James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
Who can be toughest on the ‘undeserving rich’ is shaping up to be one of the main political battlegrounds of 2012. David Cameron and Nick Clegg’s comments today on tax avoidance are an attempt to get ahead of this debate. Clegg, though, is keen to make this issue his own. As I say in
Maurice Glasman’s New Statesman piece on Ed Miliband is causing a bit of a stir. Lord Glasman, an academic who Miliband proposed for a peerage, writes that the Labour leader ‘has not broken through. He has flickered rather than shone, nudged not led.’ But if you read between the lines of Glasman’s article it is
Mitt Romney’s victory by eight votes in Iowa is hardly a ringing endorsement of his candidacy. But, I suspect, he will be the nominee. The real danger for Romney was a repeat of his 2008 failure in Iowa. He has avoided that. He now heads for New Hampshire where he has a massive poll lead.
One of the things that makes the Iowa caucuses so different from most elections is that it is almost the opposite of a secret ballot. Four years ago I went to report on a caucus in suburban Des Moines. As soon as voters entered the school sports hall in which it was taking place, they
Westminster used to think that 2012 would be the year that the ‘feel-good factor’ returned. Back in May 2010, all three parties expected the economic mood to lift. Combine that with the Olympics and the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and it seemed a good bet that, come September, the country would be smiling. Labour frontbenchers feared
The Telegraph reports today that the Prime Minister has asked for work to be done across Whitehall on how a minimum price for alcohol could be set. As the paper’s leader column makes clear, this will not be a politically easy thing to do. When I interviewed the Health Secretary Andrew Lansley for the Christmas
Steven F. Hayward’s audit of the state of American conservatism, which David Brooks judges to be one of the best magazine articles of the year, argues that the Reaganite ‘starve the beast strategy’ has failed to halt the growth of government. Hayward writes: ‘Thirty years after the arrival of the Reagan Revolution, government is bigger
If it was not all so serious, the efforts to save the single currency would be worthy of a comic opera: the Germans could compose the score, the Italians could write the libretto, and the French could take care of the stage directions. The latest IMF-related effort is, perhaps, best described by the website ZeroHedge,
A few months after the coalition was formed, I went for lunch with a close ally of Nick Clegg. After an hour or so of discussing what the coalition’s agenda would be, this Liberal Democrat said to me: ‘now, David Cameron can’t really be serious about this marriage stuff, can he?’ When I replied that
Coalition tensions over Europe are again threatening to be the story this morning. Nick Clegg has told The Guardian’s Patrick Wintour that Britain has ‘signalled we are happy for them [the Eurozone plus group of countries] to use EU institutions’ to enforce any new treaty they agree between themselves. This is a striking claim given
Andrew Lansley stands on the concourse of Euston station cracking jokes with a gaggle of civil servants. Lansley, who must be at least 6ft3, towers over the group. He looks relaxed. The contrast with how he looked a few months ago could not be sharper. Then, the Health Secretary seemed to be carrying all the
David Cameron must sometimes wonder if the gods are against his modernising project. Events have forced him back on to the traditional Tory territory of Europe and the economy. This is not how the Cameroons expected it to be in the early days of his leadership. Then he defined himself not by his position on
Normally, ‘read-outs’ on telephone calls between members of the British government and their counterparts overseas are fairly bland affairs. But today’s one on a conversation between Nick Clegg and the French Prime Minister Francois Fillon is an exception to this rule. Clegg, we are told, informed the French PM that ‘that recent remarks from members
The Times has a very interesting story (£) today on page 17. It claims that David Cameron had agreed to inform Nick Clegg if it appeared that Britain was going to be isolated at last week’s European Council. The significance of this is that it suggests that the Lib Dems believed they would be consulted
David Cameron was greeted with a full-on, desk banging reception at the 1922 Committee. The applause only stopped when the chief whip told the assembled backbenchers to sit down. The Prime Minister’s message was that the next year is going to be even tougher than the 1979-81 period. He argued that the government needed to
Today, was yet another reminder that David Cameron knows just where to hit Ed Miliband to make it hurt. After a few questions on the economy, Miliband moved to Europe — the coalition’s greatest vulnerability. Miliband joked that it was ‘good to see the deputy Prime Minister back in his place’, before mocking the coalition’s
All eyes at PMQs will be on a man who isn’t speaking, Nick Clegg. His refusal to attend the Prime Minister’s statement on the European Council means that today he will be the centre of attention. Labour will attempt to embarrass him as much as possible, trying to highlight both the divisions in the coalition
The text of David Cameron’s statement on the European Summit was clearly designed as balm for the coalition’s wounds. He devoted a large chunk of it to defending Britain’s membership of the European Union in a clear effort to reassure the Lib Dems about the future direction of European policy. But this effort was rather
The real Tory celebration of David Cameron’s veto will be on Wednesday. Then, behind closed doors, Cameron will address the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers. With no Lib Dems present, the Tories will be able to thump the desks and be rude about the EU without worrying about what their coalition partners might think. But
Nick Clegg has just given a quite astonishing interview to Andrew Marr in which he accused David Cameron of being incapable of getting a good deal for Britain because of pressures from within the Conservative parliamentary party. When Marr asked him if things would have been different if Lib Dems had been in Brussels, Clegg
