parties, there are effectively two extremist camps. One says: “we love the European Union.” The other says: “we hate the European Union.” One says: “we want things to stay the same.” The other says: “let’s just walk away from the EU.” But