Week of June 30 – July 6 – US Daily Review

By Steve Parkhurst, Senior Editor, USDR.

Looking at the news and opinion out of London each day.

7-6-15

London Mayoral candidate selection. Zac Goldsmith wins over half the vote in our Party members’ poll

The view of London members may be sharply different from those based elsewhere. But it is hard to argue that this finding isn’t promising for the Richmond Park MP.

There are no heroes in the Greek crisis that ended the euro

Referendums give voters an artificial sense of empowerment and can formalise a vague nationalist assertiveness

Let’s cut taxes for people at the top and the bottom

George Osborne’s Budget must slash the top rate of tax to incentivise success – but also stop subsidising employers who don’t pay the living wage

Seven key implications of Greece’s No vote – a Danish referendum moment?

What does yesterday’s vote mean for British eurosceptics, for the Eurozone itself and for Cameron’s renegotiation?

7-5-15

Greece has become a battleground for the worst ideas of the 20th century

There will be no winners in this showdown between Left-wing fantasists and the European project’s true believers

Budget 2015: It takes a lot of hard work to be as lucky as George Osborne

This is the Chancellor’s moment both of maximum opportunity and maximum risk

Norman Lamb: Lib Dem contender and pin-up for ageing hippies

Lib Dem MP Norman Lamb is in favour of legalising drugs . But people riding the Magic Roundabout rarely get off to vote…

Green energy subsidies spiral out of control

George Osborne to abolish coalition’s green tax target as customers face paying £1.5billion more through their bills to subsidise wind farms, solar panels and biomas plants

We’d dig ourselves a deep hole if we took politics out of planning

We may be slow as a country when it comes to major infrastructure projects. That’s the price of living in a democracy

7-4-15

Forget new promises on tax – the Conservatives should try reviving some old ones

Get rid of stamp duty on shares, and end the tax relief on films

The perils of lionising charities

As with aid, too many governments seem to have struck a Faustian pact with the third sector: money for good headlines, with no inconvenient scrutiny.

If we want to tackle extremism, we need to make a better offer

In the wake of terror attacks in Tunisia, France, and Kuwait, Britain needs to ramp up the volume of its counter-narrative

7-3-15

Enough of this charade: Greece must be told to leave the euro

It is no use pretending that the buffoons who pass for a government in Athens can solve this economic crisis

Protecting Britain from ISIS. Spies here are more effective than bombs abroad

Something-must-be-donery is seldom a solid basis for policy, if ever.

Europe’s leaders must end this reckless standoff with Greece

There’s so much more at stake than just euros. We need a cooling-off period in order to deliver and a real, sustainable solution on Greek debt

7-2-15

The Chancellor must stun us with a radical tax-cutting Budget

Mr Osborne can secure his place in history if he has the nerve to deliver a truly radical agenda next week

Daily catch-up: how democracy works in Greece, and other delusions of romantic foreigners

Plus Harriet Harman, winning at Prime Minister’s Questions

Child poverty. What matters “is less how it is measured and more how it is tackled”

Why Iain Duncan Smith is right to focus on boosting life chances rather than simply redistributing money.

English votes – you read it here first

Today begins a government journey to give some justice to England. The minimum required is a guarantee that England will not have to pay a higher rate of Income Tax than Scotland based on Scottish votes at Westminster, that England’s MPs have a veto over laws the Union Parliament wishes to impose just on England, and that England has more power to decide how to spend the money we raise in taxes which is the equivalent of the Scottish bloc grant.

7-1-15

The seeds of the current crisis were sown in the 1980s, and have been nurtured by economic illiteracy ever since

Who should be the Conservative candidate for London’s mayoral election?

Have your say on this, and all the usual questions, in our latest monthly survey.

Jeremy Hunt should lead by example and take care of older people

Society isn’t less caring. But the proportion of older people is going up and more of them will be childless. Hunt can’t outsource care to individuals and charities

Could slashing the top rate of tax to 40p put off blue-collar Tories?

160 Tory MPs want George Osborne to cut the top rate of tax again, but do voters feel the same way?

6-30-15

London’s newest buildings must connect to our city

The entrepreneur Rohan Silva makes an argument against the benign effect of the BBC which is convincing. He says the great monolith of the former Television Centre at White City had no resonance in the surrounding area. It never became a cultural hub. It certainly remained desolate and fortified until Westfield moved nearby when at least there was somewhere else to go. It is strange, looking back, that a centre of communication resembled a barracks.

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Across The Pond is edited daily by Steve Parkhurst. Steve is a political consultant, a writer at his blog as well as a Senior Editor here at US Daily Review. Follow Steve on Twitter @SteveParkhurst