James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The United Kingdom’s triple A rating is now lost with one credit rating agency, Moody’s. This is a politically difficult moment for George Osborne. Back in February 2010, he set keeping the triple A rating as one of the key tests of a Conservative government’s economic policy. His opponents will delight in pointing out that
The good news for Nick Clegg—and the bad news for David Cameron—is that the Liberal Democrats are racing certainties to hold Eastleigh in the by-election next Thursday. As I say in the magazine this week, the Liberal Democrats’ base in the constituency – they hold every ward in the seat – has given them an
Monday morning. Grant Shapps, the enthusiastic Tory party chairman, is sitting in a people-carrier, putting the final touches to a scathing press release attacking his Cabinet colleague, the Deputy Prime Minister. Press release dispatched, Shapps gets out of the car and embraces his candidate, Maria Hutchings, and the pair set off to canvass. On this
Andrew Mitchell’s piece in the FT today marks his return to normal politics post-Plebgate. Up to now, Mitchell has confined his post-resignation comments either to his old stomping ground of development or to the sequence of events that led to his premature departure from government. By contrast, today’s piece sees Mitchell getting involved in a
The jury in the trial of Vicky Pryce has been discharged having failed to reach a verdict. The decision comes after the jury informed the judge that they were highly unlikely to come to even a majority verdict. The retrial is scheduled to start on Monday. There are, obviously, limits to what can be said
The details of Labour’s mansion tax proposal remain, to put it politely, sketchy. Here’s the exchange between Andrew Neil and Sadiq Khan on the Sunday Politics on how Labour would work out which homes are worth more than two million pounds: AN: Do you rule out a re-evaluation of all properties? SK: There are a
The state owning banks is not a good thing. It is, as the annual row over bonuses at RBS demonstrates, very difficult to keep politics out of the running of the business. So, it’s encouraging news that the Treasury is moving to sell the government’s 82 percent stake as soon as possible. Today, the Mail
At the moment, the Tories intend to head into the next election with the worst of all airport policies. They won’t have announced where the much-needed extra runway capacity in the south east will be. But neither will they be ruling out extra runways at various existing airports or an entirely new airport. The risk
Those close to Ed Miliband stress that if elected, Labour will introduce a mansion tax to pay for the return of a 10p tax rate. I’m told that ‘short of publishing the manifesto two years early, we couldn’t be any clearer’. This new 10p band will apply to the first thousand pounds of income, making
There’s something gripping about a food scandal. The idea we could be inadvertently eating something taboo exercises a fascination on the public mind. But where has all the horsemeat in supermarket bolognese and burgers come from? At the moment, attention inside government is focused on Romania and Mexico. Romania is in the frame because of
The horsemeat scandal illustrates just how much of our daily government now takes place in Brussels. Owen Paterson is heading there today, for any real action on this crisis will have to be taken at a European level. One of those involved in the government’s response to this crisis tells me the problem is that
I suspect that David Cameron was in a better mood at the end of PMQs than at the start. He sailed through the session with relative ease. Ed Miliband went on living standards, his specialist subject, but his delivery was oddly flat. It was as if he was giving Cameron throw-downs in the nets rather
The latest ICM poll for The Guardian is interesting because it highlights the weakness in both the Tory and Labour positions. The Tories are 12 points behind on 29, doing appallingly with women voters—trailing Labour 25-51, and haven’t managed to halt UKIP’s momentum. But Labour’s position is not as strong as the headline figures suggest.
The Washington Post has an important story about how the Iranian regime is preparing for post-Assad Syria. The paper reports that American and Middle Eastern governments believe that Tehran is backing a 50,000 strong militia in the hope of keeping Assad in power and, if that’s not possible, defending its interests in the aftermath of
There’s normally no shortage of outrage in our politics. In Britain today, we specialise in working ourselves into a bate. This is what makes the lack of outrage at what happened at Mid Staffs all the more peculiar. If the government had received a report detailing such appalling behaviour in any institution other than an
The news coming back from Brussels is all pretty good for David Cameron, as Isabel noted this morning. He’s not isolated and looks set to succeed in his fight to see a cut in the overall EU Budget. Admittedly, the British contribution will still go up—a result of deals Tony Blair struck at the time
The political row over the changes to housing benefit, labelled the ‘bedroom tax’ by opponents, intensified this evening. In an open letter to the Labour leader (reproduced below), Iain Duncan Smith accuses Miliband of ‘a pathetic exercise in political point scoring and scare mongering’. In the feisty letter, Duncan Smith argues that the taxpayer is
This week’s Cabinet meeting was a deceptively straightforward affair. Conservative and Liberal Democrat ministers met as usual, and discussed economic competitiveness and their priorities for the next Queen’s speech. It was a convivial gathering of coalition allies. But no one mentioned the elephant in the room: the Eastleigh by-election, a contest that will pit minister
At a particularly unedifying PMQs today, one Labour MP even suggested that ministers need cognitive behavioural therapy. The cause of all this rancour: the so-called ‘bedroom tax’. Now, the ‘bedroom tax’ is not actually a tax. Rather, it is a reduction in the amount of housing benefit paid to those who — according to the
More Tory MPs have voted against gay marriage than have voted for it, with initial estimates from the vote (which was won 400 votes to 175) suggest 139 Tories voted against the legislation and 132 voted in favour. This was not the result that David Cameron was hoping for when his government introduced gay marriage
