Jonathan Jones

It looks like George Osborne will put the planned fuel duty rise on hold again, in order to avoid another Tory rebellion and potential government defeat in the Commons. This battle has its origins in a Labour Budget: that of 2009, in which Alistair Darling introduced a fuel duty escalator whereby fuel duty would increase by inflation-plus-a-penny every April from 2010 to 2013. In his 2011 Budget, Osborne announced that he was abolishing the escalator and instead cutting fuel duty by 1p per litre. From January 2012 onwards, the escalator was to be replaced by a 'fair fuel stabiliser', under which the duty rises by inflation-plus-a-penny when oil prices are low for a sustained period, but only by inflation (as measured by the Retail Prices Index) when they are high.

With the elections over and Barack Obama returned to the White House for four more years, the attention of US politicians has turned to the so-called ‘fiscal cliff’ — a collection of tax hikes and spending cuts that threaten to send the country back into recession. But what exactly is going on, and why? The Bush tax cuts George W Bush passed two major tax cut packages during the first term of his Presidency: the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003. Together, they lowered federal tax rates on income (for example, the top rate fell from 39.6 to 35 per cent, and the bottom rate from 15 to 10 per cent), capital gains and dividends.

The focus, of course, is on President Barack Obama's resounding re-election — but there are plenty of other reasons why Democrats are celebrating Tuesday night's results. In the summer, it looked like Obama's party would struggle to maintain their Senate majority. Instead, they have extended it. Embattled incumbents held on in tight races in Missouri, Montana and Ohio. The Democrats also retained vulnerable seats in New Mexico, North Dakota, Virginia and Wisconsin despite the incumbents having retired. And they took seats off the Republicans in Indiana and Massachusetts, to take their total up to 54 Senators — and it could rise to 55 if newly-elected independent Angus King decides to caucus with them. The Democrats also beat expectations in House elections.

We're now just a week away from election day in the United States. And after all the campaign rallies, all the debates, all the billions of dollars spent, it looks quite possible that things will be left pretty much the same as they are now — as far as control of the federal government goes, anyway. The most likely outcome of the Presidential election? Barack Obama re-elected. The most likely outcome of the Senate elections? 51 Democrats, 47 Republicans and two independents who caucus with the Democrats — just as there are now. And the most likely outcome of the House of Representatives elections? Well, the expert team at the Cook Political Report predicts that the Democrats will gain between zero and ten seats — at best reducing the Republican majority from 49 to 29.

With a week and a day to go until the US elections, here's a quick run-down of the 33 Senate races. Currently, the Democrats have 53 seats (including two Independents who caucus with them) to the Republicans' 47, so the GOP would need a net gain of four seats to take control. Back in the summer that looked pretty likely, but most of the races have since moved towards the Democrats. In fact, the Democrats are now more likely to extend their Senate majority than to lose it. The races are ranked from the most likely to change parties to the least likely. 1. Massachusetts (currently Republican) Ever since Scott Brown won the 2010 special election following Ted Kennedy's death, he was always going to be the most vulnerable Republican incumbent in 2012.

Ed Balls has just been given a thorough grilling by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics — particularly on his past assertions that Labour were not running a structural deficit in the years leading up to the financial crisis.

Will it be 0.5 per cent? 0.8 per cent? 1 per cent? Whatever figure the ONS tells us GDP grew by in the third quarter of 2012, there's one thing you can be pretty sure of: it won't be the actual amount GDP grew by in Q3. In the past 51 years, just 12 of the ONS's 205 first stabs at quarterly growth have survived later revisions. To be fair, the ONS recognises this, and cautiously labels tomorrow's figure a ‘preliminary estimate’. But just how wrong is it likely to be? If tomorrow's figure is +0.5 per cent, does that mean we can be pretty confident that growth was between, say, 0.3 per cent and 0.7 per cent — bad but not disastrous? It turns out we can't. In fact, a preliminary estimate of +0.5 per cent really means somewhere between +1.2 per cent and –0.

GDP per head is still 7 per cent below its pre-recession peak. That's one of the sober reminders of the weakness of our recovery in a new ONS report, released as part of its National Well-being project. In fact, GDP per head fell by 7 per cent from 2008 Q1 to the recession's trough in 2009 Q2 — and has recovered by 0.0 per cent since. That is, the 2.4 per cent recovery in GDP up to 2012 Q2 (which still leaves us 4.1 per cent below our pre-recession level) has not been enough to outweigh population growth. The GDP index has risen, but only thanks to Britain's ever-rising headcount. When it comes to GDP per capita, there has literally been no recovery at all.

With two years to go, Alex Salmond's campaign for a 'Yes' vote in the Scottish independence referendum is facing a big challenge to turn around public opinion. Ipsos MORI have a new poll out today, showing almost two-to-one opposition to independence, and support for Salmond's cause has been declining all year. This matches the findings of two other pollsters. YouGov found the split going from 33 'yes'/53 'no' in January to 27-60 in August. And TNS-BMRB have it going from 35-44 in January to 28-53 this month. So the SNP has its work cut out — it needs to change plenty of Scottish minds if its even going to make the 2014 vote close. They seem to be testing out messages to achieve this, having commissioned a YouGov poll last week.