Inflation

Ed Balls gets personal in his interview with the Times (£) today, but not in the way you might expect. For most of the piece he dwells on what the paper calls his “hidden vulnerability” – the effort to contain his stammer. And from there on, the politics seems a touch softer than usual. There are surprisingly few overt attacks on his opponents, and those that make the cut are considerably less violent that we’re used too. Which isn’t to say that the interview lacks politics. No sirree. Here’s a ten-point selection of some of the political highlights (so to speak), with my added comments:      1) Doubling back

  To the chagrin of CoffeeHousers, I have long rated Ed Balls and his abilities. He has a degree of brilliance, albeit tragically deployed in the services of a destructive economic agenda. But as we welcome him back, it’s worth reminding ourselves that his abilities are of a specific type. He understands economics (even though he did PPE) but his speciality is in creative accounting. His only tactic is to spend, borrow and cover both up by cooking the books. He is a trickster, not an economist. More Arthur Daley than Arthur Laffer. In my News of the World column today (£) I say he is dangerous to Labour as

The timing could hardly have been more resonant. On the day that Tony Blair is paraded, once again, in front of the Iraq Inquiry, Team Brown is firmly back in charge of the Labour party. For, I’m sure you’ve noticed CoffeeHousers, three of the four great shadow offices of state are occupied by former members of the Brown coterie: Ed Miliband, Ed Balls and Yvette Cooper. The fourth belongs to someone who doesn’t sit easily in either half of the TB-GB divide: Douglas Alexander. The question, of course, is what this means for Labour’s economic policy. And the answer according to Miliband is “nothing much”. The Labour leader has been

Today’s shocking inflation figures have sparked a fascinating debate. I laid out my take earlier, and I thought CoffeeHousers may appreciate a different perspective. Matthew Hancock MP is a member of the Public Accounts Committee, former economist at the Bank of England and former chief of staff to George Osborne. Fraser Nelson. Last week, growth. This week, inflation. Ed Miliband is complaining about both. But the trouble is: the two can’t be taken in isolation. For the main weapon against inflation is for the Bank of England to raise interest rates. Yet the main weapon to support growth is for the Bank of England to keep interest rates lower for

Ed Miliband has had three launches in three months – but, much as I hate to admit it, things are getting better for him. His party are now consistently ahead in the polls, so in my News of the World column today I look at what’s going right. Here are my main points: 1) Cameron’s embrace has, alas, proved toxic for the Lib Dems. I have been impressed by Nick Clegg since he entered government. I’d like to see him rewarded for the tough decisions he took, and in more ways than being named ‘politician of the year’ by the Threadneedle/Spectator awards. But it just isn’t happening. The ‘merger’ model

David Cameron was on Marr this morning (with yours truly doing the warm-up paper review), talking about the “tough and difficult year” ahead. Others have been through the interview for its general content. What interested me was its economic content: not the most sexy subject in the world, I know, but, as Alan Johnson unwittingly demonstrated on Sky this morning, the Labour Party looks unable to scrutinise the government’s economic policy. Anyway, here are ten observations:   1) “Because of the budget last year, we are lifting 800,000 people out of income tax, we’re raising income tax thresholds. That will help all people who are basic rate taxpayers.” Thanks to

The seasonal interlude has ended and Ed Miliband is sallying north to Oldham East. He will resuscitate old favourites from 2010: progressive cuts, fairness and a government bent of an ideological mission: but he will illustrate his point with reference to tomorrow’s VAT rise. Miliband will say: ‘Today we start to see the Tory-led agenda move from Downing Street to your street. At midnight VAT goes up, hitting people’s living standards, small businesses and jobs. The VAT rise is the most visible example of what we mean when we say the government is going too far and too fast, because it’s clear that it will slow growth and hit jobs.’

Ne’er mistake correlation with cause, I know. But, during the Brown premiership, the correlation between petrol prices and poll ratings was still pretty striking. Mike Smithson graphed it early last year, but the basic story was this: the Tories enjoyed their biggest poll lead over Labour when petrol prices were at their highest, and Labour closed the gap to only 1 percent when petrol prices were at their lowest. At the very least, it gives us a hypothesis to work from: prices up, the government suffers; prices down, the government recovers. And it looks as though we’ll be able to test that hypothesis soon enough. Today’s Express reports that –

The media pack is often blind to an impending political car-crash.  For instance, very few in Westminster, or the media, noticed the scrapping of the 10p tax band until the screech of twisting steel turned heads. The same is happening now in relation to living standards. The media and political establishment are yet to wake up to the fact that working families in Britain are about to become poorer (though hat-tip to Allister Heath for being quick off the mark on this front). The gathering wisdom is that, with the recession now behind us, household budgets will start to recover.  We have just published a new report – Squeezed Britain 

Oh dear. On Wednesday night, we at The Spectator saw David Cameron handing Lord Young his Spectator/Threadneedle Parliamentarian of the Year in the category of Peer of the Year. “Over the decades,” said yours truly, “Prime Ministers have come to value his advice. As Thatcher put it: ‘other people bring me problems, David brings me solutions.’” Not any more – David has brought him a problem, followed by a resignation. Less than 48 hours after picking-up our award, his political career appears to be at an end.   It is true that there are some people who have had a “good recession”. That is: faced no danger of losing their