Tory right anger over Ireland bailout

The Euro-sceptics in the Conservative party including John Redwood and Douglas Carswell believe Britain is becoming embroiled in a situation which is likely to only get more expensive and fear it will damage their ability to take political power back from Brussels. In addition, the Adam Smith Institute said that the Government’s decision to offer around £7 billion in aid, including direct loans to Dublin, was a “bad deal” for Britain. Ireland has been forced to take the £77 billion economic bail-out in a deal designed to save the euro. As a non-Euro country, the UK was not obliged to contribute but decided to offer support amounting to the equivalent of £300 per household because of the close trading relationship with Dublin. – The Telegraph

The Eurosceptic pressure on the government was highlighted when Douglas Carswell, a prominent backbencher, criticised plans for Britain to provide around £7bn in loans to Ireland. “We shouldn’t be paying to help keep Ireland in the euro,” Carswell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “If we are going to pay to solve this crisis we should be helping to pay Ireland to quit the euro.” Osborne reached out to the Eurosceptics shortly after Carswell’s appearance on Today by indicating that Britain’s help for Ireland was on a bilateral basis and that he was hoping to withdraw Britain from a €60bn EU (£51.34bn) fund. “It is a bilateral loan to Ireland to reflect the fact that we don’t want to be part of a permanent bailout mechanism for the euro,” the chancellor said. – The Guardian

Ed’s back

Returning from two weeks of paternity leave, the Labour leader said shadow Wales secretary Peter Hain would lead a review which will report to next year’s annual conference. The commission will look at policy, the party’s organisation and its relationship with the trade unions. Explaining why he did not enjoy being out of power, Mr Miliband told MPs: “You see the Tories and the Liberal Democrats doing terrible things and it is frustrating. But opposition is about the long-haul and digging in.” Shortly after the weekly meeting of Labour MPs, an ICM opinion poll for the Guardian put support for Labour at 38% – the highest it has been since October 2007. The Conservatives are down three to 36% and the Liberal Democrats dropped to 14%, their lowest result in an ICM poll for nearly 10 years. – Sky

Labour has pulled ahead sharply in the latest Guardian/ICM poll, as both coalition parties lose support. The findings, published as Ed Miliband returns to Westminster after paternity leave, suggest only a minority of voters believe the coalition is taking Britain in the right direction. Labour support in a theoretical immediate election has risen to 38%, two points higher than last month and the best in any ICM poll since Gordon Brown cancelled the planned 2007 general election. Between them the coalition parties have shed five points. Conservative support has dropped three since last month to 36%, while the Liberal Democrats have fallen two points to 14%. The Lib Dem score is the lowest in the Guardian/ICM series since May 2001, and the lowest in any ICM poll since October 2007. – The Guardian Read the rest of this entry »

Ed is back, and ready to fight

Ed Miliband launches his party on “the hard road back to power”, saying it has to move beyond New Labour and commit to changes in policy and organisation as profound as those introduced by Tony Blair in 1994. He also appears to clash with the shadow chancellor, Alan Johnson, by saying a 50p tax rate for those earning more than £150,000 should be permanent, as a way of creating greater equality in Britain. Making the country more equal, he says, is one of the issues that gets him out of bed in the morning. – The Guardian

He disclosed that a commission on Labour’s organisation would be launched at the weekend. It will cover the contentious issue of leadership elections, including the influence of the unions which ensured he beat his brother, David, despite having less support from Labour MPs and members. There is also to be a policy review starting with “a blank page”, although “not in terms of values”. His views on the tax rate appears to contradict Alan Johnson, the Shadow chancellor, who has said previously that Labour “might not see the need for a 50p tax rate in five years’ time”. But Mr Miliband said the tax rate was not simply about cutting the deficit. “It’s about values and fairness and about the kind of society you believe in and it’s important to me.” – The Telegraph

Former Blairites who carp at Ed Miliband’s leadership are like “twitching corpses”, the Labour leader’s former rival, Ed Balls, said yesterday. Mr Miliband is returning to work today, having taken two weeks’ paternity leave after the birth of his second son, Samuel, amid grumbling in Labour ranks that he has not done enough to define what his leadership stands for. There have also been fresh rumours about plots to unseat Gordon Brown before the general election. But this talk was contemptuously dismissed by Mr Balls yesterday. “The papers are full of all of this sort of twitching of the old corpses of the past. Who cares?” he told the BBC. He also defended the Labour leader’s temporary absence from frontline politics. “He is on paternity leave and I think that’s a really good thing. One of the great changes in the last 10, 15 years under the Labour government was things like paternity leave becoming an accepted part of life. But he’s coming back and he’s going to be fighting hard.” – The Independent Read the rest of this entry »