Week of May 22 – May 28

Read Time:4 Minute, 37 Second

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

5-28-12

What is the Fresh Start Project? Matthew Barrett profiles the Tory MPs trying to forge a new UK-EU relationship

My series profiling the backbench groups of Tory MPs has usually featured groups with general ideological goals. Groups representing the traditional right or Thatcherite wing of the Party cannot be said to focus on a single area of political life.

5-27-12

Cabinet minister Baroness Warsi admits breaking cash rules

David Cameron has suffered a fresh political blow as the Conservative Party chairman admits that she failed to declare thousands of pounds in rental income.

Tony Blair’s moral decline and fall is now complete

Tony Blair’s willingness to prop up the brutal Kazakhstan regime shames the one-time champion of democracy

David Cameron and George Osborne will not even argue their case

According to their Conservative critics, David Cameron and George Osborne are isolated and impervious to advice.

The prime minister has put his judgment and integrity on trial

The Leveson inquiry, designed to examine the sins of the press, has become an inquisition into the government

5-26-12

Labour may have lost the election but unions are still getting subsidies and Left-wingers are still running public bodies

On Wednesday evening ConservativeHome held an event to discuss how the Conservative Party might win the next election. Yesterday I blogged the contribution from Chris Grayling.

Ed Miliband could become the advocate of low tax, the ‘squeezed middle’ and an effective state

5-25-12

Water water everywhere, but not enough to drink?

The latest wet drought has highlighted the imperfections of our water industry, with its heavy regulations and government protected regional near monopolies. It takes some kind of genius to be short of water in an island famed for its heavy rainfall in many parts.

Bank of England issues veiled warning to savers about gilt prices and pensions

Savers approaching retirement should heed a veiled warning in a speech by the Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, pensions experts and economists claim.

The Committee on Climate Change should be abolished

The Committee on Climate Change has its offices in Holbein Place just off Sloane Square and has a budget of £4.4 million all from the taxpayer (up from £4.3 million under Labour when Ed Miliband was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.)

5-24-12

Another daft plan to ‘reinvent government’

Why can’t politicians see a major British institution without wanting to up-end it?

Leave Business Secretary Vince Cable alone – he’s the moral centre of this Coalition

The Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has stayed loyal to the Government without surrendering his identity.

There is no excuse for economic timidity

We have a disappointing absence of radicalism that is routinely blamed on the intransigence of the Liberal Democrats.

Imagine if our MPs never ‘chillaxed’

Politicians can’t win whatever they are doing, but the thought of what would happen if they never switched off terrifies Sadie Smith

5-23-12

UK inflation rate drops to 3% in April, says ONS

The UK inflation rate fell last month to its lowest since February 2010 owing to a slowdown in transport price rises and the timing of Easter.

Welfare to work ‘fraud scandal’

The welfare to work firm owned by David Cameron’s former families tsar is involved in a “multi-billion-pound scandal” in which public money has been systematically misused, a whistleblower has said.

What’s the point of social mobility? It still leaves some in the gutter

Nick Clegg’s desire to fast-stream clever kids out of deprivation leaving the rest facing shabby prospects is hardly communism

Why it’s time for a single income tax

Paying one hit of tax on all your income would simplify the system and make it more honest and transparent

5-22-12

Andrew Lilico: A six-point alternative to yet more bank bailouts

All over Europe, bank bailouts, which never stopped from 2007 on (we just stopped talking about them so loud or re-branded them “sovereign debt bailouts”), have started accelerating again.  Recent days have seen discussion or enaction of bailouts in Ireland, Spain, France, Cyprus and Greece.

ASBOs weren’t much cop, but what about their replacement?

Brace yourselves for a new crime wave sweeping across the country — the government is doing away with ASBOs. Or, rather, don’t. The truth about ASBOs is that they were rather less significant than Labour would have you believe.

Why David Cameron is still the most likely person to be Prime Minister after the next election

I wonder if there’s ever been a government which didn’t suffer from mid-term blues? The hard thing is working out whether the recent steep decline in the coalition’s polling numbers is merely a dip or a lasting trend.

Social mobility a key task for the coalition, says Nick Clegg

Deputy PM to challenge left and right on improving life chances as government publishes 17 ‘trackers’ to assessing its progress

The fashionable hostility towards social mobility is just another way of saying ‘know your place’

Is there anyone the great and the good hate more than an upwardly mobile member of the working classes? A raft of abusive terminology has been created to diss these strange creatures. They’re seen as “yuppies” or “Loadsamoneys”, waving their wads of cash around with a sneering look of self-satisfaction on their faces.

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