Peter Saunders: Welfare should be based on what you pay in – not on what you get out
National Insurance has all but collapsed as a system for delivering genuine, contributions-based self-reliance.
The final four for South East Cambridgeshire
The three women and a man face an Open Primary on December 7.
Three reasons for the Conservatives to be careful with their Co-op campaigning
A lot of people’s fingerprints can be found on the institution’s troubles, and personal attacks can carry political risks with them.
Joe Baron: Is Michael Gove playing into the hands of ‘The Blob’?
The academies programme is in reality granting greater autonomy – and therefore greater power – to the very people responsible for our current problems.
Christopher Snowdon: To properly tackle poverty, we must look at the cost of living
A poverty measure that has so little regard for what living standards people enjoy deserves to be treated with scepticism.
The lessons of Gove’s ferocious attack on Simon Cowell
It seems wrong to call Michael Gove an “attack dog”, but there is still something increasingly canine about him in Government.
James Wharton MP: Despite the delaying tactics of Labour and the Lib Dems, my EU referendum Bill rolls on
The people deserve a say on our membership of the EU – and Conservative MPs are helping to deliver one.
Shares in David Cameron are under-valued
It is possible, arguably even likely, that he will still be Prime Minister after 2015.
Iain Dale: It was ignorance, not gay sex, that stopped Flowers doing his job
Also: On admiring Paul Sykes, wishing Farage a speedy recovery, my strange dream (watch, out Greg Clark)…and why Miliband is making a twat of himself.
Simon Rose: The betrayal of savers
The Bank’s own figures showed that QE has cost the poorest 10 per cent £779 each while benefiting the top 10 per cent by over £30,000.
Heresy of the week: The conservative case for a citizen’s income
If the economy no longer provides ordinary working people with the hope of improved living standards, then the mainstream majority will look to the state instead
Joseph Henson: How to tackle Britain’s debt crisis
UK households now owe £1.43 trillion, and a third of households have no savings.
Lord Ashcroft: If the Tories are returning to comfort polling, that’s a bad sign
Without information to back it up, the results of a reported Conservative private poll must be taken with more than a pinch of salt.
Andrew Gimson’s PMQs sketch: Cameron knocks Labour about very well, but won’t discuss Boles
He had – and missed – a chance to talk seriously about the future of his country and his party.
Rachel Reeves is the first victim of Labour’s strategic chaos
Torn between obeying the unions and appealing to voters, her welfare policy is in tatters.