Media

Not a lot is the short answer. Many commentators argue that the speech failed to match the gravity of this moment in time; that it was safe; that it was not prime ministerial. Steve Richards believes that Cameron was timid, choosing to reassure rather than challenge. He writes: ‘Yesterday in his address David Cameron did Ed Miliband an unlikely favour. He made Miliband’s seem deeper and substantial. The Labour leader’s address last week was poorly structured and delivered, yet compared with Cameron’s it had an argument and was at least an attempt to address the scale of tumultuous change sweeping across Britain. In contrast Cameron’s speech was a giddying guided tour

The hours before David Cameron’s speech have been filled by a row about the pre-briefed line that: “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills.” This was taken by several papers as the Prime Minister instructing people to pay off their credit cards bill now, something that would have reduced the prospects for growth even further. So, the line has now been changed to show that Cameron is just describing what’s going on. It is all mildly embarrassing. But this little flurry can’t disguise the fact that

I’ve been away from Birmingham today but, even from a distance, it’s clear that Tim Farron has had a rather difficult day. It started with a story in The Times this morning about upset among his fellow MPs about his rhetoric on Sunday implying that the coalition partners would get divorced before 2015 and continued with him getting in a bit of a tangle about his leadership ambitions in interviews with Andrew Neil and Gary Gibbon. Farron’s problem is that he is an obvious candidate to run in any future leadership contest and so the leadership will constantly push him about his intentions. These are hard enough questions for any

Nick Clegg was in combative mood on the Andrew Marr show earlier this morning; he railed against the press and the Daily Mail in particular. It wasn’t exactly an illuminating session, but here are some highlights: Clegg on the Mail: “Can I put this mildly? I really wouldn’t believe a word you read in the Daily Mail. This is the paper that called me a Nazi. They and other papers have got a bee in their bonnet about the coalition. They come up with drivel every single day. I’m in this because I believe it’s the right thing to do…I want to see us succeed in the coalition and beyond…Miriam

The anti-abortion lobby is unfortunate to have been lumped this week with Nadine Dorries as its unofficial spokesperson. Nadine is actually PRO-abortion, for starters, as she never seems to tire of pointing out. She does, however, possess many of the unpleasant characteristics associated with pro-lifers: she’s preachy, brimming with self-righteous zeal, and incapable of seeing her opponents’ point of view. She didn’t deserve to be barracked in the House of Commons today, perhaps, but the obnoxious way in which she argued for her amendment sealed its fate. It didn’t help, of course, that pro-life organisations steered well clear of Dorries and her amendment, which, in case you didn’t know, sought

If Tony Blair thought that a meeting with Gordon Brown was like dental surgery without anaesthetic, one wonders how David Cameron would describe being questioned on Europe by Bill Cash and Bernard Jenkin. At the liaison committee, the two veteran eurosceptics pushed Cameron on why he was supporting far greater fiscal integration in the Eurozone. Cameron’s answer was, basically, that this was the only way the Eurozone could be made to work. But one can’t help but feel that greater fiscal integration is simply storing up problems for the medium term given that it will do nothing about the divergence in competitiveness between Eurozone members. The rest of the session

It is a sign of just how close the Blairs and the Murdochs were that Tony is godfather to one of Rupert Murdoch’s young daughters. But it is also a sign of the changed politics around Murdoch that this news will now be a major embarrassment to Blair. Wendi Deng Murdoch has, the Daily Telegraph reports, told the October edition of Vogue that Blair was present at the christening of her two daughters on the banks of the River Jordan last year. He is, the paper says, godfather to the elder one. The news of this deeply personal link between Blair and Murdoch will strengthen Cameron’s case when he tries to argue that it

Public Enemy Number One, the unlikely figure of Dr David Starkey, is back in the papers; this time writing in the Telegraph to meet the cacophonous heckles that followed his appearance on Newsnight. Starkey begins with a viperous assault on Ed Miliband’s view that his comments were “disgusting and outrageous”, pointing out that black educationalists Tony Sewell and Katharine Birbalsingh broadly agree with him. Starkey then goes on to restate his position. The summer of discontent has revealed the “different patterns of integration at the top and bottom of the social scale.” He explains: ‘At the top, successful blacks, like David Lammy and Diane Abbot, have merged effortlessly into what