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.
Ed Davey has managed to win his first major battle as Energy Secretary – against the might of the Treasury, no less. James blogged earlier in the week that the battle between Lib Dem and Tory on cutting subsidies for onshore wind generation would be a test of how well the coalition is actually working, and this
David Gauke was only elected in 2005, but it’s impossible that he can’t remember the Back to Basics campaign, and how well that moral campaign worked out for the Conservative Party. Its 1993 launch precipitated revelations of all kinds of non-traditional behaviour in the party, from affairs to cash for questions. Had the Exchequer Secretary
Ministers held their daily Cobra meeting this morning to check the progress of the Olympic preparations, with just three days before the opening ceremony. Following the meeting, Jeremy Hunt released a statement – about 15 minutes after the Crown Prosecution Service announced the latest charges in its phone hacking investigation – which started by describing
The Crown Prosecution Service this morning charged eight suspects in relation to phone hacking. These suspects, including Rebekah Brooks Andy Coulson face a total of 19 charges, which I’ve set out below. Rebekah Brooks, Andrew Coulson, Stuart Kuttner, Greg Miskiw, Ian Edmondson, Neville Thurlbeck and James Weatherup are all charged with conspiring to intercept the
The approach of eurozone leaders to the crisis in their region has so far been a piecemeal, sticking plaster approach. But this morning, calls are growing for big and effective bandages to bind up the wounds before it is too late. Late last night, ratings agency Moody’s warned that the size of those bandages was
Ed Miliband’s comments in the Independent today were clearly based on the assumption that Nick Clegg will not be around if and when it comes to negotiating a possible Lib-Lab coalition in 2015. Vince Cable has already thrown his fedora into the ring to be the next Liberal Democrat leader, and Miliband backed the calls for a
How many ministers will be using the Zil – sorry, Games – Lanes during the Olympics? The Prime Minister’s official spokesman said this morning that the lanes would be used on a flexible basis, and that ministers would stick to public transport. ‘The approach is that where possible they will use public transport,’ he said,
Downing Street confirmed today that the Prime Minister will meet US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in Downing Street this week. It sounds like a sensible plan, given Romney is so close to Obama in the polls at present. But there’s just one tiny little problem. I have, in my shorthand notes from a lobby
Tim Montgomerie has some excellent intelligence on ConHome this morning that Francis Maude is about to gain a new PPS. The Cabinet Office Minister’s former aide was Angie Bray, who was sacked after voting against the government at the second reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill. But Maude’s replacement PPS, Stuart Andrew, is also a
Bringing the UK Border Agency to heel has been one of the mammoth tasks facing ministers since the coalition formed. Ministers have recently been rather keen to suggest that backlogs in claims and migrants disappearing without a trace were coming under control – Immigration Minister Damian Green said at the start of this month that
The market data on Spain this afternoon suggests that the bailout sticking plaster agreed earlier by eurozone finance ministers wasn’t big enough to cover the wound even for a few hours. Ministers have signed off on the deal to lend Spain €100 billion to recapitalise the country’s banks, but the IBEX is down 5.8 per
A new cache of emails released today by the Bank of England reveal its deputy governor Paul Tucker was warned that it was ‘plausible’ that Libor rates were being ‘influenced by commercial incentives’. Tucker insisted in his appearance before the Treasury Select Committee that he and colleagues ‘thought it was a malfunctioning market, not a dishonest one’. But an
Jeremy Hunt has given an interview to House magazine this week which is well worth a read, not least because he deals rather graciously with the failure of his Liberal Democrat colleagues to support him when his back was against the wall over Murdoch. Even though Lib Dem ministers and MPs abstained on a vote calling for
Announcements from the International Monetary Fund are worded in such a way that everyone reading them comes away with something slightly different. So shortly after today’s report on the UK economy was released, Ed Balls put out a statement saying the report was a ‘very serious warning to the Chancellor that urgent action to boost jobs and
Ed Miliband used his speech this morning on policing to attack the shambles on Olympic security staffing created by G4S. That was a sensible thing for an opposition leader to do, and he managed to give quite a sensible speech, all in all. He did not fall into the trap of saying that all outsourcing
David Cameron’s interview with the Telegraph today reveals that the Prime Minister would not campaign for an ‘out’ vote in a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union. This will confuse some Conservatives, who had hoped that the ‘fresh deal and a fresh settlement’ that the Prime Minister described in the chamber earlier this month would
David Cameron made a surprise visit to Camp Bastion this afternoon. After a lunch of German sausage and potato with the troops, the Prime Minister made one announcement that may rile military chiefs, and another designed to keep them on side. The possibly irritating statement was that Cameron is ‘confident’ he could meet his promise
Ministers will be taking heart today that they seem to be finally breaking into buoyant markets outside the European Union. Figures from the Centre for Economics and Business Research show that for the first time the UK is exporting more to non-EU countries than it has been to its traditional main export market within Europe.
Louise Casey’s report on troubled families has come in for a few knocks today. The ‘troubled families tsar’ interviewed 16 families to draw up a picture of the challenges that those within the 120,000-strong group that the Prime Minister identified after last summer’s rioting as in need of focused work. Peter Mullen in the Telegraph says the research spells
Today’s headline figures on unemployment are good news: a 65,000 fall in the number of unemployed people to 2.58 million in the three months to May and a 0.2 per cent fall in the unemployment rate to 8.1 per cent of the economically active population. The focus is now growing on the Work Programme to deliver on
