Uk politics

Should the UK arm the Syrian rebels? William Hague thinks so, but it turns out neither his MPs nor the public are convinced. YouGov polling earlier this month found on 17 per cent of voters supported sending arms, and 56 per cent opposed the measure. Tory MPs such as John Redwood, John Baron and Julian Lewis today said the plan 'might make it worse rather than better', would 'escalate the violence and escalate the suffering' and that it was 'naive'. Hague himself insisted that no decision to supply arms had yet been taken, and that the EU decision to not renew the arms embargo was a way of putting pressure on all sides to attend a peace conference next month.

Anyone reading Sam Coates' interview with Ed Balls in today's Times might be forgiven for chucking their newspaper on the floor with a chuckle, muttering about the hypocrisy of a Labour shadow Chancellor lecturing George Osborne on borrowing. Balls warns that the government's plans to offer Royal Bank of Scotland shares to the public will add billions to the deficit. He tells the newspaper: 'A giveaway or loss-making firesale at the current share price would and billions to the national debt at a time when poor economic growth already means borrowing isn't coming down.' But this is an attempt by Balls to appear fiscally responsible while making the case for 'good borrowing' elsewhere.

David Cameron warned in his Downing Street statement on the Woolwich killing against forming 'knee-jerk responses' to the atrocity. But it was inevitable that there would be many knees flying in the air over a piece of legislation that some say could either have prevented the killing, or made it easier to piece together the evidence. The Communications Data Bill - better known as the Snooper's Charter - is back in the spotlight after everyone had assumed that Nick Clegg had kicked it into the next Parliament at least. Alan Johnson called it a resigning issue on the Marr Show, Lord Carlile accused his own party of blocking the legislation for political reasons, and Sadiq Khan said that a new bill with more proportionate powers was something Labour would support.

I was surprised to be told, by the editor of this magazine, that next week will mark the 20th anniversary of my standing down as Chancellor. The anniversary had entirely passed me by. I was asked this week why, if the economy was turning, George Osborne didn’t announce that he had spotted ‘green shoots’, as I observed in 1991. Although my remark, much rubbished at the time, turned out to be surprisingly prescient, I think Osborne is right to be cautious. Economic statistics are revised so often, trying to steer the economy as Chancellor is, as Harold Macmillan observed, like trying to catch a train using last year’s timetable. The best comment on green shoots was that of my then wife: ‘You don’t get green shoots in the autumn.

George Osborne has got through the IMF’s report on the UK economy. It is far from a ringing endorsement of his approach but, as Isabel notes, its criticisms are couched in such opaque language that I doubt they’ll have much political impact. I also suspect that the Treasury is not unhappy about being told that it needs to get on with returning RBS and Lloyds to the private sector. Selling even a tranche of these bank shares before 2015 would be politically powerful, aiding the Tories in their attempt to argue that they’ve been clearing up the mess that Labour left behind. The next challenge for the Treasury is the spending review.