UK’s decision to rejoin EU’s Erasmus scheme is supported by majority of Britons, poll finds
The government says that up to 100,000 people of all ages could benefit in the first year.
Nigel Farage faces second investigation over claims he broke electoral law
Anna Turley, the Labour party chair, has called on Farage to “urgently come out of hiding” and explain whether his party spent more than the £20,660 limit for campaigning.
Depoliticising the elections regulator is a no-brainer for Labour
Democracy depends not just on rules, but on confidence that those rules are enforced without fear or favour.
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French opponents of same-sex marriage have taken homophobic discourse mainstream
Same-sex marriage should become law in France today, as the bill goes through its second and final reading in Parliament – but the predicted victory will taste bittersweet.
Cuts to welfare and local councils hitting deprived areas hardest
Combined cuts to welfare and local councils are affecting the most deprived areas of England the most, a new study by the Labour Party has found.
Payday lenders buying personal details at £60 a head
Recently I spoke at a meeting where I asked those in attendance to raise their hands if they had had experience of a text message or an email from a payday lender offering them an expensive loan at interest rates that would make most people weep.
Has the deficit really gone down?
As Ed Conway has noticed, if you exclude the effects of either Northern Rock asset reclassification or the profits of the SLS from today’s public sector borrowing figures, the deficit was actually higher this year than last.
Osborne dodges a bullet but debt continues to rise
Economic data is coming thick and fast. Sandwiched between last week’s poor unemployment data and Thursday’s forthcoming results for GDP in the first quarter of the year, public finance figures were published today. They show that George Osborne has dodged a bullet.
Osborne scrapes home by a mere £0.3 billion
The latest public sector finances data, released today by the Office for National Statistics, make gloomy reading for George Osborne. Net borrowing in March 2013 was £15.1 billion, meaning he managed to reduce the deficit by a mere £0.3bn.
Cameron needs to do more than attend the Stephen Lawrence memorial service to win the Black vote
When Conservative councillor John Cherry spoke openly about his fear of Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME) children boarding weekly at a school in the West Sussex countryside, it was reminiscent of language that was not unusual in the 1980s and 1990s. The legacy of Stephen Lawrence’s murder, 20 years ago this month, was to trigger the Macpherson Inquiry, resulting in legislative reform that has driven out the worst such overt racist behaviour by those in public life.
Whether the country experiences a ‘triple dip’ or not the writing is on the wall
This Thursday we will find out whether or not the UK economy is in an unprecedented triple-dip recession. Economically, however, whether the country finds itself in a triple dip recession or not is largely symbolic – the chancellor’s austerity policies are failing and there is every chance they will go on failing unless he injects some stimulus into the economy.
The global shortage in health workers is at crisis point
The global shortage in health workers is a global crisis that is undermining efforts at international development.
Did immigration really ‘depress the wages and job chances of working-class Britons’?
It’s increasingly becoming accepted, even on the left, that immigration to Britain under the previous government had some negative consequences, one of which was to depress wages and increase job scarcity for the indigenous population.