In an interview with The Independent, Danny Alexander said he was close to agreeing proposals with George Osborne to go "further and faster" towards removing low earners from tax. He hinted that the measure could be paid for by toughening up tax breaks on the pension contributions of the highest earners and said that a tax loophole which allows multimillionaires to avoid paying stamp duty could be closed.? Michael Savage in the Times (paywall) says some Lib Dems believe Alexander has become a prisoner of the Treasury."When it comes to Danny, he seems to think his only job is to please George Osborne," said a pro-coalition minister. "He has gone native. Chief Secretary to the Treasury is a big job for us.
.. No dinners would take place at Number 10 or at Chequers and that is a key difference.He also said that when he was raising money for Labour offering donors the opportunity to influence policy was "absolutely banned".I've taken the quotes from PoliticsHome.10.00am: The Institute for Fiscal Studies has published an analysis of David Cameron's plans to introduce a minimum price for alcohol. It says that a 40pm minimum unit price would raise up to ￡850m for the drinks industry and that it would be better to force prices up by raising alcohol duty, so that the revenue benefits the Treasury.(If this is the case, can anyone explain why the drinks industry are so opposed to a minimum unit price?)10.
She points out that in order to win an overall majority the party cannot rely on the Shires and must do better in the kind of places, like Dewsbury, where she grew up. "The battleground will be the 35 most marginal seats that we hold and the 35 seats which we need to win. If you see where our marginal seats are they are predominantly in the North. They are predominantly in urban areas. And they are predominantly in seats which have large non-white populations."Those are the areas we need to concentrate on. We have to win more seats which are urban and get votes from people who are not white."? Tom Coghlan in the Times (paywall) says David Cameron is being pressed to change his plans for Britain's aircraft carrier programme.
"2.03pm: George Eaton, has written a post on the New Statesman's Staggers blog with the headline: "The cost of Libya is a blow to Osborne's credibility."He argues that the cost of the mission undermines George Osborne's previous insistence that "the cupboard is bare". "It is harder for ministers to defend library closures,
www.ytcgzx.net, Sure Start closures and the rest when the government is spending hundreds of millions of pounds on a war far from home," he writes.You can read the full post here. Photograph: Murdo Macleod 2.08pm: Alex Salmond has dropped his demands for a controversial bill to tackle religious bigotry in Scotland to be rushed through parliament after intense criticism of the proposals, the Guardian's Scotland correspondent, Severin Carrell, reports.
The government is trying to sneak through changes to the admission code without parliamentary debate. These would remove the rights of parents to appeal to the schools' adjudicator on the expansion of grammar schools. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AP 2.40pm: David Cameron said time was "running out" for a two-state solution in the Middle East when he met Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president,
ytcgzx.net, at Number 10. According to the Press Association, this is what Cameron said.We think that time, in some ways, is running out for the two-state solution unless we can push forwards now because otherwise the facts on the ground will make it more and more difficult, which is why the settlement issue remains so important.
7.05pm: Caroline Flint starts by saying: "Apparently I'm a cuckoo, so I'm going to start by talking about the dodos tonight … the Liberal Democrats! Who did you think I was talking about?"As you can see, Twigg is right that Labour has completely rejected infighting.7.07pm: Flint says as many people in her constituency of Doncaster worry about immigration and welfare as in the south. But southerners are different: lack of history voting Labour,
kate spade outlet online, lower trade union membership, for example. However, those attributes are starting to be seen all over Britain. She says to win in the south is to win the country.7.19pm: David Miliband gets a rapturous response as he stands up. People are whooping and taking photos with their phones.
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