Uk politics

Jean-Claude Juncker clearly appreciated that high-five David Cameron gave him in Brussels recently: he's appointed Lord Hill to a sizeable economic portfolio as the UK's European Commissioner. The full list of jobs, published here, is being billed as a 'strong and experienced team standing for change', and Hill, who Juncker reportedly had to google, takes the Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union portfolio. This means that has oversight of a key interest: regulations affecting the City. David Cameron is a little more worried about another Union today, but this appointment is a boost to his plans to renegotiate Britain's relationship with the European Union.

Here are a number of things that the Westminster parties' response to the narrowing Scottish independence polls have definitely not been. Absolutely definitely not. 1. A cobbled-together response The three parties deciding to announce the new powers for Scotland and timetable for the handover of those powers in the event of a 'No' vote may, to the untrained eye, have looked like a last-minute, last-ditch attempt to reverse the fortunes of the Better Together campaign. But no, argued Nick Clegg today when he sat before the the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. 'I don't accept the characterisation this has all been sort of cobbled together at the last minute.

Is Gordon Brown going on a freelancing operation with his timetable for new powers for a Scotland that votes 'No'? The former Prime Minister has this afternoon released the timetable for further devolution, with the formal process beginning the day after the result, leading to a draft Scotland Bill being published by Burns Night in January 2015.

If Scotland does vote for separation—as the latest YouGov poll suggests it will, we’ll enter the most unpredictable political period in living memory. But before we start contemplating the consequences of a Yes vote, it is worth thinking about what is giving independence momentum in Scotland. It is not just being driven by nationalist fervour but by the same anti-politics sentiment that is riling politics right across the United Kingdom. Voters who are fed up with Westminster and disappointed by politics are seeing voting Yes as a chance to rip up the whole system and start again. Breaking up the United Kingdom is, perhaps, the ultimate expression of anti-politics.

Tomorrow's Sunday Times poll by YouGov puts the Yes campaign ahead at 51 per cent, with No on 49 per cent when undecided voters are excluded (even when they're included, 'yes' are still ahead by two points: 47-45). In the space of four weeks, 'No' has blown a 22-point lead. It was only recently that the No campaign started to wonder whether this could happen: previously there was an acceptance that the polls could narrow in the last few weeks, but the narrative was that the SNP were behind and were simply trying to engineer a close enough defeat for them to argue for a significant new settlement for Scotland. Now the Yes campaign has every opportunity to gain sufficient momentum not just to get a narrow defeat, but a victory.

The government has just lost a vote in the House of Commons on the 'bedroom tax'/removal of the spare-room subsidy/underoccupancy penalty/Size Criteria for People Renting in the Social Rented Sector (the correct, if rather clunky, name). There was a three-line whip from the Tories on the vote, but the Lib Dems had decided they would support their colleague Andrew George's bill to exempt those who cannot move to a smaller home, or who are disabled and live in an adapted property. The Bill had its second reading in the House of Commons today, and passed 306 votes to 231. Jacob Rees-Mogg moved an amendment that the Bill should be considered by a select committee, in an attempt to slow it up, but it was also defeated.

This story ran first in tonight's Evening Blend. Get more scoops, analysis and insight into the day's political news by signing up for free here. Speaker Bercow has been accused of misleading the House of Commons over his plan to appoint Carol Mills as Clerk of the House. In a letter to the Speaker, seen first by Coffee House, Conservative MP Michael Fabricant suggests that Bercow may have 'inadvertently misled the House' on whether the recruitment firm advising on the appointment of the Clerk was prevented from giving evidence about the suitability of Mills for the job.