George osborne

Tory on Tory is a brutal cock-fight when defence is concerned. After the leaking of Liam Fox’s now infamous letter and David Cameron’s measured retaliation, George Osborne has broken his silence. Making unspoken reference to the £38bn black hole in the MoD’s budget, Osborne tells this morning’s Telegraph that he was ‘not thrilled’ to learn of Fox’s ‘do we really want to cut defence this much letter’ and says that Labour left the MoD in ‘chaos’, signing Britain up to ‘expensive and pointless projects’. The press will run this as a conference Tory splits story. There are clear differences between ministers, but they actually reflect entrenched positions within the MoD:

The election of a new Labour leader means that proper politics has resumed. David Cameron now knows who he needs to beat to win the next election. As I argue in the magazine this week (subscribers), if the Tories are to secure a majority in 2015, they’ll need to do better among those in households with an income of thirty-odd thousand or so, what pollsters call the C1s. The last time the Tories won outright, they got 52 percent of the C1 vote—more than double Labour’s total. But in 1997, Labor and the Tories split this group evenly. The Tories have never fully recovered from this.  In 2010, the Tories

What are we to make of the fact that No.10 gave the thumbs-up to Vince Cable’s bizarre anti-capitalist rhetoric today? “Capitalism takes no prisoners and it kills competition where it can,” he fumed – and you can argue that, technically, he is paraphrasing Adam Smith. But he has been in politics long enough to know what signal his speech sent out (and the reaction it would trigger). Mood music counts for a lot in politics, and in business. And the mood music from this government sounds like a bunch of politicians happy to tax the bejesus out of the high-paid – regarding them as ATM machines to be raided, rather

Danny Alexander’s announcement of a £900 million clampdown on tax avoidance, evasion and fraud is designed to reassure Lib Dems that the coalition’s policies are fair, that it isn’t balancing the budget on the backs of the poor. In a deliberate echo of George Osborne’s comments about welfare, Alexander said that the years when people could treat tax avoidance and evasion as a “lifestyle choice” were over. This Alexander announcement is a preview of what we’re going to see at this conference, a series of sweetners to show the party that the Liberal Democrats are influencing government policy. But Alexander also tried to gird the party for the challenges ahead,

The outrider has returned to stables. Nick Boles MP, a one-time Cameroon confidante tipped for promotion, formally introduced the possibility of a Tory-Lib Dem electoral pact, it made a few cursory headlines and then David Cameron and Nick Clegg promptly denied any such intention. It had the appearance of the classic three-card trick. A formal alliance or non-aggression pact is highly unlikely unless the coalition survives to 2015. The government will collapse before then if enough Liberal Democrats believe its record is indefensible. However, if it doesn’t then the parties must defend their joint record and in doing so will offer a collaborative future. The alternative is absurd. Nick Clegg

Far more heat than light generated by this afternoon’s urgent question on welfare spending – but a telling spectacle nonetheless. The question had been put forward by a dissenting Lib Dem voice, Bob Russell, and it was up to George Osborne to answer it. He did so with sweeping observations, and attacks on Labour, rather than specifics. And so we never really got into the small print of those £4 billion extra benefit cuts, but Osborne did wonder why Labour have never apologised for “leaving the country with the worst public finances in its history.” It was knockabout stuff.   This is not to say that Osborne was ineffective. In

The Observer has received letters revealing that George Osborne plans to deliver net savings of ‘at least £2.5bn’ from the Employment Support Allowance by limiting the amount of time people can spend claiming it. Here is Osborne’s letter to IDS, Cameron and Clegg: ‘Given the pressure on overall public spending in the coming period, we will need to continue developing further options to reform the benefits as part of the spending review process in order to deliver further savings, greater simplicity and stronger work incentives. Reform to the employment support allowance is a particular priority and I am pleased that you, the prime minister and I have agreed to press ahead

Now this should dispel any worries that the Office for Budget Responsibility is partisan in the government’s favour. Robert Chote, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies and scourge of Osborne’s “regressive” Budget, has been appointed as the body’s new chief. It is, in many repsects, the most sensible and obvious choice. Not only is Chote respected across the political divide, but the OBR is an attempt to institutionalise the kind of fiscal oversight that his IFS has provided for years. I can’t imagine that the Treasury Select Committee will try to block this appointment. In case you missed it first time around, Fraser interviewed Chote for the magazine back