James Forsyth is former political editor of The Spectator.
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The Tories are in mild shock following PMQs, they never expected Cameron to get clunked like that. Brown is clearly going to try and use Tory inheritance tax policy to ram home the message that a Cameron government will be a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich. But the Tories are
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The opinion polls are continuing to feed the story that the Tories are in trouble. Tonight’s Politics Home data which shows Cameron’s personal ratings dropping 15 points in the last 10 weeks follows a string of polls where the Tories have failed to break through the forty percent mark. Tory morale has been a bit
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The Lib Dem’s policy to make everyone’s first 10 thousand pounds of income tax free is, whatever its imperfections, a significant doorstep offer. By that, I mean it is something that those canvassing for the Lib Dems can say in an attmept to get the voters to listen to them rather than shut the door
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During the Tory party conference, I wrote about how the Tories were developing plans to radically cut corporation tax. In recent weeks, the Tories have been dropping plenty of hints about this agenda but giving little detail on it. After reiterating the Tories’ existing plans to lower the rates of corporation tax at the CBI
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That Zac Goldsmith has non-dom status is an embarrassment to the Tories. Given the anti-politics mood in the country, the whiff of hypocrisy is extremely dangerous to any political party and for the Tories anything that helps Labour’s effort to portray them as a party dominated by a wealthy clique is damaging. I suspect, though,
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The national YouGov poll and the one of northern marginals out today give us a sense of the electoral lay of the land. The national poll result which has the Tories below 40 percent and failing to win an overall majority shows that the Tories remain quite a way from sealing the deal. However, the poll
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James Forsyth reviews the week in politics There is one promise that David Cameron makes regularly that even the shadow Cabinet doesn’t believe he intends to keep: that he is going to end the era of ‘sofa government’ and bring back ‘Cabinet government’. Their experience over the past four years has taught them that real
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In the politics column this week, I write about how the Tories plan to hand over many of the traditional policy making powers of the Cabinet to a seven man policy board. The Cameroons are going to do this partly because it is a model that has worked well for them in oppoistion and that
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When the Tories first got interested in nudge theory in the summer of 2008 there was some sneering and questioning of what practical policy applications it had. But Grant Shapps’ speech today on the Tories’ Green Deal shows how nudging can be applied in government. Shapps proposes that consumers be reminded of the Green Deal
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Phillip Blond has been attracting a lot of publicity in the past few weeks and it was standing room only at the launch of his new think tank Res Publica. (I should say that I am on its advisory board). David Cameron gave the opening remarks, stressing the influence Blond’s thinking has had on how
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President Obama will announce his new Afghan policy on Tuesday night at 8pm eastern time, the early hours of Wednesday morning UK time. Obama will announce a troop increase and the signs are that he will send 30,000 plus in reinforcements. This is welcome, the nearer Obama gets to giving General McChrystal the 40,000 troops
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That Ipsos-Mori poll is still making waves, with both Steve Richards and Daniel Finkelstein devoting their columns to the prospects of a hung parliament. Steve is excited by the possibility, thinking that it would restore the Commons to its rightful place as the cockpit of the nation. Danny is concerned by it, fearful of the
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The Observer’s Ipsos-Mori poll has dominated political discussion since its publication on Sunday. But two things that I have heard tonight have increased my scepticism that it marks a dramatic shift in public opinion. First, I hear that another of the big pollsters had a survey in the field at the same time and it
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As President Obama continues to consider his options on Afghanistan, The New York Times has a good primer on what the military could do with the various levels of reinforcements being considered. This is what the military believes it could do with an extra 40,000 troops: “Should President Obama decide to send 40,000 additional American
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David Cameron was not at his best on the Andrew Marr show. On a morning when there are two bad news stories for him in the papers, the narrowing of the Tory lead to six points in one poll and him and Brown having to apologise to Westminster Abbey for their conduct on Remembrance day,
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There will be no decision from the White House on Afghan strategy this coming week. The Obama administration has told Reuters that the decision will not come until after the Thanksgiving weekend. This delay in making the decision is getting quite absurd. When the election process was still going on, there was an argument that
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Dominic Raab, who has just been selected for the safe Tory seat of Esher and Walton, will be a formidable addition to the Tory benches. Raab is a lawyer who currently serves as chief of staff to Dominic Grieve, the shadow Justice Secretary. I don’t agree with all of Raab’s views, but he will be
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Prospect magazine’s In Fact column always contains some thought provoking numbers. This month, I was particularly struck by this statistic: “The annual retail spend of Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street is £5.5bn—more than Manchester and Birmingham.” On one level, this is testament to the importance of clusters. But it is also a sign
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Sir Hugh Orde, the head of the Association of Chief Police officers, has issued another broadside against Tory plans for locally elected police commissioner. Orde has warned that senior police officers will resign over the plans and that, “Even the perception that the police service of this country… is under any political influence, I think
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In their party political broadcast last night, the Tories endorsed a community right to buy. The idea is that communities would be offered first refusal to take over and run local amenities that are faced with closure. For example, the community would be able to take over a Post Office rather than see it shut