~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~03~RS~)
18 hours ago
Huhne - Very personal politics
What started with the very personal is now having very political effects.
The acrimonious break-up of Chris Huhne's marriage led to allegations about who did what, when.
Nick Robinson Political editor
Welcome to Newslog - come here for my reflections and analysis on what's going on in and around politics
15:52 UK time, Thursday, 2 February 2012
Huhne case speeds to conclusion
By tomorrow morning Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, could find himself speeding out of the Cabinet.
Just before 1000 GMT his solicitor will be informed by the Crown Prosecution Service of the decision they have reached about whether to prosecute him and his former wife, Vicky Pryce, over allegations that he persuaded her to take speeding points on his behalf and, thereby, avoid a driving ban.
12:56 UK time, Wednesday, 1 February 2012
Bankers - Now it's class war
Did Ed Miliband really mean to call for a "class war" on bankers?
The Labour leader began by putting the prime minister on the back foot in the House of Commons today - on why he wouldn't legislate to publish all bankers' salaries over £1m and put an employee representative on remuneration committees.
20:33 UK time, Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Nick added analysis to:
Goodwin stripped of knighthood
Arise plain old Fred Goodwin. Sir Fred no longer.
The man who sank a bank - the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland - has been stripped of his knighthood.
18:56 UK time, Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Sir Fred no longer
Arise plain old Fred Goodwin. Sir Fred no longer.
The man who sank a bank - the former chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland - has been stripped of his knighthood.
11:32 UK time, Tuesday, 31 January 2012
Europe - When is a veto not a veto?
What exactly did David Cameron veto when he found himself one against 26 in Brussels last year? That is the question Labour asked at the time and now they are being joined on the morning after another night before in Brussels.
David Cameron's answer is simple - he vetoed a new EU-wide treaty or, as he put it last night: "We're not in this Treaty, we are not part of it, we're not bound by it, we don't have to ratify it, don't have to take it to the British parliament - that is what the veto secures you."
22:50 UK time, Monday, 30 January 2012
Bonuses - PM frustration tangible
I wasn't in Brussels, but you could feel David Cameron's frustration over the issue of bank bonuses from miles away.
The prime minister knows that it was not his public exhortation or the Treasury's private nudges or winks or even arm-twisting which stopped Stephen Hester's bonus.
10:06 UK time, Monday, 30 January 2012
Bonuses - Politicians taste blood
The bankers of Royal Bank of Scotland may come to regret their boss's admission that he waived his bonus rather than face a parliamentary vote on it. What's more they might not be the only ones.
Politicians led by Ed Miliband have tasted bankers' blood - a taste they may get used to.
17:05 UK time, Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Decision time on a new airport
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
It wasn't supposed to be like this
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
Benefit cap - A tale of two moralities
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
The politics of the benefits cap
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
Painful or positive?
"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
Feeling the heat
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
Labour - Now Ed backs pay cuts
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
Misunderstanding or division?
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
Not new Labour
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
Scotland: The question is key
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
Scotland: It's good to talk
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
Salmond and Cameron in high stakes battle
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.
Your money
Tax calculatorDo you give more than you get back?
About Nick
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.
More correspondents
-
Robert Peston
Business editor
Latest on events, trends and issues in business and finance
-
Mark D'Arcy
Parliamentary correspondent
Inside the chambers and committee rooms of Westminster
-
Martin Rosenbaum
Freedom of information specialist
Thoughts on freedom of information and the issues it raises
