Stephen Law

Wikileaks: We discover Obama sees the Tory team as "lightweights" and that Mervyn King said about Cameron and Osborne that they had a "lack of experience and tendency to see issues only in terms of politics". Osborne had also been identified by Labour as the "weak link" in a supposedly already intellectually dubious team. Incidentally, George Osborne did not just change his name from Gideon. It's a very little know fact that Osborne also changed degree part way through. He switched to Modern History while at Oxford (from PPE, I believe - Politics, Philosophy and Economics). Switching degrees after the first year is a fairly unusual thing to do, usually prevented or at least strongly discouraged by colleges and universities unless there are very good reasons for doing so. But who knows the actual reason for George's switch? So far I have only heard a very interesting as yet unsubstantiated report from a contemporary of his that he switched bec...

The Child Benefit fiasco has raised objections. But not the right objection. Yes it is ridiculous and unfair that a couple on shared income of £87,000 might keep child benefit, whereas a couple on combined income of £45,000 may lose it. The Tories say it's fair that the middle classes take a hit too. Which is true. But, why should someone on £45,000 lose out on about £1,500 a year, but someone on £2 million or £20 million a year lose no more? This is not a way of making the better off pay their fair share. The really fair way of hitting the better off would have been to raise the top rate of tax. But of course that would make the super rich pay more, wouldn't it? You know, people like George Osborne's banker friends. When even this small change is such a balls-up, it doesn't inspire much confidence that Osborne knows what he's doing.