Parliament

Rarely can a government have been so pleased to have been defeated. The Tories are, privately, delighted that the Lords have voted to water down the benefit cap, removing child benefit from it. The longer this attempt to cap benefit for non-working households at £26,000 stays in the news, the better it is for the government. It demonstrates to the electorate that they are trying to do something about the injustices of the something for nothing culture. The matter will now returns to the Commons where the coalition is confident it can be reversed. I understand that Nick Clegg remains solid on the issue, despite the fact that Ashdown and Shirley Williams led the Lib Dem rebellion in the Lords on this amendment.

Miliband survives! That news should steady Labour nerves. For today at least. Their leader has the knack of turning near-certain defeat into absolutely-certain catastrophe, but he bumbled through PMQs this afternoon without suffering a serious setback. He has so little ground from which to attack the government that he had to lead on a niche issue. Rail fares. He asked the prime minister why the operating companies have managed to hike prices by 11 per cent on the busiest routes. Cameron: ‘Because of a power given to them by the last Labour government.’   With that lethally terse response the PM sat down. To his credit, Miliband wasn’t rattled.

Tucked away on page 15 of today's Times, there's an insightful story about Lords reform (£) by Roland Watson. And it's insightful not just for the new information it contains, but also for the familiar truth it confirms: reforming the House of Lords is going to be one helluva difficult task. You see, while both halves of the coalition committed to a fully- or ‘mainly-elected’ upper chamber in their respective manifestos, only one half of the coalition is particularly eager to force it through now.

Reading through the paper's this morning, it's even clearer that we didn't learn much from that marathon Europe debate yesterday. But here are my thoughts, anyway, on where it leaves us: 1) Ed Miliband lacked credibility from the outset. As Malcolm Rifkind put it, he’s had three days to work out whether he’d have signed that Treaty or not — and he still can’t make his mind up. God knows Cameron is vulnerable on this, but he won’t be hurt being attacked for indecision by a man who still cant make any decisions. 2) Clegg’s misjudgment, cont? First, Clegg backed Cameron after the veto. Now, he says he disagrees with Cameron.

Much has already been written this week about the negotiating hand that David Cameron should be playing in Brussels over the next couple of days.   I am fervently of the view that there is indeed a whole raft of policy areas over which he should be seeking to reclaim powers from Brussels, and they are detailed in a new paper by Dr Lee Rotherham, Terms of Endearment, which was published earlier this week by the TaxPayers’ Alliance.   But forget the European Council for a moment. For it is worth highlighting the things that the British Government could do immediately and unilaterally, here at home, to challenge EU power — and without recourse to Brussels whatsoever. And Lee’s paper gives the following six examples:   1.