Apart from the sentiment expressed, perhaps the most damaging aspect of Mervyn King’s intervention on Tuesday was its timing. Brown’s round-the-world trip was meant to act as a rallying call – but now it’s more an exercise in firefighting, as he deals with tricky questions surrounding our capacity for a “fiscal stimulus”. Take his
A thought-provoking article by Iain Martin in today’s Telegraph, on the subject of MPs and their expenses. Here are some of his proposals for strengthening Parliament and making the system more transparent: “So, how to improve the quality of members and their work? Some political analysts argue, with some justification, that MPs should be paid
Brown’s off saving the world, so it’s a Harman-Hague-Cable match-up at PMQs today. Stay tuned for live coverage from 1200. 1201: You can watch proceedings here. 1207: Here’s Harman. First question from Joan Ryan, wanting an assurance that the Government “will do all it can” to combat rising burglary. Harman, predictably, gives an answer in the
Looking at this morning’s papers, it’s hard not to see Mervyn King’s intervention yesterday (footage from Sky, above) as a major turning point. It makes the covers of the FT, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the Mail and the Times, and the headlines cut right into Gordon Brown’s “everything it takes” bravado (The Times: “Bank to
A tale of two speeches today, as Brown and Cameron delivered addresses largely on the markets and financial regulation. The big difference: Brown’s was directed at a European audience in Strasbourg, whilst Cameron’s was delivered here in Blighty. It made for a striking comparison. On the one hand, you had the PM putting a Continental spin
Ben Brogan’s got it right. Mervyn King has just “blown a hole” in Gordon Brown’s strategy for the next few weeks and months, by telling the Treasury Select Committee that there’s no case for another fiscal stimulus. Here are the BoE governor’s exact words: “Given how big [UK fiscal] deficits are, I think it would
Some intriguing revelations about Trident in Rachel Sylvester’s column today: “Behind the scenes … the Government is taking a long hard stare at the programme. It is estimated that the replacement will cost between £15 billion and £20billion, but with annual upkeep of £1.5 billion, the total over 30 years could rise above £65 billion. That’s
Steve Richards is right: Ken Clarke was only being honest about the Tories and inheritance tax. The current fiscal landscape means that certain pledges will have to be sacrificed (or at least delayed) and, to my mind, the IHT pledge is a good candidate for that. You imagine that Clarke’s take, carefully stage-managed, would have
Could the second homes controversy be a chance for the Lib Dems to set themselves apart from the other parties? They’ve certainly come out hard on the issue, tabling an early day motion calling for the second home allowance to be abolished for London MPs, and calling for an inquiry into MPs’ expenses. Here, courtesy
Trust Frank Field to come up with another revealing anecdote about Gordon Brown in tonight’s Panorama. This time it’s about Brown’s raid on pension funds in 1997, and is reported by the Telegraph thus: On the programme, Mr Field also recalls the day in 1997 when Gordon Brown, the Chancellor, abolished tax credits paid to
There’s a futility about the calls for an investigation into Tony McNulty’s housing arrangements. Sure, McNulty’s expense claims are outrageous – a mockery of the taxpayer that will further undermine the public’s trust in politicians – but I expect the refrain of the investigators will be depressingly familiar: McNulty acted within the letter, if not
Now here’s another tax debate for the Tories to get caught up in. Appearing on the Politics Show today, Ken Clarke has suggested that the Tory plan to raise the inheritance tax threshold is no more than an “aspiration”. Here’s how the indispensable Politics Home reports it: “Mr Clarke said Tory plans to raise the
Remember David Miliband’s wrongheaded Guardian article from earlier this year; the one where he questioned the use of the phrase “war on terror,” and railed against the idea of a “unified, transnational enemy”? Well, today, Gordon Brown has an article in the Observer which seems dead set against his Foreign Secretary’s thinking. Its headline: “We
Yet another set of alarming recession statistics, these from today’s FT: “One in every 56 businesses is expected to collapse this year as the recession intensifies, a leading accounting firm has warned. BDO Stoy Hayward says the rate of business failures will increase by 59 per cent by the end of this year to 36,000
One of the more frustrating aspects of the Cameron leadership is how its strategy is sometimes (overly) determined by what Labour will do or say. Take what was their long-standing commitment to match Labour’s spending plans. This was made in fear of the “Tory cuts” attack, and ensured that the New Labour orthodoxy – that
The public finances are deteriorating – and fast. Alistair Darling’s PBR forecasts seemed optimistic back in November, but now they seem like a sick joke at the expense of the taxpayer. Indeed, a report by the Ernst & Young Item club today predicts that government borrowing over the next five years will be some £270
Labour’s Obama-centricity has certainly been grating recently – the hoo-haa surrounding Brown’s trip to the States, for instance, and the name-dropping he’s engaged in since. But now it’s been cranked up to 11, and is all the more disspiriting for it. Exhibit A: the party’s G20 micro-site, which Dizzy highlighted yesterday. It features a picture
Have the Tories fallen into Gordon Brown’s 40p tax trap? Since the measure was announcned in the Pre-Budget Report, they’ve skilfully avoided raising it – after all, an attack on the tax hike could be spun by Labour as a case of the Tories and their “rich friends”; whilst support for it could provoke some
There’s a school of thought that welfare reform will become less popular as the recession bites deeper, and as more people enter the welfare system. Not so, to my mind – and Alice Thomson adroitly sets out the reasons why in today’s Times. Her central claim is that the main divide in UK labour isn’t between
An eyecatching snippet from the Telegraph: “[Labour chief whip, Nick] Brown said that he was concerned that a hardcore rump of five per cent of Labour MPs were responsible for a quarter of all ‘unauthorised absences’ from the Commons.” Now, I wonder who they might be…