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Thursday 22 July 2010

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‘I can’t decide whether to be an actress or a bishop.’

Thursday, 22nd July 2010

Meeting the cost of welfare reform

Matthew Sinclair 9:00am

As far back as last September, Iain Martin wrote that Iain Duncan Smith’s plans to reform the welfare system were going to run into trouble over cost:

'But there is no way these proposals, as drafted, will be implemented by a Conservative government, for one simple reason: they carry an estimated up-front increased cost of £3.6bn. A Treasury and Tory Chancellor desperate to find massive savings quickly will never nod that through even if advocates of these proposals promise vast “long-term” savings. Officials will simply say: how many times

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Wednesday, 21st July 2010

Abbott’s radio silence

James Forsyth 6:37pm

Anne McElvoy’s report for the Today Programme on the Labour leadership this morning is well worth listening to. It featured all the usual suspect and some classic moments—Tessa Jowell damming Ed Miliband with faint praise and Ed Balls’ henchmen Charlie Whelan going out of his way to praise Andy Burnham—but the really memorable bit came when McElvoy asked Abbott about her decision to send her son to private school. As with her infamous interview with Andrew Neil, Abbott simply refused to answer. There was just a period of dead air.

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Not David Cameron’s finest hour

James Forsyth 5:24pm

David Cameron has just made a quite spectacular mistake. Talking to Sky News he said:

'I think it's important in life to speak as it is, and the fact is that we are a very effective partner of the US, but we are the junior partner'. 'We were the junior partner in 1940 when we were fighting the Nazis.'

The obvious problem with Cameron’s remarks is that, as any fule kno, the Americans did not enter the war until after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The error is...

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Another one in the eye for Vince

David Blackburn 4:49pm

I feel for Vince Cable, who has morphed from Sage to Crank in a matter of weeks. Imagining himself as the scourge of the tuition fee, Cable floated the idea of a graduate tax recently. This pre-empted the Browne report into university funding and disregarded the coalition agreement, which states that all questions would be deferred until the Browne report’s publication. It was, in other words, posturing.

The BBC reports what has been rumoured in Whitehall: the government is not giving serious consideration to a graduate tax, which would have...

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Clegg's revolution

Lloyd Evans 4:04pm

At last, Nick Clegg got his chance to pretend to be PM today and he used it to give a dazzling impression of Gordon Brown. Opposing him, Jack Straw was off-colour. Hoarse of throat and hunched of stance, he did his best to bring some clarity to Britain’s new mission in Afghan - Operation Leg It. He asked if the exit date of 2014 was ‘absolute or conditional’. Keen to offer value for money Clegg responded to a single question with two answers. He expected ‘no troops in a combat role’ by 2015 –...

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Howard versus Clarke

David Blackburn 2:25pm

Michael Howard appeared on today's Daily Politics and laid into Ken Clarke's 'caricature' of a policy to reduce prison places. There is, Howard argues and John Denham supported him, a correlation between increasing the number of those incarcerated and a fall in crime. In other words, prison still works. Howard criticised Clarke's 'rather foolish' denial of that link. Howard echoes the Spectator's editorial line that early release endangers society, and that it costs less in real terms to keep criminals in prison.

Howard's off-message critique is the most total...

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Clegg's only blemish

James Forsyth 1:10pm

Nick Clegg comfortably got through his first appearance standing in for David Cameron at PMQs. He was helped by a poor performance by Jack Straw, who made Neil Kinnock look like a model of concision. As Clegg said mockingly at one point, ‘that wasn’t a question it was a sort of dissertation.’

In his final response to Straw, Clegg attacked him for his role in the ‘illegal invasion of Iraq.’ Now, Clegg has long called the invasion of Iraq illegal. But it is a different matter to do so when standing in...

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PMQs Liveblog

David Blackburn 11:56am

Stay tuned for coverage of Clegg's first PMQs from 12:00.

12:02: He's off, the first Liberal to answer Prime Minister's Questions since the '20s. He lists the dead from Afghanistan.

A tricky one on cuts in the capital schools budget from the MP for Gateshead. Clegg is clear: we should be under no illusion, Labour would have had to cut.

12:03: Tory MP David Borroughes asks if Gary McKinnon will spared extradiction? Clegg replies that Cameron and Obama have discussed the matter and hope to reach a satisfactory conclusion.

12:05: Jack...

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Clegg's debut

James Forsyth 11:51am

John Bercow will need to be in good voice today. For this is the first time that Nick Clegg has stood in for David Cameron at PMQs and he is bound to get an almighty barracking from the Labour side.

At the moment, Labour MPs seem to reserve nearly all their disdain and anger for the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg’s appearances at the Despatch Box are a cue for Labour MPs to shout 'traitor' and jeer at him repeatedly. Jack Straw, the wiliest of politicians, is bound to try and make today...

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