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The commentators                    03-02-15

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Peter Brookes in The Times today

...on UK politics

What Labour is floating on university funding sounds like an unworkable policy based on a soundbite, which would leave a costly black hole in delivery. We looked in forensic detail at proposals like Labour’s and found that, in practice, they simply don’t work.
- Vince Cable, The Guardian

What if the polls are right and the SNP trounce Labour? This opens the potential for a Labour/SNP coalition government that does not have a majority of seats or votes in England. What mechanism can be devised to stop them imposing laws and additional expense on England that the English do not want?
- Philip Johnston, Daily Telegraph

The Institute for Fiscal Studies argues that the fault line of the 1980s, in which rich pulled away from poor, has been replaced by one in which old pull away from young. That will be the defining issue for whoever is prime minister after May 7 — but it will be hard for him to bring the two sides together because he will either have been elected on the back of the grey vote or with the support of the young.
- Rachel Sylvester, The Times

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Each party faces the challenge of contributing to a new set of broad and durable political alliances that command public support. Some of them will seize the crisis of the established party system as an opportunity for realignment, just as their predecessors did 100 years ago. Who will be the most successful power brokers? On their identity, Britain’s political future will turn.
- Nick Pearce, Financial Times

The cost of ignoring women is huge for any political party. The actual cost of austerity has been paid by women and children, often to devastating effect. Austerity, as it has been practised, has been gendered. You don’t have to be “a mummy” or “a millennial” or whatever new daft phrase they decide to call us to know that.
- Suzanne Moore, The Guardian

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• Four Sun journalists face a retrial after a jury fails to agree on whether they illegally paid public workers for stories
  
• The Independent reports that phone-hacking at the Mirror group may have been worse than at News International
  
• Consultation ends on proposed guidelines which still allow police unfettered access to telephone records under anti-terrorist legislation that has been used to uncover journalists' sources
  
• The Guardian reports that security services regard journalists as "dangerous" and in the same league as terrorists and computer hackers. 
  
• A Lords committee is told that a proposed press regulator with no one to regulate has so far been given £900,000 of public money

- Trials and tribulations, a snapshot of a week in British journalism

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Comment digest courtesy of
Editorial Intelligence

February 2
UK politics

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January 30
Rape law
January 29
UK politics
January 28
UK politics
January 27
Greece
January 26
UK politics

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January 23
UK politics
January 22
Chilcot inquiry
January 21
Page Three
January 20
Anti-semitism and Islam
January 19
Religion and freedom

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January 16
World politics
January 15
Election debates
January 14
Charlie Hebdo
January 13
Charlie Hebdo
January 12
Charlie Hebdo

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January 9
Charlie Hebdo
January 8
Charlie Hebdo
January 7
UK politics
January 6
UK politics
January 5 
UK politics

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