Public finances
Numbers 10 & 11 need to find a better way of working together
Philip Hammond should be sending George Osborne a case of the finest claret. For Osborne’s decision to accept the editorship…
Why Hammond won’t be pulling rabbits out of hats on Budget day
Normally, the Saturday before a Chancellor’s first Budget would be dominated by discussion about their plans for the economy. But,…
Why the tax credit cuts had to go
In the peroration of his statement today, George Osborne declared that the Tories were ‘the mainstream representatives of the working…
Government defeated twice in the Lords on tax credits
The government was defeated twice in the Lords tonight on tax credits, with the motions put down by Baroness Meacher…
Osborne’s welcome conversion to the advantages of a budget surplus
There should always be celebration when a sinner repents, and so it’s great to see George Osborne’s belated conversion to…
Ed Miliband’s refusal to admit that Labour overspent could cost him dear
Tonight’s Question Time special with Cameron, Miliband and Clegg provided the best television of this campaign so far. A well-informed…
‘Boring is good’ Cameron tells Tory MPs
David Cameron and George Osborne addressed Tory MPs this evening. The meeting was to update the Tory parliamentary party on…
Why both the Tories and Labour now want a fight on the economy
Tomorrow, in a sign of how keen the Tories are to keep the political debate focused on it, both David…
Jeremy Vine and the truth about government spending
Those who complain about the BBC (myself included) usually only refer to a small part of a massive and divergent operation.…
Cameron’s speech show us why he is still the Tories’ greatest single asset
David Cameron has yet again delivered a belter of a party conference speech, peppered with announcements. His performance is a…
Rachel Reeves’s ‘staggering’ and ‘astonishing’ future of welfare speech
Rachel Reeves, the Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, gave a speech earlier this week on the future of the welfare…
George Osborne’s grey-haired gamble
George Osborne has been in retail mode this morning, selling his pension reforms and explaining how pensioners can unlock their…
At last, it’s Tax Freedom Day… but just wait until you find out when Cost of Government Day is
Today is Tax Freedom Day. That means that the average person in Britain has to work 148 days of the…
An NHS tax is just another name for a tax rise
Finding a way to raise taxes that is popular is, for some on the centre-left, the Holy Grail. As the…
George Osborne and Ed Balls play it like it’s 2010
George Osborne and Ed Balls have gone head-to-head in the media – the former in The Sun on Sunday and…
Today’s borrowing figures are bad for the Tories, but they’re not good for Labour either
Today’s borrowing figures are, on the surface, not good for the Tories. The surplus on the public finances in January…
Osborne increases debt more than Labour did over 13 years
The national debt figures are out – £1.2 trillion and rising – and although I hate to say it, the…
An Age of Tartan Austerity looms after Scottish Independence. There are worse fates than that.
The first thing to be said about the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ latest assessment of an independent Scotland’s long-term fiscal…
The NHS must improve its approach to costing if the market is to work
News that one of the health service’s largest operators of the non-emergency 111 helpline is to pull out of the…
Immigration allows Britain to fake progress, not make progress
Is Britain addicted to immigration? I argued so in my Telegraph column yesterday and Radio 4’s Today programme held a…
Denial is a River in Scotland
Aye, the old ones are the best. You might think that George Osborne’s decision to leave the Scottish block grant…
Spending review: All departments settle
All departments have now reached agreement with the Treasury in the spending review. Vince Cable’s Business Department, which was not…
The Great Defence Procurement Rip-Off, Housing Edition
There’s no business like government business. Reacting to Philip Hammond’s statement on future army basing yesterday, today’s newspapers have led…
Vince Cable tells Philip Hammond, cut Trident not welfare
On The Sunday Politics today, Vince Cable told Andrew Neil that he disliked ring fencing particular departments. But he accepted…
The Tory branch of the National Union of Ministers says cut welfare, not our budgets
Philip Hammond is a cautious and loyal politician. He is not a boat rocker. This is what makes his interviews…
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