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This Week after 10 minutes What do we think of Portillo’s prediction? In a lively discussion on BBC2’s “This Week” Michael Portillio made two very interesting predictions – first that EdM would be the next leader of the Labour party and second, that the two coalition parties would go into the next election campaigning under the banner of “The Coalition”. Unless the whole arrangement falls flat, which is always a possibility, we are talking about what could happen in 2015…

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Is this what Blair/Brown did? The announcement by George Osborne that he’s setting up the grandly titled “Office for Tax Simplification (OTS) sounds all well and good. The objective appears a good one and the announcement itself provides a further peg to have a go “at the last lot”. But isn’t the manner of today’s development straight out of the NuLab playbook? You identify a “good cause” and look as though you are trying to address it through the setting…

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How much of the reform programme will get through? Nick Clegg has just made his statement on the electoral reform package which contains a few surprises and some measures that were heavily trailed. Jack Straw responded forcefully for Labour and we saw the first part of his thinking on how they might try to oppose what was in Labour’s manifesto – the commitment to a referendum on AV. This is going to be tricky for Labour The plan is for…

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I’ve taken it down because I’m not confident about my interpretation of the figures on which it was based. I’m on holiday and don’t have access to my notes. Apologies. Mike Smithson

The PB budget thread