Blog Posts by Alex Stevenson

After three-and-a-half incredulous hours of questioning, the Met's finest left MPs' jaws on the floor.

The hostility was almost palpable in the stuffy committee room air. John Yates, the assistant commissioner of the Met tasked with protecting us from terrorists, was physically isolated. His long empty table the only part of the packed room where there was any room at all. In addition to the MPs on the committee, a second row of MPs on the sidelines was busy eyeballing Yates. Lip-curling Tom Watson, disbelieving Chris Bryant, laconic David Davis: it would be hard to do anything calmly with this trio watching and waiting for any mistake.

As they leered on, bearded Lib Dem MP Dr Julian Huppert and committee chair Keith Vaz conducted a marvellously intimidating set-piece. Huppert, raising a bit of procedural mumbo-jumbo, requested a clarification for what happens to those who mislead MPs when giving select committee evidence. The penalty, I thought Vaz was going to say, is DEATH!

Getty Images

Dealing with the past, planning for the future: these are the quandaries which Rupert Murdoch and David Cameron share as they struggle to overcome the phone-hacking scandal.

We still don't know the full extent to which phone-hacking was a widespread, accepted practise at the News of the World. But, as News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks told staff at the doomed tabloid yesterday, there are many revelations still to be made public. Scandalous expenses practises continued for years before MPs' dodgy claims were finally revealed. How rotten is the British print media, and how long has it been this way?

With two inquiries set to investigate, it will hopefully not be too long before we find out. In the meantime Murdoch faces intense public anger which needs to be dealt with.

The tendency to vilify the most powerful man in the British media world stems from the suspicion that he uses his newspapers to advance his own political and financial interests. Murdoch is a businessman

Fifteen years ago, bribery was a legitimate tool for businessmen in search of a contract. It was not only acceptable, it was tax deductible expenses.

So ten years ago Labour MP Hugh Bayley, a minister in Tony Blair's first term, introduced an anti-corruption bill to parliament. Like most backbench MPs' bills, it didn't get far.

It did pave the way for money laundering to help fund terrorism become an offence in the first batch of anti-terror legislation following 9/11, though. That prompted home secretary David Blunkett to include a provision making transnational bribery illegal. It took seven or eight years for the first cases to be brought forward: the BAE Systems' Tanzania and al-Yamamah cases were the result. The Tanzania case was settled with a £500,000 fine. The al-Yamamah case ended with BAE being convicted of failing to keep adequate financial records - nothing worse.

Britain continued to perform poorly in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD)

He delivered the killer blow which Ed Miliband has been missing for months. The Speaker, not the leader of the opposition, is now David Cameron's number one parliamentary enemy.

Ever since he stepped up to the despatch box, Miliband has lacked that knockout punch. He has no sense of theatrical timing, as we saw yet again today. The momentum was thoroughly behind him when he leapt up to passionately defend Labour's performance in government.

"I'll tell him about our record on the NHS," he began, eyes gleaming. "More doctors and nurses than ever before!" he declared forcefully . Huge Labour cheers.

"The lowest waiting lists ever!" This was less forceful, as if Miliband had just been downgraded from a typhoon to a tropical storm. Labour MPs offered another huge cheer, on autopilot.

"... and the highest patient satisfaction ever," Miliband finished, fizzling out completely. So much for the killer blow. Judging by this failure of instinct, he will never come up with one.

"Now," Miliband

Deserted schoolMillions of people affected by this Thursday's strikes should be under no illusions: there was never any chance of these talks resulting in a deal.

Perhaps you're a parent, hoping to send your child to school as usual on Thursday. Perhaps your headteacher will be forced into the decision that, because so many of his or her staff are members of the National Union of Students (NUT) or the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL), your school is going to have to close. Perhaps you're going to have to make horrendously last-minute childcare arrangements, whatever they might be. You won't be alone.

The inconvenience of this situation would be much easier to bear, believe me, if you stop reading now.

It would be much easier for you to continue hoping last-ditch talks will persuade the unions, or the government, to give enough ground to put off the strikes.

It would be less distressing for you to be able to cling to the hope that David Cameron's speech later today might sway the union

The stakes are simply too high for diplomats to risk a confrontation with China over its human rights record.

The British government is going to be very pleased with itself after today. Chinese premier Wen Jiabao is wrapping up his visit to the UK, signing off trade deals worth over £1 billion. British businesses are being given greater access to China's fast-growing regional cities, whose GDP has more than doubled in the last three years alone. As if that wasn't enough, Wen is even going to return safe in the knowledge that 800 breeding pigs will be following him. The handshake photo call on the steps of No 10 will be thoroughly appropriate: Britain and China are doing business.

It will disgust the group of human rights protesters gathering outside Downing Street as I write. China's treatment of Tibetan demonstrators is well-documented, but the mass injustices don't get as much attention here as the fate of individual dissidents whose stand against the Chinese elite highlights what

Was this mess a piece of abstract art? The result of a toddler running amok? Neither — it was just an extremely chaotic prime minister's questions.

At first David Cameron's exchanges with Ed Miliband were relatively civilised. After a return to form last week, the leader of the opposition appeared to be retreating back into statesman mode for his first set of three questions, on Libya. A far cry from the passionate histrionics of last week, true, but he appeared to have elicited a genuine slip from Cameron over a review of the defence review. It will take further reviews of the footage to establish whether this review is really a review worth reviewing in more depth.

In the meantime, therefore, our focus is on Miliband's second set of questions. Again he repeated the tactic of last week, in which he picks a relatively obscure area of policy and doesn't let go. This time round it was the DNA of suspected rapists, and whether it's a good idea to delete them from police computers or not.

Ken Clarke's ability to "swivel", on policy and in person, is now beyond doubt. Did that really justify his comparison to a cruise ship?

This little titbit came yesterday afternoon in the Commons, during one of the most ridiculous U-turn sessions in — well, days.

Its surprise purveyor was none other than Speaker John Bercow. He was becoming frustrated with the justice secretary's reluctance at the despatch box to address the Commons as a whole.

"Can I very gently and in a jocular fashion say to the secretary of state that he shouldn't be like a cruise ship in rotation," Bercow said politely, a tiny figure dwarfed by the enormous Speaker's chair.

"The House wishes to hear him. He swivels throughout. It would be helpful if he could face the House."

Clarke is far from being a svelte cruise liner. He is more like an icebreaker, ploughing through the parliamentary obstacles in front of him with the sheer weight of his momentum.

The challenge, in these circumstances, is to get him to slow