Media

Nick Clegg is eviscerated by this morning’s press. The Independent, The FT and The Guardian gleefully report that the influential IFS has decreed the Budget (supposedly a model of fairness according to Clegg) to be regressive, that there is discontent fomenting on the Lib Dem benches and that the latest polls place Lib Dem support at 12 percent. None of this is news. The IFS is reiterating what it argued on Budget day: Osborne’s measures will hit the poorest in 2014-15. That is still some way off and action can be taken to lessen their impact. Besides, the coalition should have delivered its promise to raise the income tax threshold

Nick Clegg’s few days in charge have summed up his current political problem. If he says he agrees with what the government is doing, the media ask what’s the point of the Lib Dems? That’s what happened to him on the Today Programme this morning. But if he talks about where he disagrees with the coalition programme as he did on Monday when discussing Trident, he’s lambasted for exacerbating coalition tensions.   It is all far cry from the early days of the coalition when there was some concern in Conservative circles that Clegg was a thinner, better version of David Cameron. But if Clegg went back and like a

Few writers can make a silly season story read like official history, so it’s worth drifting behind the Times’ paywall to read Rachel Sylvester on Boris and Dave’s mutual emnity. It is no secret that BoJo and DC are united in rivalry, but Sylvester adds a second dimension with insider quotations – a mix of arch witticisms and savage partisanship. Here are several of many from today’s column: ‘Most people at Westminster assume that Boris — compared by one of his editors to Marilyn Monroe, “another egomaniacal blonde” — still harbours ambitions to lead his party. As a boy he used to declare that when he grew up he wanted to be “world king”, so

There’s an intellectually enriching debate going on at the moment between Ross Douthat and Andrew Sullivan over gay marriage. It was all started by an eloquent and heartfelt column by Ross arguing that the idea that “lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support” and that is incompatible with gay marriage. Andrew Sullivan, who along with Jonathan Rauch, deserves a huge amount of credit for moving the argument for gay marriage into the mainstream, wrote a powerful set of rebuttals. Personally, I subscribe to

David Cameron’s just launched his benefit cheat crackdown (Con Home has a little footage). There were two notable occurrences. First, Cameron agreed that tax evasion was as serious as benefit fraud and vowed to tackle it – this defused the slightly absurd criticism from the left about not challenging tax avoidance whilst hitting benefit cheats – tax avoidance is legal, benefit fraud and tax evasion are not. Tom Harris attacks his party’s attempt to draw any equivalence between tax evasion and benefit fraud, saying it misses the point: tackling fraud is to the benefit of all. Second, a Mancunian woman called Sharon Reynolds has a crush on our Dave, a

Nick Robinson’s documentary on the coalition negotiations is just under four hours away, but I suspect we’ve already heard about one of its key moments. As various outlets are reporting this afternoon, Nick Clegg tells Robinson that he had changed his mind about the pace of spending cuts sometime before the coalition agreement. Or as he puts it: “I changed my mind earlier than that … firstly remember between March and the actual general election … a financial earthquake occurred in on our European doorstep.” This matters because the Lib Dem manifesto said that spending shouldn’t be cut (above and beyond Labour’s plans) this year – and that the squeeze

The British press has worked itself into a gibbering mass of excitement about Cameron’s visit to India. The Indian press has barely noticed it. There is no mention of Cameron on the front page of The Times of India’s website, which is dominated by the spat between cricketing legends Bishen Bedi and Muttiah Muralitharan – in fact, those two are all over the press. Also, the Hindustan Times leads with a scintillating description of a parliamentary point of order; the Calcutta Telegraph splashes with an account of army operations against Maoist rebels in northern Bengal. India Daily has coverage of the Wikileaks saga. And IndiaTV is fixated by an extraordinary