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The Independent on Sunday reports that a cabal of four disgruntled/horrified Lib Dem MPs have held secret talks with Labour to amend contentious elements of the Budget, such as the VAT hike. Four rebels will not be enough to defeat the government, but it is the first indication that Simon Hughes’ call to arms will be
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What began as a coalition of expediency is maturing into a pact of principle – or at least that’s what Cameron and Clegg would have you believe. Of course, relations may sour and enormous efforts are being made to preserve Cameron and Clegg’s public cordiality. Journalists are being briefed that plans are in progress to
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Today is Armed Forces Day, and I don’t recall seeing such collective negativity from newspapers and broadcasters on the Afghan war. It borders on despair. Most news outlets have dissected David Cameron’s comments yesterday, where he could only offer the hope that troops would be withdrawn by the end of this parliament. Cameron’s non-committal answers,
From our UK edition
Everything about the Cameron government comes in fives. Five year terms, a five-year coalition and now we learn that it is Cameron’s considered opinion that British troops cannot remain Afghanistan for another five years. All Cameron has offered is the hope that troops will be home before the proposed May 2015 election. Five more years
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G20 summits are usually turgid affairs, but this one has some (limited) potential. Relations between the White House and Britain and the White House and Europe have been frosty of late. Afghanistan, BP, the Falklands, Merkel and Sarkozy’s irritation at Obama’s personal and political aloofness, all of these have been contentious. Diplomatic tension has now
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Paul Waugh has news that David Miliband has received the backing of USDAW, the shop workers’ union. Block union voting is a thing of the past, but this endorsement is a surprise nonetheless. It’s lazy to categorize Miliband as a ‘Blairite’, but he is certainly on the right of the party – vigorously pro-European, pro-business
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From the point of view of historical curiosity, it is a pity that the great Victorian statesman predeceased the era of global summits. What would Palmerston or Melbourne have made of the pageantry? What might they have said to permeate it? Would they have wanted to? Modern British Prime Ministers have moulded themselves on the
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From opposing sides of the coalition’s strait, two warning shots have been fired across the government’s bows. David Davis has challenged Theresa May’s decision to renew the 28-day detention limit for six months pending a review. And Simon Hughes has declared that he and a like-minded posse will seek to amend ‘unfair’ aspects of the
From our UK edition
The retirement age must rise, timing is the sole contention. Yvette Cooper asserts that the coalition’s acceleration of the planned rise in the state pension age will force those currently in their late fifties to re-plan their retirement. Certainly, but a rise in the state pension age from 65 to 66 is unlikely to be
From our UK edition
The government is on the defensive. The IFS’ pronouncement that the Budget was ‘regressive’ and the VAT hike ‘avoidable’ has given sustenance to the opposition and their supporters in the media. At the time, Harriet Harman’s response to the Budget seemed execrable. Now, I’m not so sure. Harman is like a Swordfish bi-plane attacking a
From our UK edition
Peter Walker, Baron Walker of Worcester, has died aged 78. He served as a Cabinet Minister in both the Heath and Thatcher governments. He was what might be termed derisively as a ‘Wet’, and was a leading figure on the liberal side of the Conservative Party for thirty years. He was a founder member of
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I doubt David Cameron will have many better days in government than this. Considering the government cancelled a hospital project yesterday, today has passed as one long photo-op, free of incident. It began with Theresa May banning a radical Islamist cleric, Zakir Naik, displaying a resolve that eluded her immediate predecessors. The papers were full
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Thank God for Iain Martin, who has called Labour’s response to the Gove ‘Free schools’ idea what is: ‘moronic’. He writes: ‘Labour warned that the resulting experiment risks creating a “two-tier” education system. Good grief. And Britain doesn’t have a two-tier schools system now? Actually it’s more like 10 tiers. In this troubling context, claiming
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Theresa May has called for ‘culture change’ in wider society to ease the equality and acceptance of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender minorities. Abstractions are the executive’s favoured metier these days. I’ve read and re-read May’s article in Pink News and nowhere does she define ‘culture change’. The end product of a culture change towards
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Well done David Miliband, for writing an article in the Guardian that is free of wonkery and abstractions. Miliband deserves applause for being the first Labour leadership contender to address public spending cuts with reasoned analysis, not ideological retorts. Also, he is right to urge George Osborne not to sell the public stakes in RBS
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70 years ago today, Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle delivered two of the most important speeches of the 20th Century. Against the odds and common sense, both urged their respective nations to fight on against the tyranny of Nazi Germany. Today is a reminder that France is one of Britain’s oldest and closest allies,
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Paul Waugh has news that the Treasury asked a broadcaster to sign a written legal agreement that they would not ask any questions about the OBR’s announcement. Well, some of the figures embarrassed Osborne but surely it wasn’t that bad? As Paul notes, this may be a case of the Civil Service taking advantage of
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Gerard Baker has written the cover piece for this week’s magazine and it’s a must read. In it, he explains why ‘closer fiscal union’, as Rompuy terms it, is not to Germany’s advantage: ‘Any attempted fiscal union might well yield to Germany the biggest single vote in how much to raise in taxes and how
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Danny Alexander acquitted himself effectively this morning. The restructuring of government spending has gone beyond bland clichés about ‘efficiencies’; with care, the government is dismantling Labour’s unfunded spending projects. £8.5bn in unfunded projects signed-off since 1 January 2010 are on a stay of execution until the autumn; £1bn of unfunded projects signed-off before 1 January
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As Allister Heath notes in City AM this morning, Mervyn King has had a good war. Well, not so much a good war as a profitable peace. King contributed to the domestic crisis by sustaining very low interest rates whilst ignoring asset prices. Brown may have forced the Governor’s hand, but King was groggily supine
