January 2011

So what might the Government actually do, when they get around to having an economic policy in two months' time? Whatever Osborne's actual economic theory is, it's likely that the political imperatives (i.e. Downing Street) will force him to announce something.

It doesn't look like the BIS-led effort to define a growth strategy is going to come to anything - Vince Cable doesn't seem to have any authority left, and anyway any such effort would need a budget. Devolving any funds from the Treasury to BIS would probably now require a change of chancellor.

Here's something amusing. The Lords filibuster of the AV bill goes on, and it looks increasingly likely that they may manage to wreck the project or at least force the government to split off the changes to parliamentary constituencies. (That's the bit that lets the Tories help themselves to boundary changes as a side payment for letting the Lib Dems have electoral reform.)

But look who's full of principled concern for the constitution and for proper scrutiny of legislation.

[an occasional series of shorts illustrating the character of leading Coalition lights]

'Facts are important, except when I want to make something up.'

A very nice school, in fact, a 1930s [really interesting PDF] full-flowering-of-LCC-municipal-socialism rusticated pile in the northern part of Hammersmith, just south of Phoenix High School [PDF] and only about a kilometre east of Toby's £1.3m Acton residence.  Hardly need to get the people carrier ticking over (there's not a lot of public transport).  Top hole.

I notice that my dear colleague Tom reckons Francis Maude is the intellectual power behind the government - and that'll be why we're in this fix. My ongoing project to analyse the government's disclosures of meetings with external lobbies came to similar conclusions with a quite limited data set as far back as October.