Something Is Stirring

Guido is right (read this) Ed Balls must have had today's fuel tax increase postponement leaked to him so that he was able to call for the cut on the Today programme this morning. What are the Tories up to? What with the tax increase postponement and Cameron telling his MPs that there will be no consequences for voting against the Bill for reform of the House of Lords despite the three line whip (see Benedict Brogan here) are Cameron and Osborne starting the next election campaign? Do they feel empowered to start pushing a distinctly Tory line because they have received the same message as Gove said today that he'd received from a Lib Dem colleague that the Lib Dems had not spent 70 years in the wilderness only to come into power to defend the status quo? Such message can surely only be read as meaning that the Lib Dems have no intention of bringing down the coalition? If there is an announcement that our relationship with the EU is to be re-negotiated then I for one will believe the Tories have decided to advertise their distinctiveness and to challenge the Lib Dems to put up or depart. The Lib Dems risk opprobrium if they bring the coalition down prematurely and will not to do so yet as despite the increased support indicated for them in the latest ICM poll they risk annihilation in any early election. They will therefore allow their Tory colleagues to express their distinctiveness in the same way as they have demonstrated their difference of view on certain issues e.g. Hunt. The Tories may have decided to start their distinctiveness campaign earlier than originally planned in order to counteract the bad publicity over the Budget aftermath (presented as a shambles but in truth not that damaging) but I suspect this campaign was due to start anytime now anyway. Apart from Europe it will be fascinating to see which other announcements the Tories make. If I were a betting man I would put money on the enlargement of airport capacity with Boris's airport given the green light. It is a project that has star quality and will keep Boris happy and occupied for years. What does not have star quality is to follow the advice Peter Sands of Standard Chartered gave Cameron yesterday about the adverse effect leaving the EU would have on the City. There are of course those who take an opposite view to Sands and that being freed of all the EU regulation the City will be galvanised into becoming another Singapore or Hong Kong to the benefit of us all. There is a book that has just come out called The EU in a Nutshell by Dr Lee Rotheram which gives a lot of scary facts about exactly what the EU is all about. Dan Hannan has written about the book here. I have ordered a copy and look forward to reading it. I hope the Adam Smith Institute review it.