Isabel Hardman

Ministers don't comment on leaked reports, as Theresa May said on the Today programme this morning, but they can jolly well make clear what they think of them, especially if those leaked reports are quite helpful to calming Conservative backbench grumbles. The Home Secretary didn't distance herself from the leak in the Sunday Times that she wants a 75,000 cap on the number of EU migrants per year, and repeated David Cameron's call for reform of freedom of movement, saying: 'What the Prime Minister has said and what I said is that in looking at reform of the EU we need to look at this whole question of the arrangements of new countries that come in, so-called accession countries.

Today's announcement that migrants cannot claim benefits if their English is so bad that they are unemployable looks suspiciously like another attempt by ministers to reassure fears about the end of those transitional controls on Bulgarian and Romanian migrants. And that is, in turn, an attempt to reassure Tory MPs that the government has done everything it can to keep Ukip at bay. But what is the Tory plan for Ukip? It needs to work out how to fight Nigel Farage's party in the European elections, how to pre-brief the European elections (presumably by talking up Ukip's chances so much that any result looks like a disappointment), and how to stop the inevitable post-European elections panic.

We already knew that welfare would be a key dividing line for George Osborne at the next election. He set up the dividing lines in the emergency budget and comprehensive spending review in 2010, and they have largely stuck, which is a testament to the Chancellor's skill as a strategist. But at today's Treasury Select Committee, Osborne thickened those dividing lines with Labour by saying that the welfare budget must take another billions of pounds' worth of cuts. It was the language that Osborne used, as much as anything else, that revealed how the 2015 debate will pan out. He said: 'My view is that welfare expenditure cannot be excluded from the difficult decisions that need to be made.

After his suggestion of cross-party talks on MPs' pay at PMQs today, Ed Miliband has just upped the stakes by suggesting that the three party leaders meet Sir Ian Kennedy of Ipsa tomorrow to set out their opposition to the pay rise. His letter, which you can read in full below, reminds Cameron that he said at noon that 'my door is always open to the right honourable gentleman', and adds: 'The public expect us to resolve this now and not wait until 2015. it only undermines confidence and trust in our political system if the uncertainty about MPs' pay is allowed to continue. 'Therefore I believe the three party leaders should meet Sir Ian Kennedy tomorrow to make clear our view that we cannot go ahead with the current proposition.

Generally when someone says they 'couldn't give a toss' about something, you can safely bet more than 50p and a cake that it's the most important thing ever to them. So when Ed Balls told Sky's Murnaghan programme today that he 'couldn't give a toss' about speculation that Ed Miliband might move him, it meant a number of things. The first is, of course, that he could give a toss, but frankly it would be weird if the Shadow Chancellor didn't care whether or not he continued in his job. Anyone answering that question honestly would have to admit that they jolly well do give a toss about whether they're going to lose their job or not.