Cut the nonsense
Speaking to the Centre for Policy Studies last month, the Conservative MP David Davis commented that “We have a conspiracy between the two front benches to exaggerate the cuts.” His own party, explained Davis, does this to placate markets, and Labour to raise a sense of grievance. So when the prime minister insists that “we cannot blow the budget on more spending and more debt,” and Ed Miliband calls Cameron the “high priest of austerity,” remember that according to the Office for National Statistics, during July this year, government spending was 5.1 per cent higher than the same month in 2011. In the four months April to July, spending was 3.6 per cent higher.
IDS payback
One to watch following the reshuffle is the relationship between Iain Duncan Smith, George Osborne and David Cameron. IDS famously refused to move from the department of work and pensions to the ministry of justice, and officials already detect tension. The chancellor is said to be sceptical about the universal credit, while the work and pensions secretary was refusing to agree to Treasury demands to find more savings from the benefits bill.
Perhaps most interesting is the upshot of wrangling over universal benefits for pensioners. The prime minister promised at the last election not to scrap the free bus passes, winter fuel allowance and TV licences given to all elderly people. But Duncan Smith is said to view pensioners as a much better target than the poor. Indeed, he has made it clear that were he old enough to receive the winter fuel allowance he would pay it back.
Laws school
The reshuffle played havoc with hundreds of round table discussions organised by lobbyists and think tanks at conference time, whose plans have been thrown in the air in light of the ministerial switch-around. One tells of particular frustration with David Laws, who was being enticed to step in to an education discussion following Nick Clegg’s pitiless dispatch of Sarah Teather, the now former children and families minister. They realised securing his attendance was going to be a struggle when Laws’s office suggested he “didn’t know enough about education” to take part.
Zuckerberg of bankers
Andy Haldane, fiercely bright executive director of the Bank of England, is suddenly racing up the home stretch to become the next governor. One long-standing City-watcher told Prospect that, though Haldane is “gawky and lacks the social graces that one normally associates with a governor,” a Haldane victory would be a major triumph for the nerdy. “He is the Mark Zuckerberg of central bankers,” was the assessment.
Quick thinking President
Thinking Fast and Slow, the surprise bestseller by Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate in economics, has a new fan: Barack Obama, according to the New York Times. However, the message he takes away from it may be a unique one. Fast thinking, says Kahneman, involves emotion and intuition and frequently leads to error, whereas slow thinking depends on rational deliberation. Obama, who is frequently criticised for being too circumspect and cool, may be the only reader that Kahneman’s book encourages to do more fast thinking. “Being a slow thinker for a leader is not necessarily an advantage because the public likes a leader to think quickly and react instinctively,” says Kahneman.
A UKIP play
A performance of EuroCrash! the Musical at this year’s UK Independence Party conference caused the librettist David Shirreff, European business and finance correspondent at the Economist, to describe himself as “a europhile and eurosceptic at the same time.” In the play, Papa Kohl and Madame Mitterrand run a European Currency School in the middle of a dense forest peopled by a Currency Snake, Norman Lamont, Angela Merkel and other strange beasts. Not so unlike the real thing. Tickets cost £30 from the UKIP website. By contrast tickets for the leader’s luncheon the following day cost a mere £20.
Speaking to the Centre for Policy Studies last month, the Conservative MP David Davis commented that “We have a conspiracy between the two front benches to exaggerate the cuts.” His own party, explained Davis, does this to placate markets, and Labour to raise a sense of grievance. So when the prime minister insists that “we cannot blow the budget on more spending and more debt,” and Ed Miliband calls Cameron the “high priest of austerity,” remember that according to the Office for National Statistics, during July this year, government spending was 5.1 per cent higher than the same month in 2011. In the four months April to July, spending was 3.6 per cent higher.
IDS payback
One to watch following the reshuffle is the relationship between Iain Duncan Smith, George Osborne and David Cameron. IDS famously refused to move from the department of work and pensions to the ministry of justice, and officials already detect tension. The chancellor is said to be sceptical about the universal credit, while the work and pensions secretary was refusing to agree to Treasury demands to find more savings from the benefits bill.
Perhaps most interesting is the upshot of wrangling over universal benefits for pensioners. The prime minister promised at the last election not to scrap the free bus passes, winter fuel allowance and TV licences given to all elderly people. But Duncan Smith is said to view pensioners as a much better target than the poor. Indeed, he has made it clear that were he old enough to receive the winter fuel allowance he would pay it back.
Laws school
The reshuffle played havoc with hundreds of round table discussions organised by lobbyists and think tanks at conference time, whose plans have been thrown in the air in light of the ministerial switch-around. One tells of particular frustration with David Laws, who was being enticed to step in to an education discussion following Nick Clegg’s pitiless dispatch of Sarah Teather, the now former children and families minister. They realised securing his attendance was going to be a struggle when Laws’s office suggested he “didn’t know enough about education” to take part.
Zuckerberg of bankers
Andy Haldane, fiercely bright executive director of the Bank of England, is suddenly racing up the home stretch to become the next governor. One long-standing City-watcher told Prospect that, though Haldane is “gawky and lacks the social graces that one normally associates with a governor,” a Haldane victory would be a major triumph for the nerdy. “He is the Mark Zuckerberg of central bankers,” was the assessment.
Quick thinking President
Thinking Fast and Slow, the surprise bestseller by Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel laureate in economics, has a new fan: Barack Obama, according to the New York Times. However, the message he takes away from it may be a unique one. Fast thinking, says Kahneman, involves emotion and intuition and frequently leads to error, whereas slow thinking depends on rational deliberation. Obama, who is frequently criticised for being too circumspect and cool, may be the only reader that Kahneman’s book encourages to do more fast thinking. “Being a slow thinker for a leader is not necessarily an advantage because the public likes a leader to think quickly and react instinctively,” says Kahneman.
A UKIP play
A performance of EuroCrash! the Musical at this year’s UK Independence Party conference caused the librettist David Shirreff, European business and finance correspondent at the Economist, to describe himself as “a europhile and eurosceptic at the same time.” In the play, Papa Kohl and Madame Mitterrand run a European Currency School in the middle of a dense forest peopled by a Currency Snake, Norman Lamont, Angela Merkel and other strange beasts. Not so unlike the real thing. Tickets cost £30 from the UKIP website. By contrast tickets for the leader’s luncheon the following day cost a mere £20.
