Economy

The word flying around Westminster this evening is that the government is going to announce a fresh package to stimulate growth tomorrow. In line with recent reports, the expectation is that new enterprise zones will be unveiled. Enterprise zones are, of course, the linchpin of the chancellor’s current strategy, offering generous tax breaks for start-up industries, relaxed planning regulations and investment in state-of-the-art broadband, so this would not be a novel move. But an announcement would be timely nonetheless.

David Cameron and Ed Miliband both gave speeches on the riots this morning and the political dividing lines between the two are becoming more and more apparent. Cameron argues that these riots were about culture not poverty, Miliband thinks you can’t ignore inequality. Cameron believes that society needs two parent families, Miliband that it is about parental responsibility. Cameron doesn’t want an enquiry, Miliband does. The challenge for Cameron now is to turn the social analysis in his speech, which I think was broadly correct, into actual policy. Already in Conservative circles, people are saying that if Cameron really does want to support two parent families then surely he must use the tax system to both encourage marriage and help those who are married.

If there's one sentiment that defines George Osborne's article for the Telegraph today, it’s that there is no need for us Brits to panic. The economic convulsions of the past few days, contends the Chancellor, serve to prove that the coalition was right to approach deficit reduction as it has. "The alternative of more spending and yet more borrowing is now frankly ludicrous," he says, "and places those who advocate it on the outer fringes of the international debate." He has a point. As I blogged on Saturday, there are reasons to believe that we'd be hurtling towards a credit downgrade and higher borrowing costs were it not for the fact that our debt-GDP ratio is set to decline by 2015.

A credit downgrade, unemployment at 9.1 per cent, spluttering growth — the economic cards are certainly stacked against Obama for his re-election in 2012. But here's the thing: American punters still think that he's more likely to win next November than not. Perhaps that's because, contrary to Clinton's famous slogan, it's not actually all about the economy. According to Nate Silver's analysis of the last 25 presidential elections, a better rule of thumb is "it’s half the economy and half everything else, stupid". So if Obama's losing the first half, what about the "everything else"?

Business Secretary Vince Cable was on strident form this morning, pledging to drop controversial web-blocking from the government’s plan to tackle internet piracy. But his Conservative colleagues at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), Ed Vaizey and Jeremy Hunt, disagree. Ed Vaizey, the minister responsible for the creative industries, is to chair a meeting on 20th September with internet service providers, copyright holders and other stakeholders, and web-blocking is on the agenda. Originally, the government proposed blocking broadband access at addresses (both real and virtual) where illegal downloads took place.