From our UK edition
Is it a good thing that David Cameron now appears isolated in Europe as he continues to dig a hole that Jean-Claude Juncker almost certainly won't fall into? Jeremy Hunt tried to argue on the Today programme this morning that it was, saying that people would respect an isolated Prime Minister who was prepared to make the right argument.
From our UK edition
David Cameron has this afternoon had a 'full and frank' discussion with European Council president Herman Van Rompuy about the candidacy of Jean-Claude Juncker for president of the European Commission. What does 'full and frank' mean? According to this picture, it involved the PM demanding a vote on the appointment from behind his hand. Not a diplomatic tactic we've seen before...
From our UK edition
Ever since George Osborne took on Neil O'Brien as one of his advisers in the Treasury the Chancellor has shown a growing interest in the need to heal the North/South divide and the difference between Planet London and the rest of the UK. Today Osborne will underline that concern about the way the country's economy is lopsided by announcing his intention for a third high-speed rail link to connect Leeds and Manchester. At a speech in Manchester, Osborne will say: 'We need a northern powerhouse too. Not one city, but a collection of northern cities - sufficiently close to each other than combined they can take on the world. Able to provide jobs and opportunities and security to the many, many people who live here, and for whom this is all about.
From our UK edition
You can’t put a price on freedom. Well now, it seems, you can: or rather, one senior academic has done so and his verdict? Scottish independence will cost £200 million. On the surface, Professor Patrick Dunleavy’s conclusions on the set-up costs for an independent Scotland look good for the Nationalists. After all, that £200 million is remarkably close to the figure Alex Salmond has been throwing around for the last week or so and some considerable distance from the £2.7 billion figure the Treasury has been bandying around. In fact, Prof Dunleavy’s report (which was published today) makes the Treasury look pretty foolish and more than a bit amateurish. For weeks, Danny Alexander has been warning of set-up costs of £2.
From our UK edition
The Cabinet is split between doves and hawks on whether Britain should back US involvement in Iraq, but this morning Liam Fox argued on the Andrew Marr Show that whether or not the Uk avoids military action, it will not be able to avoid the threat from jihadists. he said: 'Remember, the West is seen as a single entity. There are those who say if we don't get involved, if we hunker down, then we'll be fine, there'll be no backlash. That is utterly, utterly wrong because the jihadists don't hate us because of what we do; they hate us because of who we are and we can't change that. It's our values and our history that they detest more than anything else.
From our UK edition
Ed Balls knows how to talk to bankers. Having been Gordon Brown’s right hand man and City Minister under the last government, he is well known in the Square Mile—and far more popular than you might think. Earlier this month, Balls was to be found having lunch at HSBC’s private bank in St James. He was there to address the chairmen of the UK banks. Those present left this private lunch with the distinct impression that Balls was presenting himself as a restraining influence on Ed Miliband, and someone who could protect them from some of the Labour leader's more radical policies. Balls made clear to the group that he was a 'sceptic' of regional banking.
From our UK edition
David Cameron has not had the best of weeks. At home, he is engaged in a mucky fight with the former government aide Dominic Cummings and abroad he is facing defeat in his attempt to stop Jean-Claude Juncker from becoming president of the European Commission. But in the papers today, it is Ed Miliband who has all the problems. The Guardian splashes on how Labour frontbenchers do not want Miliband to stay on after an election defeat. If this story had appeared in almost any other paper, Miliband’s team could have tried to dismiss it as the price you pay for standing up to Rupert Murdoch or backing Leveson. But with The Guardian, this is much harder to do.
From our UK edition
David Blunkett has announced that he'll be standing down at the next election. 'It is clear that the leadership of the party wish to see new faces in ministerial office and a clear break with the past,' he said — I'm not sure if that's a coded reference to Miliband's unfinished purge of those who ran Labour at a time when it won elections. But it did make me think of two things Blunkett's career has been absolutely extraordinary, a blind man who was still able to read so much that he'd shoot me a caustic email, sometimes even threatening to sue me, if I wrote anything about him that he considered unfair. He was never under-briefed, and never showed any sign of his disability. He managed politics - the rousing speeches, even the sex scandals - as well as anyone.
From our UK edition
A tough message on welfare is one of the ways that both Labour and the Tories think they can win in 2015. Ed Miliband upset some on the left yesterday with his plans to freeze child benefit and dock jobseekers' allowance from under-21s not in employment or training, while the Tories constantly trumpet the gains they've already seen in people coming off benefits as a sign that their reforms are working. But the suggestion today, in a leak to the BBC, that the Employment and Support Allowance is getting so expensive that the government could break its shiny new welfare cap, threatens to undermine the Conservative narrative on welfare.
From our UK edition
How many seats will the Conservatives take from the Lib Dems at the next election? According to Lord Ashcroft’s latest polling, a dozen or so Tory-Lib Dem marginals look set to change hands. Surveying 17,000 voters in 17 seats*, Ashcroft has found the Lib Dems’ share has dropped by 15 per cent (compared to eight per cent for the Conservatives) with an overall swing of 3.5 per cent to the Tories. If this swing were replicated across the country, this would hand David Cameron another 15 seats in 2015. However, Ashcroft’s research suggests there isn’t a universal swing. For example in Newton Abbot, the polling suggests a nine per cent swing but in Wells, it was three per cent.
From our UK edition
Like all good select committees, the Education Select Committee is rarely a helpful chum of Michael Gove. Its warnings on the reform of GCSEs, for instance, played a part in one of Gove's biggest volte-faces. But its report this morning on 'underachievements of white working class children' (a group it then narrows to 'poor white British boys and girls' who are on free school meals) recommends a course of action not dissimilar to that which Gove is already taking, set in motion by the Blairites. It says: 'This problem [of underachievement] must be tackled by ensuring that the best teachers and leader are incentivised to work in the schools and areas that need them the most, and by providing better advice and guidance to young people.
From our UK edition
As expected, Nick de Bois' amendment to the Criminal Courts and Justice Bill passed 404 votes to 53. It owes nothing to the Conservative frontbench, which abstained for reasons I've tried my best to outline here (it's difficult to explain something that doesn't make a grab deal of sense, especially when both parties have voted in different ways before, as on the boundary changes). And it owes nothing to the Liberal Democrats, who opposed the measure in Cabinet and in this vote. The result this evening is an example of the way the Coalition has reshaped the workings of government. Can't get the Cabinet agreement you need on a policy? Let it rise up from the backbenches instead and hope for an unholy alliance with the Opposition.
From our UK edition
As I reported earlier, Number 10 is adjusting its commentary on Jean-Claude Juncker's bid to become president of the European Commission to include plenty of conditional verbs. David Cameron appears to be giving up the fight, too. At his press conference in Downing Street with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, the Prime Minister said: 'There is an important principle at stake here which is that the accountable elected members of the European Council, the elected heads of state, the elected heads of government, should be the ones who propose who runs the European Commission.
From our UK edition
Funnily enough, the government seems a little less bullish about blocking Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission than it did a fortnight ago. The Prime Minister's official spokesman was asked about the reports that the die is now cast for Juncker, and whether his appointment could bring forward the UK referendum on the matter. He said: 'In terms of the referendum, the Prime Minister's approach for a referendum and the 2017 timetable, that is entirely unchanged, and will not change.
From our UK edition
I was surprised to discover this morning that Gordon Brown last night suggested the Scottish education system should be abolished and replaced by a new pan-UK curriculum and examination system. This would indeed be a bold thing to recommend three months before the independence referendum. A surprise too and the sort of thing you'd expect to be all over the news today if it weren't, of course, the case that the press is irrevocably biased against the nationalists and determined to bury anything that might embarrass Unionists. Still, Gordon said it. He must have. Otherwise why would Kenny Gibson MSP say Gordon Brown "has endorsed the idea of a UK-wide education system - which could only mean taking powers away from Scotland and giving them back to Westminster"?
From our UK edition
What happens if, as reports suggest today, David Cameron fails in his bid to block Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission? It will make the Prime Minister look weak. It will make his renegotiation of Britain's relationship with Europe and his call for reform of the European Union as a whole much more difficult. These are serious wounds. But the Prime Minister may at least relax that he's not going to face an uprising in Westminster. Eurosceptic MPs have appreciated his stand on this issue, and are - by and large - committed to fighting for general election victory. They'll think about other fights after that general election.
From our UK edition
Is Generation Y becoming more right wing and self-obsessed? Radio 4 broadcast a very interesting documentary tonight, Generation Right, on whether my generation is becoming more individualistic — featuring this parish’s Toby Young and Fraser Nelson. Both argued that some of our values might be perceived as right-wing but the trend isn’t that simple. Thanks to greater choice and empowerment of the individual, Generation Y is far less trusting of the state, which one could translate as a form of small-c conservatism. The Independent’s Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is someone who believes that. She told Radio 4 my generation is selfish and spoilt: ‘…they’re a frightfully spoilt generation.
From our UK edition
One of these days, former Gove adviser Dominic Cummings is going to tell us what he really thinks. He's followed up his interview with the Times (£) in which he describes David Cameron as 'bumbling' and attacks the team around the Prime Minister with a blog examining the gap between politicians and the electorate and the failure of successive governments to learn from mistakes. The main problem for Number 10 in Cummings' analysis of the way it works is that he's not the only one who holds that opinion. He argues that Number 10, like MPs, has 'no real knowledge of how to function other than via gimmick and briefings' and that it avoids 'solving very hard problems'.
From our UK edition
There is much to enjoy in Dominic Cummings' glorious attack on the ghastliness of Britain's political system. It is a cri-de-coeur from a man who, whatever else may be said of him (and his enemies have plenty to say), has given the matter some thought. Westminster will swoon at the criticisms of Cameron ('a sphinx without a riddle'), Ed Llewellyn ('a classic third-rate suck-up-kick-down sycophant presiding over a shambolic court') and Craig Oliver ('just clueless') but that's just the gags, really. The substance is elsewhere. As in: “MPs have no real knowledge of how to function other than via gimmick and briefings. That’s also how No 10 works. It’s how all of them are incentivised to operate.
From our UK edition
Whether or not the Iraq war was wise, it's fair to say that it is now unwise for Tony Blair to intervene in the ongoing foreign policy debate. The former Prime Minister was under fire last week as the country British and US forces invaded in 2003 was rent asunder by ISIS, and naturally the debate about whether these developments show the intervention was the wrong decision has put further pressure on Blair. He rarely needs much pressure to justify his actions, though: he gives the impression of a man who protests too much. In his column today, Boris Johnson makes quite clear that these protests do not come without a cost to the wider debate about intervention.
