Peter Hoskin

Fascinating stuff.  ConHome's Tim Montgomerie has got his hands on a letter sent on House of Commons writing paper to all Tory MPs, by - allegedly - a group of Conservative parliamentarians.  Tim has uploaded a pdf of the entire thing but, as he says, this is the key section: "We all know that the expenses crisis is a massive problem, but it has brought out clear evidence of what all of us had sensed and feared, namely that the party in parliament has ceased to be a team effort and is now just run and dictated to for the personal advantage of David Cameron and George Osborne. We are concerned that the parliamentary party is just being used and abused by the leader and his inner circle. They are treating the party as if it is their private property.

Although I can't say I agree with his choice, Steve Richards makes a strong case* for John Bercow becoming the next Speaker in today's Independent.  The passage that struck me the most, though, was this: "The next Speaker should do away with the costumes and the rituals, make the language and the proceedings more straightforward, give media interviews when Parliament itself is the issue, put the case for politics and the Commons around the country and by personifying a modern approach put pressure on the party leaders to make their moves too. I have never understood why the Speaker should not give interviews, an elusiveness that makes the Commons seem more distant than it is. Even Bob Dylan gives the occasional interview these days.

Isn't it funny how things work?  Andrew Lansley gaffes in a radio interview last Wednesday and, as a direct result, George Osborne today writes the kind of article on public spending that he should have written months ago.  Rather than shying away from the idea of cuts, he actively pushes them as a necessary measure to tackle Brown's debt crisis - an obvious point, I know, but one that the Tories wouldn't have made so bluntly even just a few weeks back.  Here's the key passage: "We've all been tip-toeing around one of those discredited Gordon Brown dividing lines for too long. The real dividing line is not 'cut versus investment', but honesty versus dishonesty.

What happens when tragedy has already slipped into farce, and the farce requires new material?  Gordon Brown creates another government committee, that's what.  As the Sunday Telegraph reports, the latest Committee for Rescuing Labour and Thereby Gordon's Premiership is composed of Brown himself along with seven Cabinet ministers: Peter Mandelson, Ed Balls, Alan Johnson, David Miliband, Alastair Darling, Harriet Harman and Jack Straw.  The idea is that they'll meet every Monday morning to "plot the Government's future strategy". And there's me thinking that they did that sort of thing in normal Cabinet meetings.

Just to prove that Brown 'n' Balls haven't locked Alistair Darling in the basement of the Treasury, the official Chancellor gets an interview in the FT today.  Plenty of stuff in there about green shoots, oil prices and those darstardly Germans, but it's this passage which jumped out at me: "The chancellor is quick to criticise what he characterises as the Conservatives’ plans to cut public spending by 10 per cent, but he does not follow Gordon Brown’s tactic of claiming public spending under a Labour government would be bountiful. In making that claim the prime minister used the longer-range Budget forecasts which are not adjusted for inflation.

Aside from the failure of other ministers to follow his lead, one of the saddest aspects to James Purnell's resignation is that the DWP has lost an extremely capable minister.  Yes, I know he's not a particular favourite of CoffeeHousers - but he was instrumental in getting David Freud's welfare reform agenda accepted as government policy, and even hired Freud as an adviser.  Before Freud's defection to the Tories, all signs were that the duo would push through some of the radical measures that the country requires as both job queues and welfare bills soar. But now Purnell's gone, one of the questions swirling around the Westminster policy arena is what the appointment of Yvette Cooper will mean for welfare reform. The signs aren't particularly clear.

So what's the story, George Osborne?  Reading his speech today, there's plenty of sturdy talk about lowering the national debt burden and encouraging saving - but a few gaps that need filling if the policy is to live up to the rhetoric.  Osborne seems to recognise this himself: for every reference to the Office of Budget Responsility or the IHT cut, there's an admission that the Tories will release more detailed proposals "in due course". In which light, the most striking passage reads thus (my emphasis): "The markets are saying that Britain needs a Conservative Government with a working majority if we want to avoid the costs to the British people of the country's debts rising.