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Welcome to Newslog - come here for my reflections and analysis on what's going on in and around politics
11 hours ago
How to tax mansions without introducing a mansion tax? That is the challenge the Treasury is working on at the moment.
As I explained in my last post, George Osborne needs to find some money to spend on the tax cuts demanded by the Tory right and Lib Dems, his own growth initiatives and other diverse political fixes.
21:13 UK time, Wednesday, 22 February 2012
Once upon a time George Osborne would have been delighted to have come under so much pressure to cut taxes.
The Tory right - now with the former defence secretary, Liam Fox, leading the way - are calling on the chancellor to cut business taxes.
15:20 UK time, Wednesday, 22 February 2012
For the third question time in a row Ed Miliband has exposed the prime minister's vulnerability on the NHS. For the third time in a row David Cameron has been watched by glum Liberal Democrats.
What wounded the PM this week were his own words quoted back at him:
18:48 UK time, Tuesday, 21 February 2012
On the day Tesco reacted to allegations that it was taking part in a government "slave labour" scheme, ministers have come out fighting.
They believe that a small, unrepresentative protest group is trying to make big companies lose their nerve and withdraw from a scheme which allows people up to eight weeks' work experience without losing their benefits (in the past only two weeks was allowed).
13:42 UK time, Monday, 20 February 2012
Standby for more headlines about borders chaos.
The home secretary is about to unveil the official report into the relaxing of border controls last summer.
09:14 UK time, Tuesday, 14 February 2012
A warning light is flashing. The UK's triple A rating is under threat. The chancellor accepted this morning that "Britain's economic reputation is on the line".
Economically, that means Britain could face not just low growth and rising unemployment but, if the credit ratings agencies do eventually downgrade Britain, higher interest rates too.
15:52 UK time, Wednesday, 8 February 2012
"Kill the bill. Sack the health secretary."
That is the cry coming from a very curious coalition.
18:00 UK time, Tuesday, 7 February 2012
Could Homs become the new Hama?
In other words, could Syria's President Bashar al-Assad be about to follow the example of his father President, Hafez al-Assad, who massacred not just hundreds but thousands and, perhaps, tens of thousands of people 30 years ago in order to quell a revolt against his regime? *
11:34 UK time, Friday, 3 February 2012
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.
15:52 UK time, Thursday, 2 February 2012
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
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:
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
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
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
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
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
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
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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