Kitchen cabinets in politics: Can stand the heat

NoW phone-hacking case should reopen Ed Balls
Ed Balls called on David Cameron to review his decision to retain former News of the World editor Andy Coulson (above) as his director of communications. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Ed Balls, the shadow Home Secretary, today called on the head of the Metropolitan Police to reopen the investigation into phone hacking by the News of the World. He said Sir Paul Stephenson might decide that an independent review of the Met's inquiry, or a review by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Con...

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...

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...

Balls attacks over control orders
Labour has accused the government of "playing politics" with National Security over control orders. But Labour claims plans to modify them are motivated by a desire to please the Lib Dems, who promised to do so in their election manifesto. Labour's Ed Balls said Mr Cameron and Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg should put National Security first. The shadow Home Secretary insisted he would wait until the outcome of a review into control orders, a form of House Arrest introduced by the prev...

Ed Balls: It's a mistake to play party politics on control orders
Ed Balls said it appeared keeping the coalition together was more important to Clegg and Cameron. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/PA The shadow Home Secretary, Ed Balls, today accused David Cameron and Nick Clegg of trying to stitch up a political deal on control orders that puts the political preservation of the coalition above the preservation of National Security. Balls's intervention comes as Clegg prepares to outline coalition thinking on Civil Liberties in a major Speech tomorrow. A decision o...

First 100 days
Ed Miliband this week marked 100 days as Labour leader. The party is riding high in Opinion Polls but critics, including some Labour figures, say he's not making a big enough impact. First impressions are crucial in modern politics, but a look back at the first 100 days of 12 Labour and Tory leaders suggests they are not always a reliable guide to future prospects... Margaret Thatcher The biggest complaint about Margaret Thatcher, 100 days after winning control of the Conservative Party in ...

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 ...

Can you count the packets of crisps?
What do the crisps say? Do alarm clocks rule our lives? Did Bob Holness play sax on Baker Street? Terrified of numbers? In his regular Go Figure column, Michael Blastland explains how a bit of creative thinking can help. Have you got the brain for statistics? Here's all it takes. Numbers. What you see is not always what you get. So this week, Go Figure offers a quick and easy game to train the brain to unpick data. Outside London's King's Cross Station, just before the electi...

Concrete cell has not silenced dissident who might have been president
Campaigner for freedom ... Boris Nemtsov demonstrating for the assaulted Journalist Oleg Kashin. Photo: AFP Moscow: He was once a deputy Prime Minister of Russia; indeed he was even tipped to succeed Boris Yeltsin as president. But Boris Nemtsov spent New Year's night in a tiny concrete Prison cell without even a mattress, as punishment for having ''disobeyed the police''. Nemtsov, 51, leader of the opposition Solidarity Movement, was detained with 130 others in Moscow and St Petersburg on New Y...

Clegg to outline stance on terror
Nick Clegg is to promise a tough but fair approach when he outlines the government's views on anti-terror Legislation and Civil Liberties. It comes as ministers try to reach agreement over a replacement for control orders, which place a series of constraints on Terror Suspects. Mr Clegg will also announce plans to reform Libel laws. The deputy Prime Minister will make his case for reforming anti-terror laws and promoting Civil Liberties. He will accuse Labour of presiding over the most aggr...

Cameron promotes regional growth
Prime Minister David Cameron has promoted his Economic Growth plans on a visit to the North-West of England. He was accompanied by Lord Heseltine, recently appointed chair of a new regional growth fund. The PM said Economic Growth and "rebalancing" The Economy were his top priorities for the new year. But Labour claimed he had "abandoned" the regions and the coalition had cut funding to them by two thirds when it scrapped Regional Development Agencies. Mr Cameron visited a &#...

Ed Balls says MI5 and Scotland Yard tell him they back control orders
The political temperature is rising over control orders, ahead of a likely announcement next week. Ed Balls, the Labour shadow Home Secretary, has recently been on Radio Four, where he made an intriguing statement. He said: “The experts I’ve spoken to from the security services and the police are very unconvinced that it is possible to keep our country safe without some kind of successor regime to control orders and that is not consistent with the Liberal Democrat manifesto.” W...

Control orders set to split all three parties
Nick Clegg will give an indication in a Speech tomorrow of how the government is going to resolve the issue of whether to abolish, retain or replace control orders, introduced in 2005 to combat Terrorism, and a toxic subject entirely capable of splitting all three political parties. At one level the announcement will be a headline battle of spin. Has Clegg (against control orders) or the Home Secretary, Theresa May, (in favour of them) won? Have controls orders in any meaningful sense been ref...

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

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...

Cameron to promote growth plans
Prime Minister David Cameron is promoting his Economic Growth plans on a visit to the North-West of England. He is being accompanied by Lord Heseltine, recently appointed chair of a new regional growth task force. The Tory leader has also promised to hit the Campaign Trail in Oldham East and Saddleworth, with a week to go before a crucial by-election. He has denied the Tories are soft-pedalling in the seat to give coalition partners the Lib Dems a better chance. Nick Clegg's party is in nee...

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...

Was David Cameron's quip a way of distancing himself from Andy Coulson? | Michael White
Was David Cameron's quip a way of distancing himself from Andy Coulson? David Cameron campaigns with the Conservative Candidate Kashif Ali in Oldham. Photograph: Andrew Yates/PA I must admit that I find David Cameron a likeable public figure, both in the way he usually conducts himself in the day job and in occasional brief exchanges when we meet. But he has a dangerous streak of flippancy that makes me wince and wonder what it says about him. Or is it what it says about Andy Coulson? Here's...

Andy Coulson faces new phone hacking questions after News of the World journalist suspended
Andy Coulson, David Cameron’s communications chief, could come under fresh pressure after the newspaper he used to run suspended a senior Journalist over allegations of illegal phone hacking....

UK paper accused of phone hacking suspends worker
LONDON - The British Tabloid at the center of a phone-hacking Scandal says it has suspended an employee after an allegation of misconduct. The News of the World said Wednesday a staff member was suspended just before Christmas after a serious allegation of misconduct that is the subject of litigation between actress Sienna Miller and the paper. The Tabloid has faced scrutiny in recent months because of the tactics it has used to get material. Ex-editor Andy Coulson quit in 2007 after his r...

Tabloid suspends reporter for Sienna Miller eavesdrop
LONDON (Reuters) - A British Tabloid has suspended a reporter for Eavesdropping on the Voicemail messages of movie star Sienna Miller, media reports said on Wednesday. Previous accusations that Journalists working for the News of the World have illegally intercepted phone messages to get stories have embarrassed the government as the paper's former editor is now Prime Minister David Cameron's media chief. In December, British police said they would not bring charges relating to phone hacking ag...

UK paper accused of phone hacking suspends worker
LONDON — The British Tabloid at the center of a phone-hacking Scandal says it has suspended an employee after an allegation of misconduct. The News of the World said Wednesday a staff member was suspended just before Christmas after a serious allegation of misconduct that is the subject of litigation between actress Sienna Miller and the paper. The Tabloid has faced scrutiny in recent months because of the tactics it has used to get material. Ex-editor Andy Coulson quit in 2007 after his ...

British editor suspended in snoop scandal
LONDON, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- The British Tabloid News of the World has suspended its news editor in a phone-hacking Scandal. A newspaper spokesman said an individual had been suspended following "a serious allegation" of wrongdoing, and the BBC reports he is news editor Ian Edmondson. The allegations involve actress Sienna Miller, who said her phone was hacked, the BBC reports. She is among a number of people taking the paper to court. The former royal editor, Clive Goodman, was jailed in 2007 for co...

Send them back?
Former MP Eddie O'Hara, the new chairman of the British Committee for the Reunification of the Parthenon Marbles (BCRPM), has told the BBC News website he is optimistic the campaign for the British Museum to return the sculptures, also known as the Elgin Marbles, will succeed. However a spokesman for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said government policy remained unchanged, and that there were no plans to return the Marbles to Greece. As a Labour MP from 1990 to 2010, Mr O'...