First 100 days

Australian politics: Julia Gillard's rising waters
Wouldn’t Julia love to aquaplane? Australia’S Prime Minister marked the new year by visiting Queensland, a state ravaged by floods. But Julia Gillard had more on her mind than the billions of dollars in damage to mines, farms and cities in the boom state. Seven months after she unseated Kevin Rudd as leader of the ruling Labor Party, Ms Gillard starts 2011 struggling to establish her own leadership. August’s federal election left Ms Gillard dependent on support from Greens and...

Ed Miliband gets a kicking from the folks at home
The Jeremy Vine Show is not generally thought of as a bear pit. Politicians tend to regard it as rather cuddly - at least, by comparison to the forensic ferocity of the Today programme. So Ed Miliband must have been taken aback by the aggressive line of questioning that poured from the mouths of those usually benign Radio2 listeners who phoned in to interrogate him not only about his policies as Labour leader but about his character. At one point, he was even compelled to insist

Politics live blog - in Oldham East and Saddleworth
• It's the first proper byelection since the coalition was formed. There was a poll in Thirsk a few weeks after the General Election, but that was a "delayed election" caused by the death of a Candidate before May (and thus not technically a byelection) and it was a safe Tory seat where the result was a foregone conclusion. This will be very different. In England the thought of political parties being in coalition in government but fighting against each other at an election is still bewild...

Control orders are to be scrapped. About time too
Control orders are to be scrapped. Good. We don’t yet know what will replace them, and any combination of tagging, travel bans and the like will have to be closely scrutinised. But it now looks very likely that House Arrest will have no further place in our Democracy. The orders brought in by Labour represented the worst of both worlds. They were both an affront to liberty and an obstacle to justice. No suspect sitting at hime, cut off from all outside communication, is likely to provide...

Kitchen cabinets in politics: Can stand the heat
SURVEYS often find that even very senior politicians struggle to be recognised by an indifferent public. The advisers who serve them are even more anonymous. Toiling away in Westminster’s back rooms are aides whose influence comes without the burdens of public exposure. And at least for the handful of very senior advisers, that influence is considerable. All three Party Leaders now have a powerful right-hand man. Ed Miliband is a far punchier leader of the Labour Party than he was just a ...

Ireland: Defence minister Fianna Failexodus ahead of election
Ireland's defence minister has said he will not stand in an upcoming parliamentary election, joining an exodus from the governing Fianna Fail party ahead of an expected record drubbing. Tony Killeen is the third senior minister in as many months to decide not to run in the General Election, expected to be held in late March, in which Fianna Fail's presence in the lower house could be halved, according to Opinion Polls. The party, ADVERTISEMENT which has dominated the republic's politics for mo...

David Cameron is a pretty straight sort of guy but now he has to prove it
The Prime Minister working in the Cabinet room, 2010 (Photo: Andrew Parsons) I do not believe that David Cameron is venal. Unlike Tony Blair, Cameron has not used access to the machinery of power to facilitate the kind of covert exchange between Donor and politician that was such a feature of the Blair regime. There have been no distorted decisions on Public Policy as a reward for party donations, no marketisation of public honours, no business favours for foreign tycoons in return for politic...

Making poverty permanent | Tom Clark
In a flimsy, 13-page document rushed out just before Christmas, the government quietly ditched the goal of ending financial Poverty for Children. It was an unceremonious end to an ambition which Tony Blair had once framed as New Labour's "historic aim", and which David Cameron's new-look Conservatives had made a great show of endorsing in the pages of this newspaper in 2006. Now Whitehall insists there is no need to amend the Child Poverty Act, which - with all-party support - enshri...

Netanyahu, Minister Vie For Soul Of Israeli Right
Tensions are rising in Israel between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman. In a television interview last month, Netanyahu was asked how he could allow Lieberman to repeatedly humiliate him in public. The Journalist was referring to a Speech Lieberman gave to foreign ambassadors the night before in which he directly contradicted government policy. In one of the many Controversial statements, Lieberman said, regarding peace with the Palestinians: "It is f...

A Lib Dem win in Oldham would push the Coalition further Left. I hope they come fourth
Tory Candidate Kashif Ali deserves to win in Oldham Next week the electors of Oldham East and Saddleworth, or more likely about half of them, will turn out for the first by-election of this Parliament. The Prime Minister, so it seems, is anxious that the Lib Dems should not be humiliated, as the national polls suggest might be the case. So anxious that he has set a precedent, which some of the rest of us might like to follow, by wishing the Candidate of another party well before offering an

Ed Miliband accuses Tories of 'great deceit' in blaming Labour for deficit
Ed Miliband, speaking at Labour's campaign centre in Oldham yesterday. The Labour leader today attacked the Tories for 'rewriting history'. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA Ed Miliband accuses the Conservatives today of a "great deceit" in blaming Labour for the national Deficit and warned that they have concocted a false narrative to justify politically driven cuts. In announcing a raft of swingeing public Spending Cuts the Coalition Government has repeatedly sought to portray that its hands a...

Miliband accuses Osborne of misleading people over VAT rise
I would dearly love to know what this lightweight nonentity would do to reduce the £trillian Debt left to us by Brown? So wait...Torries Have lost popularity....Lib Dems have lost popularity....Labour have lost popularity....So who the hell do we vote for? Ohh ffs. Please get an intern to do some bsic number crunching. Single person earnin £17k take home, c £1000 per month. Rent & essential not vat rated goods £400 per month. Assuming the remainin £400 is spent on fu...

David Cameron's job scheme is Thatcher-inspired. Will he fall into the same traps as she did?
David Cameron with Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street, 2010 (Photo: Reuters) Before Christmas David Cameron proudly claimed for himself the title of “child of Thatcher”. It seems he meant it - the Coalition’s new idea for tackling Unemployment is actually a very old one. The Enterprise Allowance (EA) is back. This was one of Margaret Thatcher’s great welfare innovations - a scheme that allowed you to keep benefits for a period while setting up your own busi...

Gov. Brewers Real Death Panel: Two Now Dead
Arizona’s Governor Brewer is really hitting the core of our moral fiber as human beings. Brewer is part of a national war on the poor. The Right of course is no friend of the poor and we need more fight from Neo-Dems for those in Poverty. The Dems have done in the past more on the war against poverty than the GOP ever has establishing things like food stamps, TANF, WIC, Medicaid, Section 8 housing, free school lunches, and the list goes on. The most progressive real Democratic things the H...

David Cameron, Top Gun: We were in the dangerzone
Every time I hear Mr Cameron using his favourite cliche about the economic situation he inherited from Labour, I have the same thought. Today, I’m trying to put music to the idea, with an early entry for the daftest political allegory of 2011… Turn the volume up and click here to see what I mean. “We were in the dangerzone,” Mr Cameron has just told a Cameron Direct event in Leicester, assuring his audience that he and his coalition co-pilots have flown the UK economy ...

Falcon first to focus on social-policy issue for future
Kevin Falcon’s idea of rewarding good teachers sounds as appealing as fingernails on the blackboard to the union representing B.C.’s teachers. The proposal from the B.C. Liberal leadership Candidate was floated as one of his big ideas, something that would define a Falcon government should he win the BC Liberal leadership on Feb. 26. Maybe because it came from Mr. Falcon – who carries a reputation as a conservative firebrand – the idea was promptly dismissed by some as a ...

Open thread for night owls: The 112th and class warfare
At The Nation, Eric Alternman writes, The New Congress and the Coming Class War: What is not understood by those who cover contemporary Conservatives (and, one fears, by those who negotiate with them) is that while they like to talk about all kinds of values, these are always subordinated to a single, unchanging and uncompromised goal: class warfare. Think about it. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush talked incessantly about Fiscal Responsibility and lost no opportunity to denounce Deficit spend...

AIM's Lame Attack on Wash. Post
AIM's Lame Attack on Wash. Post Topic: Accuracy in Media In a Jan. 5 Accuracy in Media blog post, Don Irvine attempts to shoot down former Washington Post editor Leonard Downie's claim that the paper "is not coming from a point of view" with this response: For Downie to say that there is no Partisanship at the paper is truly devoid of reality. The Post has a long history of going after Conservatives and Republicans while largely giving liberals a pass. AIM pointed out once such in...

David Cameron needs to do more to help business, sacked trade adviser warns
Lord Young of Graffham, the Prime Minister’s former enterprise adviser, has said David Cameron's scheme to encourage the unemployed to set up businesses will not be enough to return dynamism to Britain's economy....

England celebrate 'special' Ashes win
England celebrated an emphatic Ashes triumph in Australia on Friday, their first Down Under in 24 years, after inflicting a record third innings drubbing in the final Test. England wrapped up an innings and 83-run victory early on the last day in Sydney for their first series victory in Australia since Mike Gatting's team won 2-1 in 1986-87. The series culminated in an overpowering England performance against the one-time titans and plunged Australian cricket into the depths of despair and inqu...

David Cameron denies Oldham byelection pact claims
David Cameron visited Oldham East and Saddleworth today to dispel claims of a byelection pact with the Lib Dems. The prime minster urged voters to back the Conservative Candidate, barrister Kashif Ali. Photograph: WPA Pool/Getty Images David Cameron paid a flying visit to Oldham East and Saddleworth today to dispel suspicions that the Tories are pulling punches in the byelection campaign to help their Lib Dem coalition partners defeat Labour next Thursday - or at least to spare them a ...

FDP Postpones Regicide: Party Base Gives Westerwelle a Stay of Execution
At their traditional party conference on the Epiphany, the Free Democrats have given themselves a breather in the dispute over party Chairman Guido Westerwelle. Internal party conflicts have been put on ice for now because the Party Leader's adversaries lacked the courage to oust him. Westerwelle's fate is now tied to upcoming state Elections. Germany's business-friendly, liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) is in a state of crisis, facing consistently disappointing poll numbers and conducting ..

John Taylor On Why "Gridlock" Will Lead To A Slowing US Economy, A Drop In Equities And Commodities, And A Spike In The Dollar
By John R. Taylor, Jr. It seems almost impossible to compose a rational outlook for the world markets in this New Year without analyzing the political situation in Washington, but so many others seem to have sidestepped this elephant – appropriately the symbol of the Republican Party – that is taking up so much of the room. That’s a big mistake, as we believe that both the growth rate of the US economy and the course of global equity prices and other risk assets are hugely depe...

Vat rise: Ed Miliband does well; George Osborne less so
Some thoughts on today’s jousting over the new Vat rate. Overall, I think Ed Miliband’s having a decent day and George Osborne isn’t. The Labour leader has started the new year with a bit of vim, grabbing some headlines by denouncing the Vat rise. That raises some questions for Labour, but they’re not as important as some people think. Has Labour got a credible alternative plan on tax and spending? No. But does that matter? Right now, not really, no. Assuming* the Coalition goes

MPs' expenses: David Chaytor to be sentenced
David Chaytor, who faces jail today when he is sentenced for making false expenses claims. Photograph: Sean Dempsey/PA Former Labour MP David Chaytor faces jail today when he is sentenced for making false parliamentary expenses claims. Chaytor, 61, became the first politician convicted over the expenses Scandal when he pleaded guilty last month to three counts of false Accounting totalling £18,350. One of the charges relates to £5,425 he falsely claimed between September 2007 and J...