Neil O'Brien is Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston
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I have a nice memory of walking into the then Chancellor’s private office at 1 a.m. and everyone just being there, hammering away on their computers, as if that was just totally normal. And nice memories of watching the senior people in the Treasury slice through some very intractable-seeming problems. But during my time in
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After nine years cleaning up Labour’s mess, things are looking up. Government debt as a share of the economy is starting to fall. For Theresa May’s successor, this means there is an opportunity to spend some desperately-needed money on public services: the police, prisons, schools and local government. But it’s also vital – and a
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George Osborne is drawing up plans for a northern ‘supercity’, in the hope that it might rival London and rebalance Britain’s economy. Neil O’Brien discussed the idea of a supercity in The Spectator in December 2012, before going off to advise Osborne. My career in politics nearly ended the day it began, when I was
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My career in politics nearly ended the day it began, when I was almost run over by a gang of Nazis in a Mini-Metro. Not a very butch car to be hit by, I know, and a rather pathetic substitute for a Panzer tank. But it was the early 1990s, and supporters of fascist government
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London’s separateness from the rest of Britain becomes more pronounced every year London has always been different from the rest of the country. But in recent decades the differences have widened to the point that, economically and socially, the capital now has little in common with the rest of Britain. The city may be hosting
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Cameron’s ‘big idea’ is for a ‘Post-Bureaucratic Age’ enabled by the internet. Will it work? Peter Hoskin and Neil O’Brien aren’t sure The future: it’s all about computers. Anyone could tell you that. But not everyone gets quite as evangelical about it as David Cameron. Put the Conservative leader in a room full of tech-heads,
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There are some pretty cheeky claims in today’s Pre-Budget Report. One is that “Cyclically-adjusted borrowing is lower than at Budget across the medium-term forecast.” (page 171). That makes it sound like it’s all under got a bit better since the Budget. But in fact the “cyclically adjusted” improvement is entirely because of a redefinition of
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Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more dishonest, it does. I wrote a piece in the Telegraph this morning saying that the Tories should dramatise the scale of the Government’s debt crisis by symbolically dropping their IHT promise. I said: “Dropping such a high profile policy would have shock value. It would send
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1) This was a vote against the Treaty, and against deeper EU integration This was indeed a vote against deeper integration. The political class are already spinning that it was stuff about abortion, an unpopular government – all the same old claims. But look at the polls and the top reasons for voting no –
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On Thursday, when I saw that The Independent had reprinted almost word for word Foreign Office talking points without attribution or any indication to its readers that this is what it was up to, I sent in a letter to the editor. Oddly enough, it hasn’t yet been published. If the Indy is “completely unapologetic”
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With wearying predictability The Independent splashes today on “10 Myths about the EU Treaty” – and prints a rebuttal of those eurosceptic “myths” on page three. They looked curiously familiar to me. And then I figured out why. The piece is an almost word-for-word reprint of a Foreign Office briefing note – but without any attribution
From our UK edition
With wearying predictability The Independent splashes today on “10 Myths about the Reform Treaty” – and prints a rebuttal of those eurosceptic “myths” on page three. They looked curiously familiar to me. And then I figured out why. The piece is an almost word-for-word reprint of a Foreign Office briefing note – but without any attribution