Eds Miliband and Balls gathered the press corps together this morning to broadcast a straightforward message: oh yes, we do have an alternative. And the shape of that alternative? A repeat of the one-off tax on bankers’ bonuses that, Balls claimed, raised £3.5 billion last year. The money would be used for an entire buffet
In or out? — that is the question that a new cross-party campaign would have put to the British people. And so they’re launching their “People’s Pledge” today. The idea is that voters would promise to support only those parliamentary candidates who back a referendum on our membership of the EU. The signatures will then
We’re pushing for a no-fly zone. France is pushing for a no-fly zone. And now the Arab League is pushing for a no-fly zone too. The news fresh out of Cairo is that the organisation has voted in favour of restricting airspace above Libya. It will now push the UN to do the same, which
It’s not just the protestors who are rallying against Nick Clegg today. Here’s what Ed Balls has to say about the Lib Dem leader, in interview with the Guardian: “‘Clegg looks an increasingly desperate, shrill and discredited politician, losing both public and party support. People think that if Clegg says something, it cannot be the
Devastation today, and devastation when a tsunami swept across Sri Lanka, and other countries around the Indian Ocean, in 2004. Here is Andrew Gilligan’s report from Columbo at the time, which sought to set the facts straight: The littoral truth, Andrew Gilligan, The Spectator, 8 January 2005 Columbo The staff of Unicef’s Sri Lanka operation
And, meanwhile, William Hague and David Cameron have issued statements on the disaster. Here’s Hague: “My thoughts are with the people of Japan at this time. We are in contact with the Japanese government and I have asked our Ambassador in Tokyo to offer all assistance we can as Japan responds to this terrible disaster.
Graphs and tables cannot ever convey the full tragedy of the situation in Japan, but the one above captures an important fact: that today’s earthquake is historic in size. At 8.9 magnitude, this Japanese disaster is the 7th largest on the US Geological Survey’s books. Because it struck on the seabed, its destructive energy is
What have the Lib Dems ever done for us? That’s the question that Nick Clegg sets about answering in interview with the Independent today — and he does so with righteous vigour. “Brick by brick, policy by policy, decision by decision, sometimes almost invisibly,” he insists, “we are putting in place good policies that will
VERDICT: A turgid sort of PMQs, where most of the quips were clumsy rather than cutting. Cameron probably won it by virtue of one of the few direct hits – his line about Ed Miliband knifing a foreign secretary, aka MiliD – and because Miliband failed, really, to prod and aggravate the coalition’s wounds over
The garbled horror stories just keep on rolling out of Libya. According to the latest reports, Gaddafi’s troops have attacked the rebels in Zawiyah with redoubled violence and force. Aircraft, tanks, bombs, mortars – all have been used against the city and its people, with what one assumes are bloody results. As one resident puts
Ah, there it is, in the final sentence of the fourth paragraph: a flattering reference to Ed Miliband. Phew. Good job David Miliband squeezed his brother’s name into his article on Labour’s future (£) for the Times today, otherwise it might have been July 2008 all over again. As it is, MiliD’s third newspaper article
What’s it to be? Take a pay cut, or lose your job? That, as David suggested earlier, is the question being posed by Theresa May to police forces – and it’s a question that they cannot shirk. With the police budget being cut by 4 per cent a year, there have to be reductions of
Uh-oh, the Prime Minster has “full confidence” in Prince Andrew as a UK trade envoy – the sort of endorsement that often means the direct opposite. In this case, though, I suspect that the line is more a hasty attempt to defuse some of the tension that has been building on this matter over the
There’s a fuse-meet-flame quality to PoliticsHome’s smart little scoop this morning. Our parliamentarians are already somewhat hacked off with IPSA, the body tasked with overseeing their expenses. So how will they react upon reading that IPSA spent £300,000 of taxpayers’ cash on furbishing their London office? The watchdog’s shopping list includes 25 cabinets (£2,295 each),
When it comes to the overall sway of British politics, Sadiq Khan’s article for the Guardian is probably the most important of the day. We’ve heard Ed Miliband say before that, “when Ken Clarke says we need to look at short sentences in prison because of high re-offending rates, I’m not going to say he’s
A strange sort of anniversary, but an anniversary nonetheless: it is 31 years, to the day, since Robert Mugabe took power in Zimbabwe, or Rhodesia as it was still called. In which case, here is The Spectator’s leading article from the time. It is, for the large part, a good demonstration of the benefits conferred
On any normal day, a missive from Tim Farron to George Osborne – urging him to axe the planned rise in fuel duty – would be striking enough. On a day when the Lib Dems finished sixth in a by-election, it has a whole lot more piquancy to it. I’m not saying that the Next
You may notice that the Liberal Democrats don’t feature in the first two graphs of the by-election result in Barnsley Central last night. Or, rather, they do – they’re just subsumed under the ‘Others’ category, having finished in sixth place. Second in the general election, sixth last night. The 1,012 votes for the
Need a bestiary to tell the hawks from the doves? Then this article (£) in the Times should serve your purpose. It’s an account of Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting on Libya, and the differences of opinion that transpired. Michael Gove, we are told, was “messianic” in his call for a tougher stance against Gaddafi. William Hague,
“A well-targeted aid budget is essential if Britain is to punch above its weight on the world stage.” That’s how Tim Montgomerie finishes his neat defence (£) of British aid policy for the Times today. But, putting aside the matter of whether it’s wise to give aid to, say, India at a time of spending
