Jonathan Jones

"I don't believe that wrongdoing did occur", said Liam Fox in his apology yesterday. With today's front pages dripping with accusations, Fox has some work to do to substatiate that claim. The Guardian reveals that "Political lobbyists were paid thousands of pounds to help a Dubai-based businessman arrange a secretive meeting with Liam Fox": "an invoice, seen by the Guardian, shows that Boulter enlisted the services of a lobbying firm to help him skip layers of bureaucracy and meet Fox for an urgent meeting on the 41st floor of the hotel. The invoice shows Boulter paid Tetra Strategy £10,000 for "project fees". It is understood that the fees covered fixing up media interviews and political lobbying.

It's been quite a week for Republicans deciding they're not interested in entering the White House in 2013. First, Christie closed the door on a presidential bid on Tuesday. Last night, Sarah Palin followed suit, saying: "After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States... My decision is based upon a review of what common sense Conservatives and Independents have accomplished, especially over the last year. I believe that at this time I can be more effective in a decisive role to help elect other true public servants to office – from the nation’s governors to Congressional seats and the Presidency.

Get ready for more Quantitative Easing. This week, Reuters found that economists think there's a 40 per cent chance the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) will announce another round when they meet on Thursday. And even if they hold off now, it's unlikely to be for long. Weak growth and the worsening outlook for the economy seem to have changed minds. The Treasury has surveyed growth predictions from independent forecasters. Back in January, the average prediction was for 2 per cent growth in 2011. It has since fallen steadily to just 1.2 per cent. Similarly, expectations for 2012 have also been downgraded, from the 2.1 per cent growth expected in June to 1.8 per cent now.

A couple of weeks ago Mitt Romney used Winston Churchill – or his bust, at least – to attack Obama. This week, he used the former Prime Minister to defend his flip-flopping. Or at least, he thought he did. Here's what he told a town hall in New Hampshire on Wednesday: 'In the private sector, if you don't change your view when the facts change, well you'll get fired for being stubborn and stupid. Winston Chuchill said, "When the facts change, I change too, Madam".' Unfortunately, as NBC have pointed out, the line wasn't Churchill's at all. It is usually attributed to John Maynard Keynes, but even that may be aprocryphal. So has another attempt to get over his record backfired on Romney? As Abraham Lincoln famously said, "You betcha!

Just over six weeks into his Presidential campaign, the sheen is coming off Rick Perry. Having entered the race as the favourite, he quickly established a double-digit lead over the rest of the Republican field. But now, especially after the candidates' latest debate last week, the momentum has shifted. Here, to illustrate Perry's fall, is yesterday's Fox News poll, compared to their previous one, conducted a month ago: As you can see, the drop in support for Perry has not led to much of an increase for his main rival, Mitt Romney. Instead, the biggest beneficiary has been Herman Cain, who has leapt from 6 per cent a month ago to 17 per cent now. That puts him in third place, just two points behind Perry and six behind Romney.

In his speech today, Ed Balls proved himself worthy of the "Son of Brown" tag, slipping in more than a few "Brownies". I thought CoffeeHousers would be interested in some of the figures behind his claims... Balls claimed that "we went into the crisis with lower national debt than we inherited in 1997". That is flatly untrue. Public sector net debt when Labour took over was £350 billion. In 2006-07 it was £500 billion. Even adjusting for inflation, Brown and Balls had added £62.8 billion in today's money to the national debt they "inherited" by the time the crisis started: Balls' defenders will say that he meant "debt ratio" – and, to be sure, debt did not rise as fast as GDP over those years so the ratio fell (from 42.5 per cent to 35.

Today's inflation figures remind us of the trouble the Bank of England will have if – as most analysts suspect – it embarks on another phase of Quantitative Easing. CPI inflation was 4.5 per cent in the year to August, and RPI at 5.2 per cent, both up a touch from July.  CPI inflation has now overshot the Bank of England's 2 per cent target for 60 of the past 75 months. It has been at more than 3 per cent since the start of 2010. As a result of last month's figure, Governor Mervyn King wrote his now-standard letter to George Osborne to "explain" why inflation is above the target.

This Sunday marks the tenth anniversary of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001. Here is the article Stephen Glover wrote for The Spectator in response: "The terrorists want us to believe the world has ended. We must not fall into their trap.", Stephen Glover, 15 September 2001 As those who are old enough remember what they were doing when President Kennedy was shot, so we will all recall what we were doing when we heard about the attack on New York. I was reading the controversial new book about Tina Brown and Harry Evans, which I had planned to write about for this column. Then my elder son rang me. Immediately Tina and Harry and their New York lives seemed wholly irrelevant to what was going on there now.