Uk politics

Earlier this week, George Osborne named Lord Lawson as one of the economic thinkers who had influenced him. But the Chancellor's mentor isn't quite so impressed with some of his policies. Here's his letter from this week's Spectator on the 'anomalous aid policy' that the government is pursuing: Sir: I was glad to see the excellent Acemoglu and Robinson article (‘Why aid fails’, 25 January) and your endnote recording that David Cameron has just declared their book, Why Nations Fail, to be one of his favourites. It is indeed an important book, which is why I quoted from it extensively in a House of Lords debate on overseas development aid in 2012.

 Edinburgh [audioplayer src='http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_6_February_2014_v4.mp3' title='Alex Massie and Matthew Parris discuss why the Union is in peril' startat=55] Listen [/audioplayer]A century ago, with Britain in peril, Lord Kitchener’s stern countenance demanded that every stout-hearted Briton do their bit for King and Country. ‘Your country needs you’ rallied hundreds of thousands to khaki and the Kaiser’s War. Today, with Britain in peril again, you could be forgiven for asking where Kitchener’s successor is. A new recruiting poster might cry: ‘Britons: Wake up! Pay attention! Your country really is at risk!’ The threat, of course, is domestic rather than foreign (for now, at least).

The decision not to reselect Anne McIntosh, as seen by one of her local party members. One evening last March I was standing at the back of the crowded annual meeting of Thirsk and Malton Conservative Association, observing in a semi-detached way as a rank-and-file member. Our MP, Anne McIntosh, was delivering an angry speech against the association’s chairman, Peter Steveney, and its executive council, who had voted two months earlier not to reselect her as parliamentary candidate for 2015 — a decision confirmed by a membership ballot last week. She paused to scan the room, dropped her voice half an octave, and snarled: ‘Martin Vander Weyer, where are you?

'I know a few people who could arrange just that,' remarked a Tory MP this morning on reading Danny Alexander's remarks in the Mirror that the Conservatives would reduce the top rate of tax to 40p 'over my dead body'. He told the newspaper: 'The top rate of tax has been an issue of late. Labour wants to take it back up to 50p, I think the 45p rate is the right place to be. I wouldn’t go to cutting below 45p – that would happen over my dead body. It’s better to say we are going to stick where we are.' It's worth pointing out that Alexander only means over his dead body in this Parliament. A source close to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury tells me: 'What he's saying is over my dead body in this Parliament. He's very explicit in the language he uses.

Why, a Tory grandee asked me recently, won't more businesses come out against Scottish independence? It was, in his view, axiomatic that independence would be bad for businesses north and south of the border. So why the silence? Perhaps, or at least in part perhaps, because when businesses do raise their concerns they often contrive to present themselves as hopeless chumps. I am sure Bob Dudley, chief of BP, is personally committed to Britain but the idea, as expressed in an interview with the BBC, that Scottish independence creates "big uncertainties" for his business is poppycock. Well, a kind of poppycock anyway. It would require BP to operate in another country and I can see why the petroleum giant would be happy to stick with the familiar status quo.

The Labour party's National Executive Committee has backed Ed Miliband's plans to change the party's trade union links by 28 votes to two, which marks a resounding victory for the Labour leader. There was little doubt that the NEC would endorse the reforms, which will still take five years to be implemented, and in the end the two members who opposed the proposals (another member abstained) were vocal leftwing backbencher Dennis Skinner and Christine Shawcroft. The next step is for the party to vote on the reforms at a special conference on 1 March. Miliband said this afternoon: 'Some people will find change difficult to accept. Others are worried about the consequences.