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Welcome to Newslog - come here for my reflections and analysis on what's going on in and around politics
17:05 UK time, Wednesday, 25 January 2012
It's Decision Time on whether to spend billions on a new airport for the UK.
It would, say its backers, stimulate growth and silence the noise of Heathrow. Nonsense say the critics. The idea of a brand new airport to the east of London is a vanity project which has been looked at in the 1940s and 70s and rejected. Others argue that the environmental costs of expanding air travel at all are simply too high.
11:54 UK time, Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Negative growth and the danger of a double dip; debt rising faster and the deficit falling slower than forecast in the Treasury plan laid out when Alistair Darling was chancellor; and the hoped for re-balancing of the UK economy on hold as the manufacturing sector shrinks instead of grows.
The prime minister will, no doubt, point to troubles imported from the eurozone. To which Labour replies that it is the shrinkage of domestic demand that caused the slowing of growth until the end of last year.
19:41 UK time, Monday, 23 January 2012
Perched in the press gallery high above the Lords for the debate about the benefit cap I was struck by the fact that this was a battle between two competing moral visions.
The minister, Lord Freud, argued for a cap not to save money but to turn around lives because it was not moral, he argued, to consign children to a life in which work was not the norm - or to give more in benefits to families than the average family could earn in work.
17:00 UK time, Monday, 23 January 2012
It's fair. It's popular. It's moral to ensure that families in which people are unemployed but able to work should not get more in benefits than the average family can earn.
Or
17:53 UK time, Friday, 20 January 2012
"They're not suffering" the minister in charge of welfare reform told me, when I asked him about those who are having their benefits cut by the government.
I was speaking to Iain Duncan Smith as he limbers up for another fight in the House of Lords next week.
18:03 UK time, Wednesday, 18 January 2012
Unemployment is up again, the chancellor's preparing the country for figures which look set to show that the economy is shrinking and the IMF is about to ask Britain for billions of pounds extra to bail out stricken Eurozone countries.
Ed Miliband might have had a tricky start to the year but it will soon be David Cameron and George Osborne who are feeling the political heat.
19:14 UK time, Tuesday, 17 January 2012
The Labour leader is urging public sector workers to be prepared to take cuts in their own pay if needed to save their jobs.
His own local Labour-controlled council in Doncaster decided last week to cut pay by 4% for staff earning £15,000 or more, excluding those who work in schools. The council said it would save between 200 and 250 jobs.
09:28 UK time, Tuesday, 17 January 2012
Compare and contrast the following two statements about Labour's approach to the economy:
"We are going to have to keep all these cuts."
11:49 UK time, Sunday, 15 January 2012
We continue to oppose the government's cuts but we can't promise to reverse any of them. That, in summary, is Labour's supposedly "new" position this weekend.
However, it does not represent, as many seemed to think, any change in the party's economic policy. It is a change merely of political message.
22:45 UK time, Wednesday, 11 January 2012
This week's battle of Britain began with an argument about the date of a referendum on Scottish independence. It is quickly turning into one about the question to be asked.
Senior government sources have told me that, despite the talk at the weekend of the need for a vote within 18 months, they can live with Alex Salmond's proposal for a vote in the autumn of 2014.
09:25 UK time, Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Braveheart v Lionheart?
It makes a good headline but listen very hard and you will hear the sound of politicians in Edinburgh and Westminster admitting they'll have to talk.
22:33 UK time, Tuesday, 10 January 2012
Let's talk about how to organise a referendum on independence or you could end up in court.
That was the message sent from the Parliament in Westminster to the Parliament in Edinburgh today.
17:58 UK time, Tuesday, 10 January 2012
We will, Ed Miliband has declared, be "a different party from the one we were in the past… a changed Labour Party".
Words that might have led some to believe that he was about to apologise for his party's role in creating the deficit.
21:09 UK time, Monday, 9 January 2012
The Scottish Secretary, Michael Moore, will make a statement to the Commons on Tuesday on the legal status of a referendum on Scottish independence.
He will say that a vote organised by the Scottish government would be purely advisory and open to legal challenge since the power to change Scotland's constitutional status rests with Westminster.
13:47 UK time, Monday, 9 January 2012
"Here we go again... another Tory-led government interfering in Scotland".
That is how Alex Salmond's Deputy, Nicola Sturgeon, responded to the news that David Cameron wants to give the Edinburgh government the legal power to hold a referendum - but only with strings attached.
06:48 UK time, Monday, 9 January 2012
The battle over the future of the United Kingdom will begin in earnest this week.
On Monday morning the cabinet will discuss proposals to give the Scottish Government the legal power to hold a binding referendum on Scottish independence providing the vote is held within a specified timeframe - perhaps the next 18 months - and is a straight choice between staying in or leaving the UK.
12:05 UK time, Wednesday, 28 December 2011
I will never forget the first time I visited 10 Downing Street. Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and I was determined to use a meeting with her to discuss a report on the growing problem of homelessness amongst the young.
No-one, of course, out-determined Mrs Thatcher, who had seen off many much more powerful men than me. I was greeted with an unsettling mixture of one-part feminine charm and another part steely resolve - in this case to talk about pretty much anything else other than homelessness.
22:22 UK time, Wednesday, 21 December 2011
A devout Roman Catholic who became one of the Archbishop of Canterbury's closest advisers, a diplomat who worked with the very undiplomatic Alastair Campbell at Number 10, a spin doctor who was liked and admired by the journalists he briefed.
Tim Livesey is a surprise and impressive choice for the vital role of chief of staff for Labour leader Ed Miliband.
09:36 UK time, Tuesday, 20 December 2011
Praise for the unions which have signed outline agreements. Patience with those who say they need to think some more. Condemnation for those who say that no deal is possible and hint of more industrial action to come.
That will be how Danny Alexander, chief secretary to the Treasury and chief pensions negotiator for the government, responds today to the progress made on reforming pension schemes.
11:50 UK time, Monday, 19 December 2011
Negotiations over public sector are said to be "on a knife edge". Ministers across Whitehall are waiting nervously for news back from their officials.
They are already hearing some good news - a senior local government source has told the BBC's Mike Sergeant that agreement has been reached between councils and the unions on the "principles" of a deal. The NUT's Christine Blower has told the BBC she is optimistic about a deal for teachers. Health unions are in negotiations this morning.
Tax calculatorDo you give more than you get back?
Nick started blogging about politics for the BBC in 2001 when he was one of the earliest mainstream journalists in the UK to adopt the format.
He has been in his current role since 2005.
Before he was political editor, he did the same job at ITV News, before which he was chief political correspondent for BBC News 24, deputy editor of Panorama and a presenter on BBC Radio 5 live.
He began his time at the BBC behind the microphone starting as a trainee producer in 1986 on Brass Tacks, Newsround and Crimewatch.
Based at Westminster, he has particular responsibility for serving BBC News' flagship programmes, including Today on BBC Radio 4 and BBC One's Ten O'Clock News.
Born in Macclesfield, Cheshire in 1963, he attended Cheadle Hulme School, followed by University College, Oxford where he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics.
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