cunningtitle

Whatever your political allegiance, the RBS bonus announcement (which I’ve written about for Full Fact) resulted in a spectacular political manoeuvre. Boris Johnson remarked that he couldn’t understand the bonus awarded to Stephen Hester as it was “completely out of whack” with other people’s pay. Many argued the Mayor of London was being opportunist, jumping [...]

Usually the first few paragraphs of a news story will tell you everything you need to know. Just occasionally though, the final lines of an article are the ones that could spark an entire debate. Take for example, this quote from the head of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, cited by the BBC in their [...]

General elections tend to be won by the more optimistic parties, or more accurately, governments only change when the opposition is particularly optimistic. Think back to the campaigning of 2010 and the slogans of the Conservatives, and you might remember phrases such as “I’ll cut the deficit, not the NHS” – certainly a defensive slogan, [...]

The positioning over the EU debate is, inevitably, very political. The Liberal Democrats have a three line whip against a referendum despite their manifesto commitment, presumably because any referendum would split the coalition badly. Labour also want to seem united on the matter, keen to avoid a Conservative-style split. Despite a few Labour names (including [...]

An e-petition calling for rioters to lose their benefits has rapidly gained the 100,000 signatures needed for it to be passed to parliament (and last time I checked had over 200,000 signatures). Personally, I foresee problems with this not as a result of some sort of right to benefits, but purely because you are introducing [...]

I’ve just watched the BBC News at 10 report on the allegations that the News of the World hacked (amongst others) Milly Dowler’s phone and the phones of the families of soldiers. There was some coverage of the possibility that police were paid for information – something presumably done to speed up access to information [...]

Bluntly speaking, the strikes don’t seem to have benefited anyone politically. I’m not sure anyone really expected it to do the coalition any good. No government wants a strike on its hands since images of thousands of people waving signs protesting against it will dominate the headlines that day. Ed Miliband had a very difficult [...]

There’s been a lot of coverage of the changes to the NHS reforms announced today. In particular, the media have focused on the notion that it is “yet another U-turn” by the government in a long list of changed policies. The government won’t say it as it would look stroppy, but I suspect a lot [...]

Today it was announced that a new university will be launched without any government funding. Instead, the New College of the Humanities will be charging £18,000 tuition fees. Understandably, alarm bells are ringing for a lot of people. The general train of thought is that the following will happen: Universities such as this, despite the [...]

As a result of Alan Johnson’s resignation today, Ed Balls has become the new Shadow Chancellor. Inevitably there will be much speculation about the consequences this will have on Labour’s economic policy, given that Mr. Balls has argued so strongly against any cuts and even spoken out against Alistair Darling. Ed Miliband has tried to [...]