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Welcome to Newslog - come here for my reflections and analysis on what's going on in and around politics
18:08 UK time, Wednesday, 7 November 2012
You know what it's like when you invite someone to dinner.
There's always the question of who pays. Should you split the bill or should the host pick up the tab? So it will be tonight at one of Westminster's most exclusive private dining rooms - in No 10, Downing Street - when David hosts Angela.
11:32 UK time, Wednesday, 7 November 2012
So Barack Obama has been re-elected as US president. What are the lessons from the campaign and result for British politicians?
1. Incumbents can still win
17:36 UK time, Monday, 5 November 2012
Never was there clearer evidence of the difference the Savile scandal has made to attitudes to allegations of child abuse.
The prime minister has broken into a trip to the Gulf to announce an investigation into allegations that abuse at a North Wales children's home went much further than an official inquiry revealed and may have involved a senior Conservative from the Thatcher era.
10:04 UK time, Thursday, 1 November 2012
On the morning after the fright night before, the chancellor says the government will listen. Listen, that is, to the call from the House of Commons for a cut to the EU budget. Yet the deputy prime minister says the government's "offer" to Europe is a real-terms freeze - ie: an increase in line with prices.
Even that could be hard to deliver, we are told, given that every one of the EU's 27 governments must sign up to any new long-term budget deal. Currently, 17 nations want an increased budget because they are net beneficiaries.
18:09 UK time, Wednesday, 31 October 2012
A government which claims that it is facing defeat at the hands of its own backbenchers over the issue which has split the Conservative Party over much of the past quarter of a century - Europe.
A government which is told by one of its self-proclaimed friends that it lacks a convincing strategy for delivering its most important challenge - producing economic growth and creating wealth.
09:05 UK time, Wednesday, 31 October 2012
"The message I keep hearing is that the UK does not have a strategy for growth and wealth creation."
That one sentence alone is a gift to Ed Miliband particularly on the day of Prime Minister's Questions. All the more surprising then that it comes from a report commissioned by the government and written by a former Conservative Deputy Prime Minister. This is a war cry from the man whose golden locks and virtuoso performances earned him the nickname Tarzan.
08:53 UK time, Thursday, 25 October 2012
Curb benefits for big families. That, once again, is the cry coming from the Conservative side of the coalition.
The idea - to cap benefits after families have their second child - is guaranteed to generate headlines, controversy, but, you know what, very little money.
00:04 UK time, Saturday, 20 October 2012
Day after day Andrew Mitchell refused to bow to calls on him to go. Day after day David Cameron backed him.
Day after day the story simply didn't die, until yesterday when the former soldier appointed to instil some discipline into Tory ranks lost the will to fight.
19:01 UK time, Friday, 19 October 2012
Andrew Mitchell has resigned as the government Chief Whip.
He asked to see the Prime Minister after he returned from the EU Summit in Brussels.
18:54 UK time, Friday, 19 October 2012
Andrew Mitchell has resigned as the government Chief Whip.
He asked to see the Prime Minister after he returned from the EU Summit in Brussels.
12:24 UK time, Monday, 15 October 2012
They shake hands. They smile for the cameras. They hail an agreement which allows the people of Scotland to determine their own future. However, both men will know that there can only be one winner.
Either David Cameron is set to become the last Prime Minister of this United Kingdom, or Alex Salmond is on course to be the first nationalist leader forced to admit that his country has rejected the chance to become an independent nation.
17:47 UK time, Wednesday, 10 October 2012
This conference season has scarcely featured a significant new policy. It has, though, revealed some important new political positioning.
The Liberal Democrats branded themselves as one of what were now three - and not two - parties of government. Nick Clegg insisted they could be trusted more with the economy than Labour and more with society than the Conservatives.
14:51 UK time, Wednesday, 10 October 2012
Who are you really? What is your government for? Why are you doing what you're doing?
It is curious that almost seven years after he became his party's leader and more than two years after he became Prime Minister, David Cameron felt that those were the questions he had to answer today.
16:28 UK time, Sunday, 7 October 2012
The Big Picture.
That's what Tony Blair used to say the media should focus on when asked about all the things that were going wrong for his government.
17:57 UK time, Thursday, 4 October 2012
I noted yesterday that it is a banner to march under, a tune to hum and a new brand to replace New Labour.
But what does One Nation Labour amount to?
18:11 UK time, Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Imitation - they say - is the sincerest form of flattery. Today Ed Miliband delivered a speech that didn't just echo one of the slogans and some of the rhetoric of his Tory opponent but even the way David Cameron once famously delivered them - without notes.
His speech was based around a single assertion: that he could unite the country in difficult times and was the man to deliver the 140-year-old Tory slogan "One Nation".
12:48 UK time, Tuesday, 2 October 2012
About 100 yards from where Ed Miliband will deliver his speech is one of the most significant sites in the history of politics in Britain.
The Labour leader will try to make that history come alive and to use it as his new rallying cry.
11:21 UK time, Tuesday, 2 October 2012
Close your eyes. Think very hard. I want you to imagine something.
You're looking at the most famous black door in the world. It's May 2015 - the day after the next election. The man standing on the step is Ed Miliband.
11:07 UK time, Monday, 1 October 2012
What, if anything, does Labour's latest economic announcement tell us? Some argue almost nothing. I believe something rather more than that.
This is the case for the prosecution: Ed Balls is only telling us what he would do now if he was chancellor, not what he will do if he becomes chancellor in 2015.
13:21 UK time, Sunday, 30 September 2012
Ed Miliband believes that his task this week is to establish his character not Labour's policy prospectus (as I spelt out in yesterday's post).
He wants to portray himself as a leader who is strong and has a clear vision, in contrast to a prime minister who he portrays as interested in power for its own sake and who has swung between hugging hoodies and huskies in opposition to wanting to lock up the first and ignore the second now he's in government.
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 the flagship news programmes, including Today on Radio 4 and the Ten O'Clock News on BBC One.
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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