“On a day of confusion, David Cameron appeared to ditch a cherished pledge that the winter fuel allowance, free bus passes and TV licences for the over-75s would continue for the better off after the next election. … Only hours later though No 10 moved to stress that the Prime Minister remained personally committed to the policy despite major opposition within his Cabinet. … ‘He is minded to repeat the pledge,’ a Downing Street source said.” – Daily Mail
“Middle-class voters will have to wait years for tax cuts and any spare cash will be focused on helping the poor, David Cameron indicated yesterday. … The Prime Minister said, however, he wanted to get to the position ‘where we can allow people to keep more of their own money to spend as they choose’.” – Daily Mail
“In a major speech on the economy, the Chancellor will argue that long-term recovery remains in the balance unless more spending cuts are made. … He will highlight the progress made so far in tackling the vast budget deficit left by the last Labour government. … But in an attempt to dampen speculation about tax cuts, he will warn that further reductions in the size of the State must come first.” – Daily Mail
> Yesterday on ToryDiary: Why Osborne should cut income taxes for poorer workers first
“David Cameron yesterday made tougher immigration controls his top demand in the EU’s new treaty — and delighted campaigners. … The PM said stricter rules to limit new arrivals from poorer European countries are ‘absolutely achievable’. … And he dropped the strongest hint yet the issue will be a red line for him as he begins to renegotiate Britain’s European Union membership, as The Sun has demanded.” – The Sun (£)
“Michael Gove was yesterday embroiled in a new war of words over showing Blackadder in schools – with one of the programme’s stars. … Sir Tony Robinson, asked to weigh in to the row over whether the TV comedy should be used in lessons about the First World War, branded Mr Gove ‘very silly’. … The actor, who played the hapless Baldrick in the long-running series, refused to accept Mr Gove’s claims that it would feed pupils ‘left-wing myths’ about the 1914-18 conflict.” – Daily Mail
“Doctors are rebelling against plans to harvest personal information from the medical files of millions of patients. … David Davis, a Tory MP and former shadow home secretary, said: ‘It’s an enormous threat to privacy. To make patients go in and make an appointment with their GP is frankly disgraceful. … ‘The database does have huge value for the NHS but it will go wrong. Some people’s information will be lost. If hackers can take on Microsoft, how long until they get to the Department of Health?'” – Daily Mail
“Yet our system is already marked by absurdity: in the vast majority of such cases, life does not mean life – and one in seven murders is committed by those under the supervision of the probation service: out on licence, in other words. … This dreadful fact alone explains why the whole life sentence is sometimes necessary for public protection; and why it would be criminal of David Cameron to give that lesser priority than gratifying Mr Clegg.” – Daily Mail
“MPs with newborn babies should be able to bring them into the House of Commons for votes because they would not be a disruption, a minister has claimed. … Jo Swinson, the Liberal Democrat business minister who gave birth to a boy before Christmas, said the ban on bringing infants to the voting lobby was ‘bizarre’.” – Daily Mail
“Ed Miliband’s push to level the playing field between British and foreign job-seekers could damage the economy, business leaders said last night. … The Labour leader vowed to close a loophole which allows firms to use cheap agency workers instead of employing better-paid staff. … But the CBI business body said the use of temporary agency workers was perfectly legal — and that their ‘flexibility’ had ‘saved jobs and kept our economy going’ through the credit crisis.” – The Sun (£)
“Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have been challenged by one of Labour’s most loyal union leaders to stop treating the proposed HS2 rail scheme as a ‘political football’ and to give Labour’s unambiguous backing to the £42bn project. … Mick Whelan, the general secretary of Aslef, said he was dismayed at the conflicting signals from the Labour leadership over the need for a new high-speed link between London, the Midlands and the north of England.” – The Independent
“Owen Paterson, the Conservative environment secretary, may be blind to the increased risk of flooding across Britain because he is sceptical about climate change science, Labour has said. … Amid warnings of further floods to hit Britain within the next 48 hours, Maria Eagle, the shadow environment secretary, said Paterson had ‘real questions to answer’ about why he was allowing cuts that could affect Britain’s ability to deal with severe weather incidents.” – The Guardian
“Britain needs to face up to a radical change in weather conditions that could be the result of global warming, and spend much more on flood defences, Sir David King, the government’s special envoy on climate change, has said.” – The Guardian
“Chairman Adebayo Ogunlesi vowed to make Gatwick ‘truly first-class’ when his US investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners bought it in 2009. … But thousands of passengers had Christmas ruined when a power cut on December 24 left them stranded for hours with no food and just one toilet. … [John Mann said:] ‘How does it look if people can’t get in and out of the country? It makes us a laughing stock around the world. It’s a shambles. Mr Ogunlesi obviously doesn’t use Gatwick at Christmas.'” – The Sun (£)
“Far too many on my side of politics still have their heads in the sand, holding on to a ragbag of notions that now bears no serious examination: that so-called civil liberties should always come a distant second to schools, hospitals and such like; that the centralised, snooping, target-driven state can be our friend, so long as it can be once again captured by Labour and put to the correct uses; and that from the NHS to the BBC, so long as giant and unwieldy institutions can be kept away from the private market, all will be well.” – John Harris, The Guardian
“Nigel Farage yesterday said ‘the basic principle’ behind parts of Enoch Powell’s notorious Rivers of Blood speech was right. … The Ukip leader was asked if he agreed with a statement about how the ‘indigenous population found themselves strangers in their own country’. … He said it was true – but appeared thrown when he was told the statement was made by the controversial Tory minister of the 1960s.” – Daily Mail
“UKIP has attracted half of the 37 per cent of voters who have deserted the Tories after voting for them in 2010, according to the latest opinion poll. … Nigel Farage, the independence party leader, far from revelling in stealing Conservative votes, commented on Twitter : ‘[Lord] Ashcroft’s poll makes it clear that the majority of UKIP support does not come from the Tories; 60 per cent of UKIP support comes from elsewhere.’ He later tweeted: ‘Go look at the figures. I don’t lead some Tory splinter group’.” – The Times (£)
> Today on ToryDiary: Toby Young’s Tories Before UKIP plan
> Yesterday:
“Hard-fought territory in southern Afghanistan will fall to the Taleban after British forces withdraw this year, British commanders and military experts believe. … Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon, the former Liberal Democrat leader and ex-Royal Marine, went so far as to describe the 12-year conflict, which has so far cost 447 British lives and tens of billions of pounds, as a ‘textbook’ example of how to lose a war.” – The Times (£)
“Whatever the cause, it’s deeply distasteful that we prefer to admire old cars than consider the system that led to their survival – extensive censorship of the media, vast police surveillance, near-total restrictions on freedom of assembly and speech, arbitrary arrest and torture of journalists and dissidents. There is a good reason why large numbers of Cubans have fled to the US in recent decades, and why people still take the desperate measure of cobbling together rafts and trying to float across the Caribbean, risking their lives to be free.” – Mark Wallace, Comment is Free
“Fixing potholes is now a bigger issue than cutting fuel duty, according to furious motorists. … An AA poll today reveals 91 per cent of Brits would support a political party vowing to fill them. … This tops the 85 per cent who would back MPs promising a petrol tax cut.” – The Sun (£)
“Alistair Darling ended 2013 in good financial shape. … According to the latest register of MPs’ financial interests, the former Chancellor received £33,150 for making three speeches. … Darling reckons he spent ten hours on this work, suggesting his market worth is an impressive £3,300 per hour.” – Richard Kay’s column, Daily Mail