George Osborne and David Cameron’s call to end housing benefit for people under the age of 25 is the latest move in a government so right wing that it would make Margaret Thatcher blush. In an interview with James Naughtie on Radio 4’s Today programme this week, David Cameron set out to explain why he […]
Posts Tagged ‘David Cameron’
A shuffle to the right
Sep 5th, 2012 by Darrell Goodliffe.Today, politics came back with a bang. David Cameron unveiled his first significant reshuffle since taking power after a weekend of damp squib policy announcements. In the most central area for the government, the economy, it was very much a case of plus ca change. George Osborne, unsurprisingly, remained in place, as did Vince Cable […]
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Progressive Conservatism 2005-2012
Sep 4th, 2012 by Carl Packman.David Wooding, the political editor of The Sun, said during reports of the cabinet reshuffle that for him two things were at play: firstly moves were being made in order for the Tories to be more in touch with the public, and secondly Cameron wanted to temper the rabble on his backbenches. To be sure, […]
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Are the Tories about to have their Blair vs Brown moment?
Aug 10th, 2012 by Carl Packman.This supposedly Conservative-led government has always been all about moving quickly, tearing down the red tape left up by the Labour party, and knocking down the barriers raised to build about a new revolution in schools, public sector reform and wider society. In short they were heirs to Blair who went about exactly the same […]
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Why are the Tories so coy about a judge-led inquiry?
Jul 6th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Parliament was at its worst yesterday. The mud wrestlers Osborne and Balls were so dementedly determined to lay toxic blame on each other for the shocking LIBOR scandal that the City escaped with hardly a bruise to its name. The difference between a judge-led inquiry and a special parliamentary select committee inquiry is not that […]
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Leveson-style inquiry into banks needed, not inter-MPs mud-slinging
Jul 4th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.They’re being forced to yield inch by inch. First, Barclays’ chairman Agius said he had no intention of resigning; 24 hours later he’d gone. Then the shameless and disgraced chief executive Diamond announced that he was the best person to oversee a change in culture at the bank, having told us a few months ago […]
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The Conservatives are facing an existential crisis
Jun 28th, 2012 by Jon Trickett.Deprived of their social and ideological anchor, the Tories may never win again. The great British middle class has changed. Its characteristics, outlook, values and relationships with the rest of society are very different to how they were. Take just one measure: the educational background of people in middle class occupations. In 1945, only 17,000 […]
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Cameron attacks welfare system like a dart board
Jun 27th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.Cameron’s latest foray into populism shows signs of desperation. With IDS’ universal credit the fulcrum of the new welfare system, but now well behind schedule and likely not to be completely rolled out till 2017, Cameron fires off another scatter-gun splurge of anti-welfare pellets, before he or anyone else knows the costs or practicality of […]
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The Tories on a road to nowhere
Jun 26th, 2012 by Andy Newman.The announcement of Conservative aspirations to scrap housing benefit for under 25s is yet another example of the thoughtless vandalism of the government, as they degrade the nation’s social infrastructure. Jon Trickett’s recent pamphlet for Compass on the “Conservative Dilemma” is therefore a timely contribution to the debate about why the government acts as it does, […]
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Why under 25s need housing benefit
Jun 25th, 2012 by David Osler.Perhaps the most depressing aspect of David Cameron’s ‘no housing benefit for under 25s’ outburst this morning is the underlying assumption that everyone in that age group has a warm and loving middle class family home, in which they could live happily if only they had not decided to strike out on their own. Let me […]
