David cameron

When an ICM phone poll this week had Labour level with the Tories for the first time since Jeremy Corbyn became leader, even the pollster cast doubt on the finding. But today, YouGov has Labour ahead by a point—34% to 33%. YouGov’s Anthony Wells says that this suggests ‘something is genuinely afoot’. Now, as the election reminded us polls are not all seeing. It is also doubtful what the value of a poll is this far out from a general election: Ed Miliband was regularly ahead by large margins during the last parliament and still went on to lose the election.

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thespectatorpodcast-politicalcorrectness-budget2016andraves/media.mp3" title="The Spectator Podcast: Osborne's Budget" startat=594] Listen [/audioplayer]George Osborne used to tell his aides to prepare every budget as if it were their last: to throw in all of their best and boldest ideas. But this week, the Chancellor has opted for political as well as fiscal retrenchment. This was a cautious budget. Its emphasis on infrastructure was as laudable as it was uncontroversial. There were few hostages to parliamentary fortune, which is sensible given the Tories’ small majority and the way in which the EU referendum is challenging party discipline. British government is on hold.

Normally when a Leader of the Opposition prepares for the Prime Minister's Questions before a Budget, it comes second to the prep for the difficult Budget response and focuses on a slightly random topic. The difference between this session and a normal PMQs is usually rather marked. But when Jeremy Corbyn rose today to ask his questions, his chosen topic of air pollution wasn't all that more eccentric than his usual range of subjects.  David Cameron's team does have to prepare a wider range of topics - albeit in less detail - for PMQs now that Corbyn is Labour leader. But even they hadn't thought of air pollution: Cameron had to answer his first question by saying he didn't have the figures that the Labour leader requested to hand.

David Cameron this morning claimed that people who wish to leave the EU are 'taking a risk with people's jobs, taking a risk with families' finances.' Well then let us consider an even bigger risk that David Cameron is taking. In a visit to Turkey in 2010 our own Prime Minister announced that he would do everything he could to ensure Turkey entered the EU. Speaking as a guest of the country's Islamist Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, our own PM said, 'Turkey deserves its place at the top table of European politics - and that is what I will fight for.' Since then he has indeed been fighting to get Turkey into the EU.  This is despite Turkey doing everything it can to demonstrate that it has no place in the EU.

Don’t expect ‘fireworks’ from the Budget one of Osborne’s closest political allies told me this week. Ahead of the Budget on Wednesday the Chancellor finds himself hemmed in by the EU referendum, fraying Tory discipline and the worsening global economic situation, I say in my Sun column this week. A Budget four years out from a general election is normally when a government takes some risks. But I doubt Osborne will be doing much of that on Wednesday. First, he doesn’t want to do anything to make the EU referendum more difficult for the government to win—the intensity with which David Cameron is campaigning reveals how worried he is about losing it. Second, Cameron and Osborne know that they can’t rely on Tory MPs at the moment.

In their interview in the Christmas edition of The Spectator, Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth asked the Prime Minister whether he now considered that his intervention in Libya had been a mistake. David Cameron accepted that matters could have gone better since the fall of Gaddafi, but insisted that ‘what we were doing was preventing a mass genocide’. Like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Gaddafi’s genocide seems to have been a fiction. It was reiterated over and over again by government and in the media in order to whip up support for the imposition a no-fly zone in March 2011. However, there was never any convincing evidence.

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the EU Commission, made a typically brilliant intervention in the EU referendum debate by arguing that ‘Whoever does not believe in Europe, who doubts Europe, whoever despairs of Europe, should visit the military cemeteries in Europe.’ Cicero made just this point to his brother Quintus, who in 59 bc was about to embark on his third term as governor of Asia Minor (now western Turkey): ‘Asia ought to remember that, if she were not governed by us, she would hardly have been spared the disasters of external war or internal discord. But our government cannot be maintained without taxes, and Asia ought without resentment to pay over some of her wealth as the price of permanent peace and quiet.

Pro-Brexit Tory Cabinet Minister would, I suspect, not be complaining about the government’s referendum campaign tactics if they didn’t fear that they were effective. Whatever you think about how he has done it, David Cameron has driven the risks of leaving the EU up the agenda this week. He has pushed the Out campaign onto the back foot. This is what makes Boris Johnson’s appearance on Marr tomorrow morning so important, I argue in my Sun column this week. Out need Boris to drive their agenda as successfully as Cameron is pushing IN’s. The interview is a big moment for Boris too.