Election Battlegrounds 9) London

All three parties have a middling band of targets – what leaps out is how so many Cameron-era gains now seem out of the Tories’ reach.

Iain Duncan Smith: We must face hard truths about homegrown extremism

This problem may have started abroad, but it is now here, in our own society. It must be dealt with.

Heresy of the week: Fairness is a Conservative concept

Fundamentally, fairness is about the desire for a moral order.

Unemployment falls again

Voters may suspect that Conservatives only care about those at the top – but falling unemployment helps those stuck at the bottom.

Labour’s delay of Universal Credit would cost the taxpayer money

Labour’s main criticism seems to be that the scheme is running behind schedule – their answer is a further three month delay

Cllr John Moss: The lessons from Waltham Forest

All those who voted UKIP achieved was the election of two Labour Councillors.

Prime Minister Ken Clarke and other absurd fantasies

Would a Conservative Party led by him have beaten UKIP?

George Osborne has misunderstood the politics and economics of welfare reform

The long-term effects of Osborne’s slash-and-burn approach to welfare are less certain than IDS’s more considered approach.

David Burrowes MP: WWWD – What would Wilberforce do?

As Tim Montgomerie said, “compassionate conservatives must be the agents of rescue – not just for indebted or sick economies, but for broken people too”.

Think Big, Britain

I’ve long hoped that the next Tory manifesto would offer an agenda for ensuring Britain can compete in what Digby Jones has rightly called the ‘Asian century’.

Labour abandons slobs and makes two U-turns

Like Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove has turned out to be far more in tune with public opinion than Labour was, and is now dragging his opponents along in his wake.

In It Together: Andrew Gimson reviews Matthew d’Ancona’s penetrating account of a coalition that cannot explain itself

The book provides a feast of material – and is too canny to pretend to say the last word on its topic.

We will stop paying people to be idle: an interview with Iain Duncan Smith

“When you sneer at somebody who stacks shelves, you sneer at the whole cycle of work, and that’s not good.”

The politics of poverty and the poverty of politics

John Kay was one of the original New Labour gurus. It’s therefore significant to see him incline, however cautiously, towards… Read more »