Archive: 7 June – 13 June 2010
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Friday 11 June 2010
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Alistair Darling is not a man to indulge in cheap political pyrotechnics. Indeed he is the original straight kind of guy in politics, but he is seething with anger at claims that he fixed the treasury forecasts ahead of the election to make things look better than they are. In a long interview with the Guardian he says he is going to be after Cameron every day to demand a big apology from him if as he suspects the borrowing forecasts published by the new office of budget responsibility on Monday do not show any sign of a deterioration in the borrowing forecasts since he published his own projections in the March budget. He thinks Cameron has been misleading the public by making up claims that he had found the books were even worse than Darling had said.
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This is high risk stuff from Darling. He does not know what the OBR headed by Professor Sir Alan Budd will say on Monday so by highlighting this issue he could yet be riding for a fall. There is every liklihood that Budd will... -
David Cameron goes for a 6am run with British soldiers at Camp Bastion in Helmand province during his two-day visit to Afghanistan. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
It wasn't quite Churchill. But neither was it Brown.
David Cameron stood up in a sandstorm at Camp Bastion shortly before 8am local time this morning (4.30am in Britain) to hail Britain's "inspiring" armed forces. The prime minister was on lively form, because he was up early for a 15-minute run at 6am round the base with a group of soldiers.
In his speech Cameron paraphrased Albert Pine to advise the troops on how to pick themselves up when they feel miserable:
Think of that soldier who said: those things we do for ourselves, they die with us, those things we do for others and for our world are immortal, they never die, they are never forgotten.
What you are doing here will never be forgotten. It is great and important work. You are incredibly brave and professional in what you do. I stand here as your prime minister wanting to tell you from the bottom of my heart that you should be proud of yourselves and what you do because your country is incredibly proud of you. -
Wednesday 9 June 2010
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A coalition cabinet meeting in Downing Street last month. Photograph: Phil Hannaford
The Liberal Democrats really are in this together with David Cameron. Yesterday for the first time the Liberal Democrat members of the cabinet held a political cabinet with the Conservatives.
The very fact they had a political, as opposed to government, get-together shows how bound up the two parties now are. It was brief – a longer one will be held shortly – but they discussed how they were going to have to protect themselves from the coming Labour attack on their proposed cuts.
No one is under any illusion they will be doing anything popular. Iain Duncan Smith, the work and pensions secretary, predicted the country is heading for a nightmare.
The thinking at the political cabinet seemed to be to point out that Labour itself was committed to a similar cuts programme, but had not allocated a penny towards achieving this.
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Tuesday 8 June 2010
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Jacob Rees-Mogg, pictured campaigning unsuccessfully in Glenrothes in Scotland in 1997, has won praise for his Commons maiden speech. Photograph: Murdo Macleod
Nick Boles, an influential Tory thinker over the past decade who has just been elected as MP for Grantham and Stamford, has a delightful piece in the Times today about life as a new MP.
Boles says the main topic of conversation among new MPs is the question of when they are going to make their maiden speeches. Boles gives an insight as to why his maiden speech will be more nerve wracking for him:
When I had cancer a few years ago, radiotherapy zapped my saliva glands and my mouth gets very dry. Will the Speaker let me take a bottle of water into the chamber? Or should I acquire a little hip flask and take a secret swig before I stand to speak? And what will my constituents say if they think they've seen me knocking back cherry brandy at 3 o'clock in the afternoon?
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Harriet Harman and Diane Abbott. Photograph: John Stillwell/PA
The Labour interim leader Harriet Harman is taking the controversial step of nominating Diane Abbott for the Labour leadership. Although strictly neutral in the campaign, Harman regards it as necessary to try to ensure a woman is on the ballot paper when nominations close.
Harman is expected to say she is doing this for the good of the party, and it may lead to a group of other people nominating Abbott before nominations close tomorrow.
Abbott is currently way off the 33 nominations from her fellow MPs needed to stand in the contest. She had nine at lunchtime, including her own.
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