Peter Hoskin

Eds Miliband and Balls gathered the press corps together this morning to broadcast a straightforward message: oh yes, we do have an alternative. And the shape of that alternative? A repeat of the one-off tax on bankers' bonuses that, Balls claimed, raised £3.5 billion last year. The money would be used for an entire buffet of economic delights, from the creation of new houses to the funding of job schemes for the young. The upshot, apparently, would be 110,000 new jobs. Nice work, as they say — if you can get it. But there are a couple of problems with all that, the first of which Labour has pre-empted. It is that last year's bonus tax may not have raised as much as £3.5 billion, after all.

Ah, there it is, in the final sentence of the fourth paragraph: a flattering reference to Ed Miliband. Phew. Good job David Miliband squeezed his brother's name into his article on Labour's future (£) for the Times today, otherwise it might have been July 2008 all over again. As it is, MiliD's third newspaper article in as many days is enough to suggest that he's keen to remain a prominent figure, if not yet an actual rival for his brother's crown. In some respects, though, the recommendations made by MiliD are a challenge to his brother's Way of Doing Things. His suggestion that the left be "an ally of wealth creation," for instance, reads something like: "enough with the banker bashing, already.

Uh-oh, the Prime Minster has "full confidence" in Prince Andrew as a UK trade envoy – the sort of endorsement that often means the direct opposite. In this case, though, I suspect that the line is more a hasty attempt to defuse some of the tension that has been building on this matter over the past few days. Only this morning, a Downing Street source told the Beeb that the Prince could be ejected from the role should any more revelations surface. Another suggested that "there won't be many tears shed if he resigns." And then there's the senior Tory putting it about that "there appears to be no discernible mental activity," on Prince Andrew's part. It has been – and continues to be – a right royal rumpus, to say the least.

Need a bestiary to tell the hawks from the doves? Then this article (£) in the Times should serve your purpose. It's an account of Tuesday's Cabinet meeting on Libya, and the differences of opinion that transpired. Michael Gove, we are told, was "messianic" in his call for a tougher stance against Gaddafi. William Hague, for his part, was considerably more cautious. A graphic alongside the article puts George Osborne, Liam Fox and Andrew Mitchell in the Gove camp, and Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander with Hague. David Cameron, chairman of this diverse board, is said to be "caught in the middle". The government has since denied that the Cabinet is split.

"A well-targeted aid budget is essential if Britain is to punch above its weight on the world stage." That's how Tim Montgomerie finishes his neat defence (£) of British aid policy for the Times today. But, putting aside the matter of whether it's wise to give aid to, say, India at a time of spending restraint back home, Tim's claim rather inspires a question: is our aid budget well-targeted? And the answer, it seems to me, is encoded in Ian Birrell's punchy piece for the Evening Standard. Ian's overall point is similar to that made by economists such as Dambisa Moyo, whose work we have mentioned on Coffee House before now: that international aid is failing, on a grand scale, to do anything about the poverty it's meant to alleviate. Worse, it even has counterproductive effects.