David Cameron
An Ed Balls up on benefits for rich pensioners
I am used to David Cameron shooting from the hip with knee jerk, ill thought out policies to respond to public opinion but I thought that Ed Balls would be cleverer than that.
Abandoning the winter fuel allowance for a mere £100 million: why bother?
Ed Balls is currently making a speech in which he will effectively renege on previous Labour Party statements that universality remained a "part of the bedrock" of the welfare state.
Very little link between migration levels and attitudes to immigration
Much like the assertion that nobody can talk about immigration without being accused of being a racist (if anything immigration is talked about too much relative to its impact), the idea that public concern about immigration is related to the numbers of migrants settling in the UK appears also to be a myth.
Scottish Tories split on devolution
A former Conservative Scottish secretary has called (£) moves by the party north of the border to increase the powers afforded to the Scottish Parliament a "suicide mission".
If Miliband continues to dither on Syria, he may go down in history as Labour’s John Major
According to the dictum attributed to Edmund Burke, all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. Yet evil will triumph even more easily if good men help the evil-doers. In the Syrian civil war, with more than 80,000 dead and no end in sight, that is what the European Union has been doing, by upholding an arms embargo on the supply of weapons to all sides.
The government’s drive to cut immigration risks splitting up families
In two weeks time the daughter of one of my friends will get married. This happy occasion will be marred by the fact that soon after the wedding her new husband may have to leave the UK. Despite his high earning potential, new rules about family migration, introduced in July 2012, will exclude him from obtaining a spouse’s visa.