From the FT’s Business blog:
Some have attributed Nick Clegg’s proposal to give every British voter a share in the UK’s state-owned banks (floated during a trade visit to Rio de Janeiro) to a combination of jet lag, domestic political calculation and Copacabana sunstroke. But the UK deputy prime minister’s suggestion has a long pedigree – longer than perhaps even he recognises.
Read the post in full here.
Britain went to the polls on Thursday in a mix of local elections in England and national polls for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Voters also have their say in a referendum on changing the electoral system to the alternative vote. Follow the FT’s slideshow with images of the day.
Two tests await Ed Miliband, Labour leader, and his party: polls across the country, and a referendum on the alternative voting system for which he is a principal campaigner. George Parker, political editor, talks to the leader of the UK opposition about the upcoming ballots, his call for a cultural change in the City of London, and the coalition government’s deficit reduction strategy.
Nick Clegg has been warned by senior Conservative MPs that they will wreak revenge on him for the Liberal Democrats’ “Easter uprising”, including frustrating his plans for elections to the House of Lords.
Tory backbenchers were seething over attacks made at the weekend by the deputy prime minister and other senior Lib Dems against Tory cabinet ministers, as the heat intensified in the Alternative Vote referendum campaign.
Here the FT’s South Asia bureau chief discusses the UK’s aid policy in India. What do you think David Cameron’s government should do? Join the debate in the comments section.
Sixty years after granting independence to India, the UK is weighing whether India is a worthy recipient of its aid programme. Once the largest single recipient of British foreign aid, the country has developed so rapidly in recent years that some in prime minister David Cameron’s government think it could be time to cut off India and channel the money to poorer countries, mainly in Africa.
From the FT’s Money Supply blog:
As far as Britain’s economy is concerned the spending review, just published, changes little. There was the “reprofiling” predicted first in the Financial Times, but it amounted to only £2bn a year of additional gross capital expenditure. This will not make the difference between stagnation and recovery. The Treasury is right: there is no Plan B.
Commentary led by Jim Pickard and Alex Barker of the FT’s political team, Michael Hunter, markets reporter, Gordon Smith, FT.com’s deputy news editor, Martin Sandbu, editorial writer and co-ordinated by Darren Dodd, of the UK newsdesk.
The chancellor sat down in the House of Commons at 1.33pm
JP: Osborne’s stroke of genius is to announce departmental cuts of 19 per cent – just lower than the 20 announced by Labour in March. Let’s wait to find if he is comparing apples with pears.
Average savings in departmental budget to be lower than the average implied in Labour’s March budget. Instead of average cuts of 20 per cent, there will be cuts of 19 per cent per department
Osborne says: “The measures set out today bring sanity to our public finances”
£15.8bn to refurbish schools
Schools budget to rise from £35bn a year to £39bn
More on education: Early years education budget for schools to rise over each of the next four years. New £2.5bn pupil premium for disadvantaged children. And Sure Start services budgets will be protected in cash terms
Now for transport: The cap on rail fares will rise to retail price index plus 3 per cent for 3 years from 2012. £30bn to be invested in various transport projects over the next 4 years. M25 will be widened between 10 junctions. Crossrail will go ahead among other investments in Britain’s transport infrastructure
The BBC’s online budget will fall and it will not expand its activities competing with local media
Pilots of super-fast broadband to be started in the coming months
Now for the BBC: The BBC will take from the government the responsibility for the World Service. The licence fee will be frozen for the next six years
Osborne says there will be £1bn to set up a “green investment bank”
JP: There is a 50 per cent increase in funding for apprentices. But the chancellor isn’t spelling out which schemes will suffer to pay for this – my bet would be the £1bn ‘train to gain’ fund (used to help companies send staff on training).
£220m invested in the UK Centre for Medical Research and Innovation at St Pancras. £200m to be invested in developing wind technology
Now for science: The science budget is protected at £4.6bn a year
Your hosts are Jim Pickard (JP) Alex Barker (AB) and Beth Rigby (BR)
15.37 AB A few concluding points. This probably did enough for Ed’s team to be satisfied — it was a decent performance from a extremely difficult hand. It slowly won over the audience and by the end they were behind him. But it did seem as if they were willing him on, rather than being gripped by a compelling story. It certainly lacked the honesty that he said was important in politics. Most of the difficult issues were glided over. One passage stood out on education: Ed praised comprehensives but then pointed to an example of a poorly performing school that had been taken over and improved. Now, if you’re honestly making that point, why not mention the fact that is was probably an academy? Why miss out the name, if you are being straight with this Labour audience?
15:28 JP Time to wrap up. The judgment here – and from senior colleagues at the FT – was that it was a 6/10 speech at best. “At least he didn’t bomb,” says one. Ed started slowly with some bad anecdotes. There was no single narrative thread; he was too concerned to tick off a variety of subjects. It’s not clear where the heart of the speech lay – the only new line was his call to unions not to go on strike. Only at the end did his rhetoric pick up, with a rousing finale. Some colleagues thought that the anecdotes about his immigrant background was moving; others were not sure that it convinced. And maybe the whole thing was too long. Neither a failure nor a triumph.
15.25 AB One of the best applause lines in the speech was the Red Ed bit. But I’m wondering whether this was wise. Running through a list of insults — Red Ed, Wallace out of Wallace and Gromit, Forest Gump — and then saying “come off it” is not necessarily the best idea. It does a great favour to the hostile media. As most politicians are told when they start out in the business, the first rule of interviews is never to repeat a question, even if you want to say it is absurd. It gives people the quote they need. (JP Also, don’t admit that you sometimes find politics ‘depressing’. Your job is to inspire and lead.)
George Parker, political editor, reviews the long-awaited autobiography of Tony Blair, commenting on its lack of contrition and the ex-premier’s attack on his former friend and colleague, Gordon Brown.
Related reading:
Tony Blair’s book is published: part 2 – FT Westminster blog
Tony Blair’s book is published: part 1 – FT Westminster blog
Blair blames Brown for electoral defeat – George Parker, ft.com
Read our first post on Tony Blair’s book.
JP = Jim Pickard KS = Kiran Stacey GP = George Parker
That’s all for today – thanks for joining us. At least for this live blog.
12.38 JP – Blair describes his calm mood after 9/11, despite realising the historic importance of the terrorist attacks. “I saw my role as that of galvanising the maximum level of support,” he said. He deliberately set out the UK’s position in a broadcast from Downing Street. The key phrase “shoulder to shoulder” had been chosen very carefully, he admits. “I was aware this was a big commitment that would come to be measured not in words but in actions….I took this view for reasons both of principle and of national interest.”
12.36 JP - One of the better anecdotes in the book (page 331) is where a distracted Prince Charles tells Blair he has been insulted by Prescott – or at least thinks he might have been. Prescott’s offence was to slide down the seat, legs apart, crotch pointing “menacingly” with this teacup and saucer on his gut. The prince was suspicious that Prezza was making some kind of class point.
12.34 JP - On John Prescott. He could be “maddening”, “dangerous”, “absurd” or “magnificent”. Prescott also “agitated strongly” for Blair to leave in 2006-7. “He didn’t think it mattered electorally if I was swapped for Gordon.”
By George Parker, political editor
David Cameron was still glowing last night after his three-hour bonding session with President Obama, who took him on a tour of his personal apartments in the White House as well as the garden: a far cry from the short “brush by” offered to him when he was still leader of the opposition.
In spite of all the pre-meeting efforts to dampen expectations – Cameron wrote that he was not bothered by the “baubles” of the “special relationship” – his team were immediately anxious to tell journalists how well the meeting had gone.
In spite of the little local difficulty over BP, the two leaders joshed about the state of their children’s bedrooms and exchanged gifts: Sam Cameron bought a natty pair of pink and purple Hunter wellies for the Obama children.
| About this blog | Blog guide |
Jim Pickard joined the lobby team in January 2008. He has been at the Financial Times since 1999 as a regional correspondent, assistant UK news editor and property correspondent.
Kiran Stacey is an FT political correspondent, having joined the lobby in 2011. He started at the FT as a graduate trainee in 2008, working on desks including UK companies and US equity markets before taking over the FT's Energy Source blog.
Elizabeth Rigby, the FT's chief political correspondent, joined the lobby team in September 2010. Elizabeth has worked at the FT for more than a decade and was most recently its consumer industries editor.
Helen Warrell is the FT's UK reporter, covering home affairs, crime and policing. She joined the FT in 2008 and has spent time as a reporter in the Brussels bureau and more recently, editing the paper's Asia coverage on the world news desk.
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