Blog posts tagged "Alistair Darling"

February 23, 2010 9:01 am 22 Comments

Has politics been turned on its head, with Labour now the party of "big business", blogs Jon Snow.

December 9, 2009 10:27 am 20 Comments

What a strange world we live in. The economics team I work with – Faisal and his backroom wizard, Neil Macdonald, tell me, and you, that today’s UK pre-budget report will stand or fall on the whims of a handful of economists across the world. Not any old economist but largely those who work for [...]

June 5, 2009 11:15 am No Comments

To answer my own initial question: Purnell has broken from the pack. He has done what David Miliband, conceivably Andy Burnham, and maybe John Hutton (of whom more in a moment), might have done and must have been thinking of doing. Purnell has plunged a knife that has been waiting for such an exercise for [...]

June 3, 2009 1:33 pm 52 Comments

A political crisis This is a political spectacle none of us has ever seen before. The government is reshuffling itself. Hazel Blears has just shuffled herself out of the Cabinet. She’d have been fired anyway over her second homery and non-payment of capital gains tax. Two other ministers, one of them another woman, are expected [...]

March 30, 2009 10:29 am No Comments

So Britain’s 12th largest building society goes bust – and the chairman complains that the chancellor isn’t bailing it out. Stunning! If, as some suggest, the Dunfermline Building Society is a victim of reckless lending, what possible obligation does Mr Darling have to bail it out?

January 26, 2009 1:13 pm 15 Comments

Seeing the steel job losses in communities that can least afford to cope with them, I commend File on 4 on Radio 4 this last Sunday (25 January). They investigated the new bankruptcy laws that make it much easier to go into “administration” and pointed out that whilst jobs in the failed company might be [...]