Attack, attack, attack. That’s the temper of George Osborne’s article for the Guardian this morning, which sets about Labour’s economic credibility with a ferocious sort of glee. Perhaps the best passage is where he asks how many times Labour can spend their ubiquitous “bank tax,” but this is more pertinent to the recent debate: “Where
Boris kicks off his Telegraph column today by observing that Colonel Gaddafi and Gordon Brown “look vaguely similar”. And yet the really provocative copy, at least so far as the government is concerned, is reserved for the final paragraph: “It is bonkers [by pushing for AV] to be pursuing the last manoeuvre of a cornered
As an independent creature, the Resolution Foundation’s new Commission on Living Standards isn’t doing Ed Miliband’s work for him. But, boy, must the Labour leader be glad that they exist. At their launch event this morning, the “squeezed middle” – aka low-to-middle earners – suddenly took shape. There were graphs, such as those in James
Remember when Gordon Brown came up against Fern Britton in a TV interview? I’ve pasted the video above to remind CoffeeHousers of two persistent truths: how tricky a subject petrol costs can be for a serving Prime Minister (watch on from around the 0:50 mark), and how Labour are hardly blameless when it comes to
Ed Balls has been warming up to this one for a while, and now it has finally come: an all-out attack over rising prices. In an interview with the Sunday Times (£), the shadow chancellor warns of Britain’s “cost of living crisis,” and demands that George Osborne reverse the VAT increase. Much of his pleading
Did any CoffeeHousers hear this discussion between Bill Cash and Stephen Pound on whether the left or the right have the most attractive politicians? It was inspired by a recent Swedish research report that came down in favour of the latter. You can read the whole thing at this link – but, seeing as it’s
Some speculation (£) today that the Office for Budget Responsibility will shortly downgrade its 2011 growth forecast – and hence the growth forecast in next month’s Budget. If so, then you can expect Ed Balls to crow on and on about it. He did, after all, prime the attack in his recent clash with George
Oh look, the ruling Fianna Fail party is set for defeat in the Irish election. Unsurprising, for sure, but the scale of their drubbing will still be something to behold. An exit poll conducted by RTE has them in third place on only 15.1 percent of the vote – which, as Sunder Katwala points out
Slowly, haltingly, the West decides what to do about Gaddafi. The latest news is that, having broken his silence over Libya a few days ago, Barack Obama is now imposing sanctions against its despicable regime: freezing assets, blocking transactions, that sort of thing. It follows a package of sanctions, including an arms embargo, that Britain
No need to explain why we’re disinterring this interview with Saif Gaddafi, by Justin Marozzi, from out of the archives. Given his “rivers of blood” warning this week, his claim that “I’m very enthusiastic to see Libya as an oasis of democracy, a society that respects the environment and human rights and so on, and
The Office for National Statistics’ preliminary figures for Q4 growth, released a few weeks ago, were a curious beast. They they were, suggesting that because of a snow-laden December our economy had started shrinking again, to the tune of -0.5 per cent. And yet so many other indicators were doing rather nicely: from activity in
Last we heard, the government was considering what it should, and could, do to suppress rising fuel prices. I wonder whether they have now pencilled something into March’s Red Book. You see, after a swell of speculative fear triggered by events in the Middle East, the cost of oil is going up, up, up. Brent
“Now he and his leader know what it’s like to be people’s second choice,” trilled George Osborne during his recent encounter with Ed Balls over the dispatch box. But might Balls actually have been Miliband’s third choice for the shadow chancellorship? That’s the implication of a delicious little story in today’s Sun, which claims that
Do head over to ConservativeHome, where Tim Montgomerie has put together a comprehensive guide to the revamped Downing Street operation. I won’t spoil its considerable insights here, except to highlight this: “An analysis of papers sent to Downing Street and the Cabinet Office has revealed that just 40% are directly related to the Coalition’s programme.
If Muammar al-Gaddafi weren’t still in charge of a country, then his speech for Libyan State TV would have been straight-up hilarious. There he was, all spittle-flecked bombast, rattling on and on about the “bunch of rats and cats” who are trying to depose him, and blaming their actions on, erm, hallucinogenic drugs. “We Libyans
The people of Egypt and Libya may have swung the spotlight onto their respective countries – but it is a spotlight that Iran is keen to exploit. Two of their warships have just passed through the Suez canal en route to Syria, the first to do so since 1979. They were given clearance by Egypt’s
Aside from official – and provocative – proclamations from Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, the news from Libya is still arriving piecemeal. The latest reports are that the protestors have prevailed in Zawia, in the west of the country, to add to their “liberation” of Benghazi last night. And there is some speculation that Gaddafi Senior has
Call it the Big Society, decentralisation, people power, whatever – but David Cameron’s vision for society just became a good deal more concrete. In an article for the Telegraph this morning, the Prime Minister makes a quite momentous proposal: that there ought to be a new presumption towards diversity in public services, whereby the private,
Slam one down on the bar, scoop in some crushed ice and finish with a slug of grenadine. Paul is straight from the cocktail school of cinema. Which is to say, it contains a handful of familiar ingredients — the buddy movie, the road movie, Star Trek, stoner gags, granite-jawed FBI agents — all swept
The morning after the day before, it seems that some of the murk around Abdelbaset al-Megrahi’s release has lifted. In particular, one thing is explicit that wasn’t before: that the policy of the Brown government was to “do all it could” to facilitate the convicted Lockerbie bomber’s transfer to Libya. We might have surmised the
