George osborne

It is to his credit that nuance is a word inimical to Lord Tebbitt. The unashamedly independent voice of the past has written a cutting piece about the coalition, the Lib Dems and the Oldham East by-election. He says: ‘A Lib Dem win would tilt the Coalition even farther Left and away from Conservative policies.’ Many Tory ministers joke that they thought themselves right wing until meeting their Liberal colleague. This is a radical government that many on the right can cheer.

This comment from Nick Clegg – speaking to the Evening Standard today – deserves pasting into the political scrapbook: “Let me be absolutely clear once and for all. The Liberal Democrats will fight the next election as we did the last – as an independent political party in every constituency in the country.” Which is considerably less equivocal than David Cameron and George Osborne have managed recently. When the Tory pair were pressed on the matter towards the end of last month, they said only that they "expect" the coalition parties to fight independently of each other come election time. Not that the Clegg quotation rules out electoral chicanery altogether.

Ne’er mistake correlation with cause, I know. But, during the Brown premiership, the correlation between petrol prices and poll ratings was still pretty striking. Mike Smithson graphed it early last year, but the basic story was this: the Tories enjoyed their biggest poll lead over Labour when petrol prices were at their highest, and Labour closed the gap to only 1 percent when petrol prices were at their lowest. At the very least, it gives us a hypothesis to work from: prices up, the government suffers; prices down, the government recovers. And it looks as though we’ll be able to test that hypothesis soon enough. Today’s Express reports that – thanks to rising VAT, fuel duty and oil prices – petrol may soon soar to £1.40 a litre.

The Lib Dem manifesto committed the party to a fully elected House of Lords. The Tory manifesto talked about a ‘mainly-elected’ second chamber and in 2007 David Cameron voted for ‘the other place’ to be 80 percent elected (interestingly, George Osborne voted for a fully elected Lords). The coalition agreement committed the government to a ‘wholly or mainly elected upper chamber’. So it is hard to see how a Lords that retained a twenty percent appointed element could be portrayed as a major Lib Dem triumph as, according to today’s Guardian, the coalition wants. There has been talk in Westminster that Clegg’s consolation prize if the AV referendum is defeated will be a fully elected Lords, a long-standing Liberal aim.

The Telegraph’s latest Lib Dem revelations are embarrassing for the ministers concerned, but won’t cause the coalition much trouble. Ed Davey is caught being critical of the announcement to take child benefit away from higher-rate taxpayers and expressing concerns about the changes to housing benefit. Michael Moore, the Scottish Secretary, is captured expressing regret about the Lib Dem u-turn on tuition fees and saying he couldn’t work with Tories like Liam Fox "for very long." Steve Webb, the highly numerate pensions minister, was trapped into revealing that he had written to the Chancellor about the child benefit changes because "the details aren’t right." There are, the Telegraph tells us, more of these revelations to come.

There could barely be a starker contrast between Danny Alexander's interview with the FT today and the, ahem, Cableleaks. Unlike his fellow Lib Demmer, the Treasury Secretary knew that he was speaking to a journalist – and he keeps well within the lines when discussing the coalition. "My impression," he says, "is that the Liberal Democrats support the coalition. People knew the first couple of years would be extremely tough." Alexander saves his most enthusiastic rhetoric for the quad: the group of four ministers – David Cameron, George Osborne, Nick Clegg and himself – who met regularly during the spending review period to decide where the cuts would fall. As he puts it, "it was a very effective way of making sure the government is joined up".

'Tis the season to bash a banker – or it is if you're a Lib Dem, at least. After the stresses of last week, Nick Clegg lets off steam with an aggressive interview in the FT. "They don't operate in a social vacuum," he says of the City's moneymen, before seething that, "it is wholly untenable to have millions of people making sacrifices in their living standards, only to see the banks getting away scot-free." He even suggests that the government should consider a one-off bonus tax, like that introduced by Labour last year.   Will anything come of it? On the evidence so far, probably not. The coalition – from Vince Cable to George Osborne – has certainly not shied away from tough rhetoric on lending and bankers' bonuses.

The Christmas Special of The Spectator is out today, and George Osborne kindly agreed to an interview. We have printed 1,500 words in the magazine, but James and I thought CoffeeHousers may like a fuller version, where he has more space to speak for himself.  We have gone into way more detail on tax policy here than in the magazine, for example, as Osborne is seldom pressed on this point and his thoughts are very interesting. We have divided it up by subject headings, so CoffeeHousers can skip the chunks they’re not interested in.   Liberty, paternity and Treasury It is an exciting day for Liberty Osborne, the Chancellor’s daughter, to join him at work.

It's not just the students who are waging a political struggle. In yesterday's Times (£), Tim Montgomerie fired up a debate over the future of the Conservative Party that will no doubt simmer through the rest of this Parliament. For those who can't delve behind the paywall, the argument was broadly this: that a tension is emerging between liberal Conservatism and a more traditional Conservatism. On the side of the Liberal Conservatives are those who want to extend the union with Nick Clegg and his party; a group which may well include the Tory leadership. On the other side are those who want the Tories to go it alone after the next election, with a more traditionally Tory policy platform.

Asking PFI contractors to voluntarily give back some of the money that they are due from the government might seem like rather a hopeless task. But the PFI-Rebate campaign launched today by Jesse Norman, one of the smartest of the new intake of Tory MPs, has a better chance of success than appears at first blush. Norman is pushing for the contractors to take a 0.5 percent cut which they might well decide is worthwhile to deal with all the negative publicity that further scrutiny of PFI would bring. If these contractors want to take the PFI model global, then they can’t really afford the kind of coverage that a prolonged campaign would bring.

George Osborne’s autumn statement previewed what I suspect will be the coalition, or at least the Conservatives, re-election message. ‘This government has taken Britain out of the financial danger zone and set our economy on the path to recovery.’   Today’s OBR forecast was a boon for the Chancellor. It suggests that there won’t be a double-dip recession, as his critics suggested there would be. The improved economic numbers allowed him to come to the House and declare that the deficit reduction ‘plan is working’, and that already the coalition has saved the country £19 billion in debt interest. Alan Johnson was his usual self in response.