‘500,000 to lose sick pay as welfare reforms bite’. Those words boom from the front-page of the Times this morning – and they’re based on an article by Iain Duncan Smith (£) in which he admits that some 23 percent of the country’s 2.1 million Incapacity Benefit claimants could be found fit for work. This,
The trouble with holding a ministerial debate in public is that, when it comes to the crunch, it’s obvious who the winners and losers are. So it is with Vince Cable and higher education funding. A couple of months ago, the business secretary tap-danced onto the stage with a (problematic) plan for a new graduate
If Alan Johnson continues as he has started, then he may be a surlier, snarlier shadow chancellor than many of us expected. He’s got an article in today’s News of the World and an interview in The Observer – and, in both, he’s on unusually combative form. Osborne’s cuts are labelled as “deep and irresponsible,”
…the David Cameron rap, inspired by his speech on Wednesday: Hat-tip: Guido
It’s twenty years, to the day, since the UK joined the European Exchange Rate Mechanism – a decision that would, of course, culminate in our withdrawal on Black Wednesday, 16 September, 1992. Subsequent years of strong growth placed those events in a fresh context, but here’s The Spectator’s take from 1990: The dangers of stageism,
There are several eyecatching appointments in Ed Miliband’s shadow cabinet. Ed Balls at Shadow Home puts Labour’s most vicious scrapper up against a wobbly government department. Yvette Cooper as Shadow Foreign Secretary is a suitable reward for her showing in the elections, but it is a counterintuitive use of her background in economics. MiliE loyalists
…and Yvette Cooper is shadow foreign secretary. Ed Balls gets shadow home. So, looks as though Ed Miliband has bypassed the family psychodrama with an appointment that few expected, or even thought of, until this morning. Johnson was 16/1 with Ladbrokes for the shadow chancellorship going into today. UPDATE: Paul Waugh has the full list.
David Cameron clearly wants us to waltz into the weekend with the Big Society on our minds – so he’s written an article on the idea for the Sun. It rattles through all the usual words and phrases, such as “responsibility” and “people power”, but it strikes me how he applies them just as much
How do you get from David Cameron to Simon Cowell in two, easy steps? Answer: Andy Coulson. The former News of the World editor is, of course, Cameron’s director of communications – but he also happens to be on friendly terms with the X-Factor impresario. We set out this, and all the other tangled relationships
You can say what you like about Labour’s penchant for internal elections, but at least it makes for good, political entertainment. Tonight, the results of the shadow cabinet elections will be released, and we’ll discover which of the 49 nominees made it into the final 19. Then it will fall to Ed Miliband to force
Put aside all the post-match analysis of David Cameron’s speech: the most intriguing story in the papers this morning is this one in the FT. It claims that the Treasury is working on plans to “reprofile” the spending cuts, which basically means “delay” them. The idea would be to push the bulk of the cuts
Ok, so that was a peculiar kind of speech from David Cameron – neither wholly successful, nor wholly unsuccessful. In terms of its general tone, it was much as we expected: a dose of bitter realism about the public finances, lacquered over with heavy optimism about what the country can be. But its content was
1537, PH: And Cameron ends on that note, calling on the public to get involved in fixing society: “So come on: let’s pull together. Let’s come together. Let’s work, together, in the national interest.” Standing ovation. More reaction on Coffee House shortly. 1537, PH: This is good, liberal-conservative stuff from Cameron. He says that the
Who’d have guessed that David Cameron would go into his conference speech on the backfoot? This was supposed to be a moment tinged, if anything, with jubilation: the first Tory PM for thirteen years addressing a party that seems to have fallen in love with him. But instead we’ve got the child benefit row, and
There was a quiet momentousness about Iain Duncan Smith’s speech in Birmingham today – even before he started speaking. When IDS resigned the Tory leadership in 2003, he could barely have imagined that he would one day address his party as a leading member of the government. Even a few weeks ago, he couldn’t have
The first Boris vs Ken poll of the season carries an obvious health warning: there are other candidates to come, not to mention another one-and-half years of the current mayoral term. Yet Tories might still be pleased that their man is 9 points ahead of his predecessor and main rival at this stage. And that’s
Courtesy of Ben Brogan, one of the most noteworthy passages from David Cameron’s appearance on Today this morning: ‘Jim Naughtie: Is the Trident upgrade untouchable? David Cameron: We do need an independent nuclear deterrent… JN: Is that a yes? DC: Yes. Basically I was going to give you a longer and fuller answer but the
Whether you agree with the plan to restrict child benefit or not – and, broadly speaking, I do – there’s little doubting that it has met with some fiery resistance in the papers today. The Telegraph leads the attack, calling it “a hastily conceived about-turn bundled out on breakfast TV”. The Daily Mail highlights the
It was all so Osborne-a-go-go earlier that we didn’t have chance to mention Boris’s speech to the Tory conference. By way of rectifying that oversight, here’s footage of the Mayor of London taking on the trade unionists who have organised a Tube strike today. His proposal that at least half the members of a union
George Osborne delivered everything we expected, and then some. This was a confident and wide-ranging speech from a Chancellor who has suddenly discovered a central message: what’s right about burning £120 million of taxpayers’ cash in debt interest payments every day? Wouldn’t it be better to get to grips with that waste as soon as