More from The Week

A small revolution was announced by the Education Secretary this week, undramatic in itself but one which promises to end Labour’s practice of eroding academic standards in order to make the statistics look good. A small revolution was announced by the Education Secretary this week, undramatic in itself but one which promises to end Labour’s practice of eroding academic standards in order to make the statistics look good. Michael Gove has declared he will replace the current system of league tables, which judges schools on all GCSE passes, with a system that looks only at the five traditional subjects.

Philip Collins reviews the week in politics Other people’s families are always strange. How much stranger when the idea of a political fight within a family is no longer a metaphor. Ed Miliband recently told of his parents’ journey to England and his gratitude for their refuge here. This dramatic and effective story could have been a moment of emotional differentiation if it weren’t for the inconvenient fact that the other serious candidate has the same parents. The battle for the Labour leadership remains a curious contest which has provoked no curiosity. The public was asked this week which of the candidates would make the best prime minister: 64 per cent said either none of the above or that they didn’t know.

Just occasionally, a government comes up with a proposal that is so sensible it makes the opposition’s kneejerk criticism seem pathetically misjudged. So it is with David Cameron’s plan to use data from credit agencies to trap benefit cheats who are stealing £5.6 billion annually from the taxpayer. Opponents will have to do better to explain why this is an incursion on civil liberties when exactly the same information is used on a routine basis by banks and retailers to judge customers’ creditworthiness. If a benefit claimant is spending £2,000 a month on his credit card while supposedly unfit to work, it is the government’s duty to pick this up.

No Prime Minister wants to do battle with the European Union, which is why it has accrued so much power in such a short space of time. When preparing for government, David Cameron was warned by the Civil Service that if he wanted to wrestle powers back from Brussels — as he has promised to do in party conference speeches — then it would absorb at least a year of his time in Downing Street. Since then, his approach has been to spend as little time as he can on the subject, hoping it will not appear on his political radar. While he may well have no interest in Brussels, but Brussels has all too much interest in Britain.

When George Osborne attended his first meeting of European finance ministers on Tuesday, he may well have felt a pang of pity for his Continental colleagues. True, Britain has the worst deficit and the most rampant inflation in Western Europe. True, Mr Osborne may have been outmanoeuvred over the regulation of hedge funds. But the Chancellor has a trump card: the pound sterling. When it tumbles, we can export our way back to growth. When Greece implodes, we can maintain a studied distance. All things considered, it could be worse. We could be Germany. Germany’s dire situation today offers the most eloquent of all arguments against the concept of a single currency.

As valedictory Budget statements go, this one did not disappoint. Alistair Darling may lack Gordon Brown’s verbal chutzpah, but he made full use of Labour’s arsenal of debt and tax concealment tricks, all of which have been carefully honed by this government since 1997. The most important points were buried in the fine print, missing altogether or assumed away thanks to growth and revenue forecasts so optimistic that they would have made even Lehman Brothers’ accountants blush. The central ‘achievement’ of this Budget — that the deficit this year will be £167 billion rather than £178 billion — is something which any self-respecting Chancellor should be deeply ashamed about. This sum still represents an overspend of 11.

There was much that was absurd about Wednesday’s pre-Budget Report, from Alistair Darling’s failure to outline a realistic plan to prevent Britain’s national debt from exploding, to his risibly over-optimistic long-term growth forecasts. Public spending will jump again next year, we’re told. Schools, hospitals and police will be protected from cuts if Labour wins the election — which, plainly, it has not the slightest expectation of doing. This was about political positioning, banker-bashing, with a new bonus tax, and pretending to the electorate that a few efficiency savings and National Insurance tweaks will be enough to rescue Britain. The intention was to deceive voters, with the pain only kicking in after the election.

Pity Alex Salmond and his separatist supporters. The publication of their manifesto for Scottish independence this week is no threat to the Union, but a requiem for a dream now vanquished. The devolution settlement gave them the rope, and now they’ve managed to hang themselves with it. During Mr Salmond’s tenure as First Minister, Scotland’s economic situation has become progressively worse. If Gordon Brown did not send home pocket money — a subsidy of £11 billion each year — Scotland would have a budget deficit that would put even Britain’s to shame. So now Mr Salmond is under pressure: this week he had to demote one of his ministers to avert defeat in a no-confidence vote and he is being routed in Glasgow’s by-elections.