OpEd: UK politics 20-03-15

The commentators 20-03-15

...on UK politics

Few environmentalists believe the Government has delivered David Cameron’s five-year-old promise to be the “greenest ever”. But, after Wednesday’s Budget, it is being hailed as the bluest. The accolade springs not from the Coalition’s political hue, but from an announcement – deep in George Osborne’s statement – that ministers intend to designate the largest marine nature reserve in the world, protecting 830,000 square kilometres of the Pacific around Pitcairn Island. Some three and a half times the size of the United Kingdom, this area hosts some of the clearest waters and rarest wildlife on Earth.
- David Lean, Daily Telegraph

The opinion polls are locked because neither party offers what a plurality wants, which is the Labour party, led by Tories. The sum total of his many failures, allied to a flinty political will which is a genuinely rare political virtue, is that George Osborne has turned into a Tory man carrying out Labour measures, the best chancellor Labour doesn’t have. The sort of chancellor Labour had in the year 2001. - Philip Collins, The Times

If the opinion polls are right, Britain is about to elect another hung parliament. The dilemmas that would then face David Cameron and Ed Miliband are not of the same life-or-death order as those of when Hitler invaded Russia in 1941. But they will call for the same kind of clarity and pragmatism that Churchill managed. Cameron and Miliband will also have to do what it takes. It’s what they are there for as party leaders. It’s what Cameron did, brilliantly, in 2010 after the voters delivered a hung parliament. And it is what he and Miliband will have to do if a similar avenue to power opens up in May.
- Martin Kettle, The Guardian

There is a time and a place for everything, boobage display included. That is why it was so surprising to see Theresa May, of all people, rock up to the Commons on big, bad Budget Day, sporting a rather alarmingly plunge-front outfit.
- Jan Moir, Daily Mail

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Having restored some dignity to the victims, we have yet to learn not to glorify the killer - most particularly by not according him an identity that might secure him a place in folklore. That also means avoiding describing Emwazi as Isis's "star executioner" or saying that he "features" in the group's videos.
For six months we have been providing propaganda for Isis, and sprinkling words such as "evil", "vile", "depraved" around doesn't mitigate that failing.
- Emwazi is not a folk hero, let's stop treating him as if though were