James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
The evening before the government was formed, I walked back from the television tent city on College Green to the House of Commons with a man who was about to become a cabinet minister. The evening before the government was formed, I walked back from the television tent city on College Green to the House
We are entering the end game of the spending review. The Department of Education settled this morning, according to both Tory and Lib Dem sources. Although there is confusion about whether the money for the pupil premium is coming from inside or outside the education budget – Clegg’s speech suggested outside but other Whitehall sources
Today brings another couple of reminders of the coalition’s potential political problem with the middle class. In the Telegraph, Peter Oborne attacks Cameron and Osborne for a “morally disgusting” policy of targeting the middle class for an outsize share of the fiscal pain. While the Mail’s front page screams ‘What does get you locked up?’
The piece in the New York Times magazine this weekend on the Obama presidency illustrates how far he has fallen. A large chunk of it is devoted to whether or not he can win re-election, something that most of his supporters used to take for granted. Significantly, the Obama White House itself is admitting that
Score the first round to Ed Miliband. In his debut PMQs performance, Miliband comfortably got the better of David Cameron, forcing him onto the defensive for most of the session. Miliband’s first question was a long and worthy one about the death of Linda Norgrove, the UK aid worker, in Afghanistan last week. Then, he
Politically, one of the key questions about Lord Browne’s suggestion that tuition fees should be raised is how the tribunes of the middle classes react. Will a rise in fees be seen as another burden on those who work hard, play by the rules and are already bearing more than their fair share of the
In the government’s grid for the week, Sir Philip Green’s report into how to make the public sector more efficient was meant to be the top story today. For an obvious — and tragic — reason it is not. Politically, the report was meant to help the government make its case that the cuts can
“You only get cut through when there’s a row,” one Tory observed to me on Friday as we discussed the anger that had followed George Osborne’s announcement on child benefit. So in one way, the Tories are not unhappy with the fact that this story is still rumbling on. It is imprinting on the public
Charles Moore’s column in the Telegraph today is one of the best articles you’ll read this year. The nub of his argument is that: “Mr Cameron finds himself the heir both to Blair and to Thatcher. To Blair, because he has had to take his party away from its preferred territory and pay attention instead
In many ways, Gordon Brown and George Osborne are opposites. In many ways, Gordon Brown and George Osborne are opposites. When Brown became chancellor, he moved into the smallest, dingiest office on the Treasury’s ministerial corridor — eschewing the grand office that had been used by his predecessors. He also made great play of turning
Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair’s chief of staff, is the latest veteran of the Brown Blair era to have his say and he is even more vicious about Gordon Brown than Peter Mandelson was. In his memoirs, which are being serialised in The Guardian tomorrow, he says that Blair ‘felt physically threatened’ when Brown leaned over
The shadow Cabinet results threw up some surprises. The most unexpected failure was that of Peter Hain. As a key Ed Miliband backer, it was widely expected he would make it on. Diane Abbott not making the cut was widely expected, she’s not popular with her parliamentary colleagues. But few would have predicted how well
One of the most intriguing questions about the decision to take child benefit away from households with a higher rate taxpayer in them is whether it marks the beginning of the end for universal benefits. The quotes today from Michael Fallon, the Tory vice-chairman, certainly suggest that it does. Fallon ridicules Ed Miliband with the
The coalition’s immigration cap is, as several Conservative Cabinet ministers have pointed out privately, flawed. It threatens to cap the kind of immigration that bothers almost nobody, high skilled foreign workers coming to this country to do a specific job. As Ken Clarke has told colleagues, the problem is that Labour — albeit right at
David Cameron was speaking in odd circumstances today. He was talking to a party that was back in power after more than a decade in opposition. But unlike Tony Blair in 1997 he couldn’t devote his speech to a celebration of that both because his party did not win a majority and because of the
We have heard much since the coalition was formed about how Cabinet government has been restored. The child benefit flap reveals how limited this restoration is. There was no Cabinet approval of the decision and, as Andrew Grice confirms this morning, Iain Duncan-Smith was unaware of the change until the morning of the announcement. The
Last night, one minister came up to me nervously and asked, ‘is this our 10p tax moment?’ He was talking, obviously, about the decision to take child benefit away from households with a higher rate taxpayer in them. My answer was no. The comparisons with Brown’s removal of the 10p tax rate miss a
Today was a reminder of the tax change that would give Tory re-election chances a massive boost, raising the threshold at which the higher rate kicks in. Indeed, electorally dealing with this is far more important than the abolition of the 50p rate and has been made more so by the decision to link the
In the last few weeks, there has been much speculation that child benefit would be stopped when a child reaches 16. Today’s announcement suggests that this is not going to happen, although the Tories are refusing to rule it out. If there are to be changes to child benefit — and given the financial situation
The most important line in George Osborne’s speech was this one: “It’s very difficult to justify taxing people on low income to pay for the child benefit of those earning so much more than them.” Logically, this argument applies equally to all other universal benefits. Why should someone on £12,000 a year be paying tax