Uk politics

Up until a few months ago, David Cameron and Nick Clegg tried to avoid doing big set piece broadcast interviews on the same day. This was driven by a desire to both maximise the coalition’s dominance of the media agenda and to avoid having to give a running commentary on what the other had said. But this rule has gone out of the window as the AV referendum has got rougher and rougher. So, following on from their both doing separate interviews on Andrew Marr on Sunday, they both were on the Today Programme this morning. Clegg even told Justin Webb to ask Cameron about the split between the two

At Cabinet this morning, I am told that Chris Huhne directly challenged David Cameron and George Osborne about the claims that the No campaign have been making. He asked them both in turn, if they were going to — or could — defend them. Osborne responded by telling Huhne that his behaviour was inappropriate and that Cabinet wasn’t the place for such disputes. The fact that this row broke out in Cabinet shows just how badly relations within the coalition have been damaged bv the AV campaign. That Huhne is leading the anti-Tory charge even within Cabinet will also stoke the rumours about what the Energy Secretary is planning to

Is AV too complex? Ask John Humphrys, who unwittingly made the case against switching system today, in conversation with David Cameron on the Today programme. It became clear that Humphrys believed that everyone’s second preference vote would be counted under AV — and Cameron pounced. Here’s the transcript: DC: If you go to an AV system you start counting some people’s votes more than once. And you end up, in the words of Churchill… JH: No you don’t. It simply isn’t true that you count votes more than once. DC: Yes, you count all the votes. You start eliminating candidates, and you count people’s second preferences. JH: And I have

The Royal wedding and gossip about super injunctions is rather dominating conversation at Westminster today. But there is still some politics going on. Patrick Wintour in The Guardian has the beginnings of the recriminations that will follow a No vote in the referendum. Relations between the Lib Dems and the Yes campaign are pretty bad at the moment. Clegg’s camp is happy to tell journalists about what they see as the myriad failings of the Yes campaign. They complain that the Yes campaign has been too slow on the draw, let the No side define the debate and failed to get any message across. The Yes campaign’s response to this

Blimey. That was a weird one. PMQs was trundling merrily away when the house was suddenly engulfed in a whirlwind of insults and accusations. Even now the row rumbles on across the blogosphere. Cameron arrived at PMQs looking genial and well-sunned. Quite a contrast with his sallow-faced opponent. Perhaps Ed Miliband’s bookish ways have kept him in the reading-room during the heat-wave while Cameron was roaming his herbaceous borders uprooting dandelions and other troublesome yellow-heads. The session began with the usual blend of opportunism and hypocrisy. Miliband demanded to know why economic growth has flat-lined in the last six months. Cameron lighted on a more favourable set of figures –

Or, rather, he’s back in portrait form, as unveiled earlier today: And here it is in full, Prime Ministerial context:

I have rarely heard the House as loud as it was after David Cameron’s ‘calm down, dear’ put down to Angela Eagle. The Labour benches roared at the Prime Minister and Cameron turned puce, while the Liberal Democrats looked distinctly uncomfortable. There is already a rather over-blown debate going on about whether the remark was sexist or not. But whether or not it was, it was certainly ill-judged. It was a tad too patronising and directing it at one of the more junior members of the shadow made it seem bullying. The Labour benches were heckling Cameron more than usual today, a result of him losing his rag with Ed