Conservative party

To these eyes, this afternoon’s phone hacking debate was a surprisingly sedate affair. Chris Bryant – proposing a motion to have an inquiry conducted by the Standards and Privileges committee into the News of the World’s actions – seemed to go out his way to depoliticise the argument, and other Labour MPs followed his lead. And so there was relatively little mention of Andy Coulson, with the emphasis instead on the wrongs that might have been done to the House by the police and the media more generally. It was, then, little surprise that Bryant’s motion was passed unanimously. There were some flashes of controversy and acid, though. Bryant himself

Nick Clegg’s speech today is meant to be one of a pair with David Cameron giving the other tomorrow. The speeches mark an attempt to set out an agenda for the government that goes beyond deficit reduction. The idea is that Clegg’s speech called ‘horizon shift’, which is all about making government policy more long term, goes hand in hand with Cameron’s speech tomorrow on ‘power shift’, the government’s plan to devolve power down. This twin-pronged approach came out of the political Cabinet at Chequers at the end of the last parliamentary term and a recognition that the coalition must be seen to be doing more than just reducing the

A noteworthy directional shift from Nick Clegg in his speech this morning. Instead of priming the us for “savage cuts,” as he once did, the Deputy PM is now deemphasising the severity of what’s to come: “Some of the hyperbole I have heard is just preposterous – this idea, that somehow, it is back to the 1930s. After the spending round, we are still going to be spending £700bn of public money – more than we are now.” To be fair, the basic message hadn’t changed: cuts are “unavoidable,” Clegg says, as we struggle to contain the deficit. But this new motif demonstrates just how keen the Lib Dem leader

You’ve got to hand it to Dan Hannan – he knows how to make a splash. His latest initiative is a cross-party campaign for an “in or out” referendum on Britain’s EU membership. You can find details in his article for the Telegraph today or, indeed, on the campaign’s actual website. But the basic argument runs thus: with the AV vote next year, referendums are now hardwired into the political mainstream – so why not give us a vote on one of the biggest questions of national sovereignty that we face today? And if you agree with him on that, you can sign up here. Hannan is, of course, making

Lucy Manning reports that Keith Vaz’s Home Affairs Select Committee will convene an investigation into the phone tapping scandal. Hauling Yates up before his eminence was a sleight of hand, calling for a second inquiry is as obvious as Jordan. Labour is confident and Coulson is their target. However, the Home Affairs Committee is more likely to examine the police’s inept investigations than the inner workings of a tabloid newsroom. (And so, according to Vaz, it will transpire.) Coulson will remain in the clear unless the CPS brings a prosecution on the basis of Sean Hoare’s new evidence. Labour will catch some collateral flak if this appeal goes ahead –

Keith Vaz’s sleight of hand to get Yates of the Yard before his committee today and to confirm that his officers will soon be talking to Andy Coulson is yet another reminder that Labour today has a lot more fight in it than the Tories did in 1997. Yates’ comments don’t come as a surprise; the government was making clear yesterday that Coulson was happy to talk to the cops. But they have pushed the story back up the news agenda — the 24 hour news channels are covering it live — just when it finally appeared to be dying down: mission accomplished for Vaz and Labour.