Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of The Spectator and author of Why We Get the Wrong Politicians. She also presents Radio 4’s Week in Westminster.
There was a moment in the last Budget statement where George Osborne revealed that the deficit was – just – lower in the year to April 2012 than the previous 12 months. He made it by a whisker. Today, the statisticians have revised their opinion and said borrowing for that financial year was is up
The 42 ‘Alternative Queen’s Speech’ bills laid by Peter Bone and Philip Hollobone are very useful for the Lib Dems, as they can use them to argue that this is what a Tory majority government would look like. A source close to Clegg says they serve as an example ‘for any members of the public
The Tory leadership held one of its election strategy meetings yesterday at Chequers. The Prime Minister and his colleagues will have been reassured that their party certainly seems to be turning its face towards 2015, with some of David Cameron’s fiercest critics preferring to get behind the campaign for James Wharton’s referendum bill. I look
Bravo to Owen Paterson for making such an extensive and detailed case for the value of genetically-modified crops today. That he gave this speech to Rothamsted Research at all is provocative, but if you read it in full, you will find a thoughtful and far more equivocal argument than the debate surrounding it suggests. The
That former Care Quality Commission chief executive Cynthia Bower resigned so quickly from her current job after being named as one of the three executives involved in a discussion about covering up the Commission’s failings simply underlines what an appalling mess this case has been from start to finish. The names were withheld ostensibly because of data
What a lot of fun Michael Gove is having with Stephen Twigg’s latest policy pronouncements. The Education Secretary has written a fabulously long letter to his Labour shadow following up on Monday’s speech with 36 questions. He charmingly writes: ‘I am sure your speech was the result of a well-thought-through reflection on schools policy and
The Tory party is currently offering a campaigning masterclass on James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill. As Coffee House revealed last night, any member of the public can sign up to co-sponsor the backbench legislation, and the party has spent a great deal of time squaring backbenchers on the wording of the bill to prevent further
George Osborne is expected to respond to the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards’s final report in his Mansion House speech this evening. The report is hefty and packed with recommendations, but there are two areas where the Chancellor will find himself treading a particularly tricky path. Both the proposal to defer bonuses and introduce a
…bad bankers The commission wants to encourage greater personal responsibility, through making it clear with whom the buck stops for each key area within a bank, and sanctions including a criminal offence of reckless misconduct in the management of a bank. The report emphasises that it would be rare to secure a conviction under this
This story broke as an exclusive in tonight’s Coffee House Evening Blend, a free round-up and analysis of the day’s political stories. Click here to subscribe. The Conservatives will table James Wharton’s Private Member’s Bill for an EU referendum tonight for publication tomorrow. Coffee House has exclusive details of the changes to this piece of
The debate about the Syrian crisis is now as much about shoulda, woulda, coulda, as it is about what can happen now. Douglas Alexander’s response to the G8 communique this afternoon said: ‘This statement begs the question whether a different diplomatic approach by the Prime Minister, not focusing so much effort on lifting the arms
Remember that last communique signed at a summit of world leaders, the really challenging one that they’re all worried they will never meet in reality? You don’t? How strange. David Cameron mused at the weekend that these agreements that take days to draft end up in an ‘elephant’s graveyard’, and to try to show that
Those cracking jokes about bears visiting the woods following Ken Clarke’s latest warning about the dangers of Britain leaving the EU miss the point. The former Chancellor and Minister without Portfolio is firstly echoing the stance of his boss, rather than briefing against him, and is secondly continuing to plug away at the case for
Michael Gove is naturally having some fun with Stephen Twigg’s schools speech. The Education Secretary has responded to Twigg’s plan for ‘parent academies’ by saying: ‘Labour’s policy on free schools is so tortured they should send in the UN to end the suffering. On the one hand Stephen Twigg says he will end the free
The Treasury is entering its last minute negotiations with recalcitrant departments ahead of next week’s spending review announcement. But for all the talk of ‘difficult decisions’, the settlement doesn’t look as though it will take some of the more difficult decisions about the shape of government itself. In a Free Enterprise Group paper published today,
Stephen Twigg is, as he probably expected, coming in for a bit of flak on his U-turn on free schools this morning. Labour’s Shadow Education Secretary has launched his own plan for ‘parent academies’, which Toby Young and James Kirkup have had some fun with here. But he is basically doing what Lord Adonis has
While the G8 begins today with splits already clear on Syria, David Cameron will be aware, as he sits down for talks with world leaders, that the splits in his own Parliament are becoming increasingly vocal. It’s not just Boris Johnson’s column in today’s Telegraph in which the Mayor of London warns that ‘we won’t
David Cameron is far more optimistic than Nick Clegg about arming the Syrian rebels: that much has been clear for a while. He explained why he’s optimistic on Sky’s Murnaghan programme this morning, arguing that if the West doesn’t work with the ‘good’ rebels, then the ‘bad’ rebels will have more of an opportunity to
Tony Blair has plenty to say on the crisis in Syria in his interview in today’s Times, as you might expect. But he also makes a few points on other aspects of foreign policy that are worth noting, particularly regarding Europe. The former Prime Minister tells Alice Thompson and Rachel Sylvester that David Cameron was
David Cameron was pressed on Barack Obama’s decision to give assistance to the Syrian rebels when he spoke to journalists in the Downing Street garden this afternoon. He gave a long answer, the transcript of which you can read at the bottom of this post, along with the audio. But here are the key points
