Boundary changes as well, including the shrinking of the Commons by 50 seats that would result in many MPs going through re-selection processes. 2020 is going to be hellish.
1% growth or above = normal times.
Agreed, ruling out borrowing to invest is dumb in the extreme. Osborne being a plank.
You don't vote for the Greens/UKIP/Lib Dems because you think they'll get in power, you vote for them as a protest and as a way of indicating you want the country to go the general direction they promote, in the case of the Greens you vote for them because they're the only party serious about environmental issues and because they'd move further to the left economically and socially than the rest. And you use your vote to say that you take the environment seriously and you want broadly left wing politics.
Yeah, the consequences for failing to adhere to the charter was something that Nadhim Zahawi entirely failed to answer when repeatedly pressed by Wark on Newsnight, just kept on repeating guff about "protecting the country from future Labour governments". They all know it's crap and just a means of making Labour look dumb, which, to be fair, it has.
In truth many of those firms in the city he is supposed to be responcible for in his portfolio would also know that he has not had any previous meetings with them, and since his appointment has not scheduled any - they could quite conceivably have been contacted in the prep for the interview by the researchers and lets be honest they probably raised genuine concerns about his suitability if that's a true reflection of his "ability".
nothing
By Cathy Newman
5:26PM BST 15 Oct 2015
It was, as Jeremy Paxman noted during his spoof interview with The Thick of It “junior immigration minister Ben Swain”, the kind of question which “invited a numerical answer”. But when, on Wednesday evening’s Channel 4 news, I asked Richard Burgon what the UK deficit was set to be this year, the real shadow economic secretary to the Treasury found that the numbers eluded him. “Well…” he began.
His mouth started to move but no words emerged. “I’m not an economic… erm…,” he finally ventured, before remembering his full title . As he paused, I could sense the cogs turning furiously before he settled on: “I’m not somebody that’s going to put a figure in a crystal ball of what exactly the deficit is going to be at the end of the year.” No crystal ball was required, of course. The figures are in the official Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts – something perhaps he might have been expected to read up on since being appointed last month.
“Car crash” political interviews can make for compelling viewing. Voters have long wearied of soundbites, so anything that forces an MP off the script is always going to be more interesting. So it was with Jeremy Paxman’s humiliating encounter with Chloe Smith, the junior Treasury minister who found herself unable to answer simple questions about her boss’s deferral of the fuel duty rise. There was a certain amount of sympathy for Ms Smith, with one Conservative MP reflecting that it was like sending a lamb to the slaughter.
Paxo admitted afterwards that he’d wrecked her ministerial career. Should he have held back? Believe me, it’s not always easy judging the tone right on the other side of a car-crash interview. But it is a dereliction of duty to go easy on a Minister of the Crown.
You certainly can’t blame Nick Ferrari for quietly tormenting the Green Party leader, Natalie Bennett, whose “brain fade” interview on LBC Radio earlier this year degenerated into coughs and splutters when she hadn’t the first idea how to cost her party’s housing policy. Mr Ferrari was persistent but always courteous – devastatingly so. An iron fist in a velvet glove allowed him to press the point, without losing the sympathy of his listeners.
That was the same technique used by Eddie Mair when he accused Boris Johnson, ever so politely, of being “a nasty piece of work”. The London mayor doesn’t use a car if he can help it, so let’s call it a bicycle-crash interview. Either way it was impossible not to watch, even if you ended up squirming in embarrassment.
I knew Mr Burgon was starting to struggle when I noticed him at one point apparently wiping something out of his eye. It’s what a poker player might call a “tell”. The fictitious Ben Swain on The Thick of It betrayed his own discomfort when he started puffing and blinking furiously during his own innumerate answers.
That’s when your natural empathy for an interviewee – a reluctance to feed a clearly floundering fellow human being into the mincer – collides with a professional duty to slice through the pre-spun answers to the unvarnished truth.
So I pressed on.
I look forward to inviting Mr Burgon back into the Channel 4 News studio. Next time, no doubt, he’ll be able to give me deficit statistics – to the last decimal place.
The lack of competence here is staggering. The EVEL debate next week is going to be a disaster.You changing your mind on Corbyn, or just think he needs more time to settle in to the job?
It was obvious that he and his team weren't going to settle naturally into leadership, particularly if the majority of the PLP was against him, but this start has been an unmitigated disaster. And despite challenges from Osborne, and the media, it's been mostly self-inflicted failures. This too, without a significant rebellion from within the party (which was very much expected), shows how much worse it could get in the near future.
I'm sure the public are going to be outraged at the City not having enough influence over the Labour party. I mean it's not like they've had enough influence over government financial policy for the last 30 years, which has been a rip-roaring success.yes we would all be much better off if they took their 15% of uk gdp and set up in frankfurt wouldn't weOh no.
Much obliged for the detailed response. The woman on QT last night shows that tax credits cuts have the potential to rebound massively on Osborne, unfortunately though I think the state of Labour right now means they have get out of jail free cards a plenty.
well actually isn't the minister for international development tasked with helping manufacturers get new markets - and the UKTI - they were certainly helpful to me when taking us on a ministerial delegation to Africa
