Uk politics

John Bercow's interview with the World at One was guaranteed to raise a few hackles across Westminster, and he certainly delivered on that by attacking 'totally low-grade, substandard' 'no-hopers' in the media. But well as revealing that he told his mother to stop reading the Daily Mail after reading something unpleasant about him in the newspaper, the Speaker also made some other interesting comments about his own role.

This morning's announcement that the retail prices index rose to 3.2 per cent in July, up from 2.4 per cent in June, means commuters will see a 6.2 per cent rise in their train fares in January. Fares rises are currently calculated using RPI + 3 per cent. Analysts had predicted RPI would be 2.8 per cent, which means tickets will be even more expensive than originally expected. Don't forget rail fares already saw an average 8 per cent rise at the start of this year. Some tickets will rise by a further five percentage points if other fares on a network are kept lower as a balance. Before he was reshuffled from the transport brief, Philip Hammond described trains as a 'rich man's toy'.

'That's just boring waffle!' shouted Evan Davis on Radio 4 this morning when policing minister Nick Herbert refused to give direct answers to his questions on the turnout expected in the police and crime commissioner elections. Herbert repeatedly argued that 'any turnout will confer greater legitimacy' than the current system of unelected police authorities. But his repeated refusal to pin down any figure for the percentage of voters who will trudge out of their homes on a cold and possibly rainy November evening to vote for the commissioners betrayed an unease about how well these elections are going to work out in practice. Herbert and his colleagues will know that a low turnout will be awkward, not least once the new commissioners are in place and start taking unpopular decisions.

It would be wrong to say that David Cameron has had a bad Olympics. After all, the Games went extremely well, both in terms of logistics and Britain's wonderful medal haul. The Prime Minister is not responsible for the bouncy mood of the country at the moment, but he's also not having to answer aggressive questions from the media about an awful security breach, total gridlock in central London or worse. But the Prime Minister did rather let himself down by being drawn into the inevitable debate about sports provision in the state education sector during the Games. That discussion started so early into Britain's rise up the medal table that at the time it was impossible to assess whether state-educated athletes were pulling their weight.

If the coalition leaders had hoped that announcing the demise of Lords reform during the Olympics would mean the government would enjoy a slightly easier ride, a poll released this morning by The Guardian suggests they were wrong. The ICM poll found that only 16 per cent of voters now believe the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats will stay in partnership until 2015. This has fallen from 33 per cent two weeks ago. Overall, 54 per cent of voters believe the government will collapse before the next general election, and only 19 per cent think the two parties will pull apart a few months before the election in order to campaign separately.