Uk politics

For people in the communication business politicians have an uncanny ability to confuse even their better intentions by resorting to clumsy, even stupid, language. Thus David Davis earlier today. When normal people hear the phrase “shock therapy” I’m pretty sure they associate it with pretty awful, even ghastly, measures that, most of the time, don’t even have the saving grace of working. You wouldn’t want any of your relatives to be given shock therapy. It’s A Clockwork Orange or One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest stuff. Davis is not alone. Dominic Raab says the “talented and hard-working have nothing to fear” from removing “excessive” employee protections. I suspect many hard-working

George Osborne has told Andrew Marr this morning that the reshuffle is ‘not far away’ and that he is staying put. As we said in this week’s magazine leader, reshuffling a Chancellor half way through a parliament would be a major admission of defeat, and for little practical gain. The main issue for the Prime Minister to face now is how the public will react if popular figures are reshuffled. One by one, all of the reshuffle targets have fought their corner through the press. Ken Clarke, Justine Greening, Jeremy Hunt, Baroness Warsi and today Vince Cable have all made made their case publicly to stay where they are. But

‘If concerns are expressed, we look into them. We’ve done that.’ When Glenys Stacey appeared on Sky News this evening after Ofqual finally published its initial report into the gradings of the GCSE English exams, she had an air of finality about her. What the chief executive of the regulator was trying to suggest, as she discussed the report’s findings with the presenter, was that this was the end of the row. Even though Ofqual’s report said the problem with last week’s GCSE results was not that the papers taken in June had been marked too harshly, but that those sat in January were marked too generously, this is not the