Much ado about the Office for Budget Responsibility’s growth predictions in the Treasury Select Committee earlier, especially as an OBR official admitted that the cuts and tax hikes in the Budget could conceivably tip us into a double-dip recession. So are the OBR’s official forecasts too optimistic, as some are now claiming? Only time will
To be honest, these Mandelson memoirs are already losing their lustre. I was planning to do a summary of this morning’s revelations, as yesterday – but swiftly lost the will. It’s not that this first draft of New Labour’s history is unappreciated, of course. But so much of it is just plain unsurprising: ministers thought
This afternoon’s education question felt like a pressure valve being released. For a week now, the story has been all about the heat building-up under Michael Gove. But, today, the Education Secretary looked far more comfortable, and managed to swing the blowtorch back in Ed Balls’ direction. The message that the coalition had been struggling
Meanwhile, in other Labour news, Ed Balls has just jumped into the deep end without any armbands. Speaking to the BBC this lunchtime, everyone’s favourite Labour leadership candidate said that he didn’t – and doesn’t – approve of Labour’s plan to cut the deficit in half “through spending cuts.” As if to underline the point,
As Peter Mandelson has us knee-deep in Kremlinology already, it’s worth pointing out this insight from Mary Ann Sieghart in the Independent: ‘It was quite clear in 2008 and 2009 that Brown was going to lead Labour to defeat, whereas a messy leadership contest was by no means certain …. Mandelson by then knew that
So now we know what happened during those uncertain days following the election in May – or at least we know Peter Mandelson’s side of it. The Times begins its serialisation of the Dark Lord’s book today with a front-page photo of Nick Clegg and the legend, “Clegg the Executioner”. And, inside, Mandelson explains how
Let’s dwell on the Labour leadership contest a second longer, to point its participants in the direction of John Rentoul’s column today. Its central point – that Labour should “leave a door ajar” for Nick Clegg – should be self-evident to a party which has been forced out of power by a coalition. But, in
It may not be the sexiest story in today’s newspapers, but the ongoing Office for Budget Responsibility row is certainly among the most important. After all, a great deal rests on how it is resolved. Not only could we end up without a body capable of restoring trust in fiscal forecasts, but the government’s promising
Oh joy, Labour are at war again. The animosities which have largely been kept in check since the election are now piercing through to the surface again – and it’s all thanks to Peter Mandelson’s memoirs. After the ennobled one’s insights about Gordon and Tony in the Times yesterday, Charlie Whelan is shooting back from
Iain Duncan Smith is on a roll, and the roll continues with his interview on Straight Talk with Andrew Neil this weekend. Supporters of welfare reform will hear plenty to encourage them, even if only on a rhetorical level. Duncan Smith discuses how the fiscal climate makes this a “once in a generation opportunity and
And so this morning’s Office for Budget Responsibility story rumbles on, with various Labour figures questions whether the organisation is as independent as it should be. The most significant intervention, though, is from the government. As the FT reports, George Osborne’s Treasury team is hanging onto its ability to select the next head of the
“Aspiration” tends to be a convenient word for politicians, in the sense that any policy that they can’t implement now can be glossed over as something they want to do in future. But, if Vince Cable’s interview with the Times is anything to go by, it could become a troublesome word for the coalition. Speaking
Forget the hubbub about Gove’s schools list, the most damaging story for the government this week could well be on the cover of today’s FT. Alex Barker does a great job of summarising it here. But the central point is that the Office for Budget Responsibility changed its forecasting methods just before the Budget, with
If cash was the one and only determining factor in elections, then David Miliband would have the Labour leadership contest sewn up. As figures released today show, he’s raked in a hefty £185,000 in donations to his campaign. That’s over 6 times more than Ed Balls has managed, and 12 times his brother’s total. Miliband’s
You’ve got to hand it to him: David Cameron knows when to dish out the charm. Just days on from news about cuts to their pay-offs, he is today giving a speech to civil servants in which he purrs that they “the envy of the world”. Not that he withholds the stick, though. The meat
There’s an snappy little anecdote in Steve Richard’s column today, which bears repeating in these parts: “Clegg is in a similar position in relation to his party as Tony Blair was over Iraq. Blair used to go around telling his colleagues: ‘It’s worse than you think. I believe in the policy.’ Clegg is known to
Well, that was quick: after only three months in the role, Alan Budd is to step down as the head of the Office for Budget Responsibility. A shame, too. In a quiet sort of way, he had become one of the defining figures in these early days of coalition government – helping to establish the
Rachel Sylvester is on top form in the Times today, and I’d urge CoffeeHousers to delve behind the paywall (or borrow someone’s copy of the paper) to read her column. Its central point? That ministers are discovering ingenious ways to exploit and undermine the ringfenced health and international development budgets. The Home Office is saying
While we’re on the subject of Boris, this article by the Times’s Sam Coates is worth noting down. It suggests that the Mayor of London has “lost faith” in our first-past-the-post voting system, and has declined the opportunity to campaign in its favour. And while he remains an “agnostic” about the alternative votes system, he
This morning’s Times devotes its front page to how the government is borrowing Boris’s ideas for combating the unions. But Spectator readers might remember that James foresaw this situation in his politics column. Here’s what he wrote back in October: “…an agenda is being discussed to curtail the ability of unions to call for industrial