Here’s a question for you: should free school meals (FSM) be given to all pupils, regardless of their parents’ income? I ask because this is precisely what the Labour-led council of Southwark is proposing for its primary schools. As the Evening Standard reports, the councilmen’s thinking is that by giving “healthy” FSMs to every pupil,
Seems that the Tories can be more assertive too. After remaining more or less silent on the matter since the coalition was formed, George Osborne has today given his take on the AV referendum to the Daily Mail — and he’s far from kind towards the Yes campaign. “What really stinks,” says the Chancellor, “is
There’s an interesting post by Éoin Clarke on debt interest doing the rounds. It originally appeared on his blog, but was soon commandeered by LabourList — and little wonder why. Dr Clarke’s point is a perceptive and striking one. Debt interest, he says, is lower now than it was under John Major. The implication is
Here at Coffee House, we normally exhume a piece from The Spectator archives on Fridays. But we thought we’d make an exception, today, for the fiftieth anniversary of Yuri Gagarin’s ascent into space. The piece below is actually the only one that the magazine ran at the time, and is by the politician/journalist/author Desmond Donnelly.
There’s a new equation in British politics, and it’s one that Nick Clegg came up against this morning: Politician + Rochdale = Gillian Duffy. The Deputy Prime Minister was quizzed by Gordon Brown’s unassuming nemesis during his visit to the town earlier — and the results are in the video above. For what it’s worth,
Is the inflation panic over? After rising for five consecutive months, CPI inflation went down by a 0.4 percentage points in March, to 4.0 per cent, taking the City by surprise. RPI inflation also went down, by 0.2 percentage points. The numbercrunchers at the Office for National Statistics put it down, largely, to a fall
“I have to accept my responsibility.” Who would have thought that Gordon Brown would ever breathe those words, let alone breathe them to a conference in America over the weekend? Our former PM has, it’s true, suggested that his regulatory system was inadequate to the financial crash before now. But here he was much more
Ignore what your council is telling you. So says no less a personage than the Prime Minister of our country, speaking at one of his freewheelin’ roadshow events this afternoon. Cameron may have been referring specifically to the red tape being wrapped around Royal Wedding street parties, but it’s still a pretty pugnacious point for
Labour’s cartography department has been hard at work all weekend to produce this. It is, lest you haven’t heard Yvette Cooper today, an “interactive web-map” of the job losses announced by police forces so far, all across the country. You can interact with it in ways that include clicking to view a larger version. So
We really oughtn’t let the weekend pass without some mention of political events across the Atlantic. As you’ve probably heard, a US government shutdown was avoided on Friday evening, and all thanks to a budget compromise which saw Barack Obama slash a cool $38 billion from his spending plans. Although the debate over who has
We’ll try to get the video later, but, for now, a transcript of Norman Lamb’s appearance on the Politics Show will have to do (UPDATE: video added above). Here we had a very unusual political moment: an assistant whip, and adviser to Nick Clegg, not only calling for changes to government policy, but also threatening
Pause, listen, engage and … push back. That just about sums up Andrew Lansley’s article for the Sunday Express today, as well as the government’s general effort to reconstruct and repackage its shaky NHS reforms. Which is to say, the Health Secretary makes sure to mix reassurance (“There is no more important institution in this
Andrew Tyrie promised that the Treasury Select Committee would be an assertive, insistent body under his stewardship — and he hasn’t disappointed so far. The committee’s recent evidence sessions have been fiery affairs, particularly by the usual standards of these things. And today they have released the result: an extensive and prescriptive report into last
When is a split not a split? When it’s a subsidiary, of course. We learn this morning that the Vickers Banking Commission will not recommend a complete, Glass-Steagall-style separation of retail and investment activities. But it will advise that banks erect some sort of barrier between the two, to ensure that everyday savers’ (and taxpayers’)
Developments aplenty on the Portuguese front — the most noteworthy being that Britain is probably in for a €4.8 billion share of the €80 billion tab. Robert Peston explains the numbers here, although it basically comes down to the lending mechanisms that will be deployed. Add up our 13.5 per cent exposure to the European
Is the defence budget the most chaotic in all Whitehall? George Osborne said as much last October — and he’s still dealing with its hellish intricacies now. The main problem, as so often in military matters, is one of overcommitment. Thanks to various accounting ruses on Labour’s part, large parts of the MoD’s costs were
Well, David Cameron is doing his part to boost the Spanish economy — by EasyJetting to the country with SamCam to celebrate her 40th Birthday. But what about Spain’s peninsular cousins, the Portuguese? They were, more or less, the subject of George Osborne’s speech to the British Chambers of Commerce conference earlier — but not
How much are we in for? That is the question that springs most readily to mind after Portugal’s request for fiscal aid from the EU. And, sadly, the answer is difficult to work out. The figures being spread around range from £3 billion to £6 billion, with valuations in between. But, really, it depends on
Reassurance — that’s what the happy trio of David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Andrew Lansley sought to emit during their NHS event earlier. And reassurance not just about where the coalition is taking the health service (although there was plenty of that), but also about the “listening exercise” they are engaging in now. Although all
The birds chirruping in the sunlight clearly didn’t get Ed Balls’s memo. Otherwise they’d know that today is “Black Wednesday,” the day when the coalition’s tax and benefit policies swoop in to leave the average household some £200 a year worse off. This is the message that the shadow chancellor is broadcasting this morning, be