George osborne

Britain will contribute $15 billion (£10 billion) more to the International Monetary Fund. This means that there will be no need for another parliamentary vote on UK funding of the IMF as it is within the limits set by parliament in its last vote on the matter. This news has emerged in a joint statement by Australia, South Korea, Singapore and the UK; the UK’s $15 billion contribution is in proportion to this country’s voting share in the organisation. In terms of the politics of this decision, it is interesting that the Australian Liberals, the Tories’ sister party Down Under, are going to back the increase in the Australian contribution despite being

We thought CoffeeHousers might care to read James’s political column from this week’s magazine (on sale today), so here it is: There is a split in the Cameron circle. The divide is between those who think that the problems of the past few weeks have been a blip, one that will end when Boris Johnson wins in London, and those — including some of the Prime Minister’s closest friends — who fear the problems are symptoms of a disease that could cripple the government. At stake in this debate is the future strategic direction, and the potential success, of the Cameron project. The Prime Minister, ever the optimist, is in

It’s roughly seven months until George Osborne’s Autumn Statement, so no better time to consider which political issues will come to the boil ahead of it. Fuel costs, I’m sure, will be one if them; because they never really go away, and the 3p rise in fuel duty will have just been implemented in August. But I’d say the safest bet is the finances of the elderly. If the furore over the frozen income tax allowance for pensioners didn’t put that voting bloc at the forefront of Osborne’s mind, then the demographics behind UKIP’s poll jump will surely do the trick. He will be under severe pressure to act. Actually,

In the current issue of The Spectator I interview Sweden’s Anders Borg, perhaps the most successful conservative finance minister in the world — both in his economic track record, and the accompanying electoral success. His response to the crash was a permanent tax cut to speed the recovery. At the time, everyone told him it was madness. But Borg is unusual amongst finance ministers, in that he is a trained economist. To him, madness lay in repeating the formula of the 1970s and expecting different results. Last year, Sweden celebrated the elimination of its deficit. It’s perhaps worth mentioning a few other points which I didn’t fit into the interview.

On one side of the Atlantic, there’s Christine Lagarde begging for more cash for the IMF. On the other, there’s George Osborne more or less willing to hand it over on behalf of British taxpayers. This is how it’s been for months now. This is why it’s no surprise to read in today’s Telegraph that Osborne may be ‘close to agreeing’ an extra £10 billion for the fund. There are the usual caveats, of course: the Exchequer will only stump up if various other countries do likewise, and then the money has to go into one big pot for all the world, not into special mechanisms targetted at the eurozone.

I counted five issues which the NUT conference suggested that teachers might strike over. But in a conference full of the usual bluster, the most noteworthy threat was not to cooperate with Ofsted inspections. Ever since the new chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw — who was hugely successful as the head of Mossbourne academy — announced that a merely satisfactory grade would no longer be regarded as good enough, the teaching unions have taken agin him. But not cooperating with Oftsed would be unlawful. Anyone who tried to block an inspection would be liable to prosecution and a fine. Another issue exercising the unions is George Osborne’s proposals for regional

The drumbeat of criticism of David Cameron and George Osborne by various Tory MPs, summed up on the front page of today’s Telegraph, has drawn a reaction from those MPs loyal to the leadership. Kris Hopkins, the founder of the 301 group of Tory MPs, complains that the trouble is being whipped up by a ‘small group of disaffected people’ and that ‘the nature of their criticisms shows that this is about their egos not making the country a better place.’ At issue here is who speaks for Tory MPs. Hopkins claims that the vast majority of his colleagues are ‘committed and supportive of the Prime Minister and his team’

The row over the so-called pasty tax is a proxy. It is really a row about whether David Cameron and George Osborne get what it is like to worry about the family budget each week.   In truth, I suspect that they don’t. But I think the same probably goes for Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg and the vast majority of journalists. Most of the politics of class in Westminster, as opposed to the country, is the narcissism of small difference.   The best thing the coalition could do now is hold its nerve. The Budget did reveal that support for it is shallow. But, as one leading pollster said to