Philip hammond

Philip Hammond, the man the Tories have tasked with overseeing spending cuts should they get into power next year, has just given a speech to Policy Exchange on reducing waste and improving efficiency. Much of it reheated existing arguments about, say, transparent public spending – which doesn’t make those arguments any less valid.  But there are one or two other points worth mentioning here First, the very fact that Hammond was making this speech.  Introducing him, George Osborne complained that the Labour government has made Hammond’s potential role – Chief Secretary to the Treasury – a non- job, and that the Tories would restore it to being “one of the

Sit Philip Hammond in front of our very own Fraser Nelson, and you know that one topic’s bound to come up: the Tories’ commitment to the 50p tax rate.  And so it was at this morning’s DLA Piper and Spectator Business Breakfast Debate at the Merchant Taylors¹ Hall in Threadneedle Street. Fraser chided the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, claiming that this Tory policy would leave the restaurants in Zurich “doing very well,” as our entreprenurial class potentially leaves these shores behind.  “If the rich are going to suffer, are they going to stay?” Hammond’s response? That he didn’t think the tax would make people move abroad, and that

Here’s something new for party conference season: real people. About 200 of them. Firemen. Unemployed. And, yes, workers. They are brought to you courtesy of Victoria Derbyshire’s Five Live show, where I am sitting at the back listening to this mass focus group session. It has become (for me, anyway) an unmissable feature of the party conference season – a welcome injection of real life into the all-too-myopic conferences. Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet members turn up knowing that this session will be about all the normal, disinterested person will hear about the conference. Now and again, she asks them to clap or boo depending if they agree or disagree. It’s