Blog Posts by Ian Dunt

There was a subtle but important shift in David Cameron's political message today. For the first time, he set himself up as a war leader. It's the beginning of a new storyline, one which is connected to, but different from, the austerity message we have seen thus far.

Making a major speech on the economy, the prime minister said: "We are living in perilous economic times. Turn on the TV news and you see the return of a crisis that never really went away: Greece on the brink, the survival of the euro in question. Faced with this, I have a clear task: to keep Britain safe. Not to take the easy course - but the right course... That is why we must resist dangerous voices calling on us to retreat... It's not an alternative policy, it's a cop-out."

Cameron's speech was the first moment in a gradual moving of the goalposts. Soon, the function of the government will not be to improve economic performance, but merely to protect Britain from the eurozone crisis.

This change in narrative has five

No-one had much appetite for a fight, but they did their best to pretend.

David Cameron was already red faced when he stood up, his hair so impeccably ordered it seemed on the verge of disciplining someone. Too much gel perhaps. For his part, Miliband has grown more comfortable with the PMQs slot. Everyday, he looks more like a party leader and less like a school prefect.

The Labour leader started with Francois Hollande, the new French president whose relationship with Cameron will have been somewhat damaged by the prime minister's decision to throw his lot in with Sarkozy during the election.

"It's a shame he didn't see the French president months ago," Miliband said, "but I'm sure a text message and LOL will go down very well." The reference to Rebekah Brooks' testimony about the prime minister, and his inability to distinguish between 'lots of love' and 'laughing out loud', had clearly been prepared for in Downing Street.

"I must admit I have been overusing the mobile a bit," he

The most interesting thing about the Queen's Speech was what wasn't in it.

Firstly, gay marriage. Equalities minister Lynne Featherstone said the legislation would be in place by 2015 and the consultation is currently ongoing. But the fact it wasn't in there today suggests the government is trying hard not to upset right-wing Tory MPs and the handful of ministers who are uncomfortable with it.

There was also no movement on social care. This is a good litmus test of a government's mojo. An eager, daring government would be trying to sort out something which everyone recognises as a big problem for the country. Today the coalition just kicked it resolutely into the long grass. Similarly to before the general election - when cross-party talks fell apart and the Tories started campaigning on a Labour 'death tax' - it's not getting sorted.

On a handful of other major, mostly constitutional issues, there was just a holding pattern. We got no new details on Lords reform, just confirmation of

By Ian Dunt

Foreign diplomacy is a mucky business, but every so often you are presented with simple choices.

Imagine the following situation. An election is taking place in a neighbouring state which you rely on for your nuclear and defence plans. The incumbent has previously described you as an "obstinate kid" and refused to shake your hand in public. The challenger is riding high in the polls and looks set to win.

Do you a) throw your chips in with the new guy? b) Stay removed from the election and then welcome the winner, a practise which happens to correspond to diplomatic convention, or c) back the incumbent and rudely snub the challenger.

b) is the right answer, but if you're incapable of that, at least a) makes a rash kind of sense. c) is a quite insane way to proceed and that is precisely what David Cameron did.

The prime minister threw his lot in with Nicolas Sarkozy in two ways. First, he snubbed Francois Hollande on his trip to London, leaving him to meet up with Ed

No matter how many gains Labour secures, Ed Miliband does not look like a prime minister in waiting. He looks like a Lego man, unable to compete with David Cameron's easy charm.

Labour's gains tonight are significant but, at the time of writing, they are not of a scale which suggests an impending general election victory. Even if they did, one should always be wary of translating local council fights into a general election.

But Ed Miliband could be prime minister by 2015 because of a unique combination of factors: An incompetent government, a resurgent United Kingdom Independence party (Ukip), a divided Tory party, a hung parliament result, an unpopular austerity package and continued economic decline.

Much has been written about Miliband's weaknesses, but consider for a moment the accomplishments of the Conservatives. They have not won a general election since 1992. They failed to do so even against a deeply unpopular Labour party which had been in power for 13 years. Cameron has

By Ian Dunt

James Murdoch's extraordinary evidence session at the Leveson inquiry has left media secretary Jeremy Hunt on the brink. Can he survive?

What has Hunt done?

Jeremy Hunt, the culture, media and sport secretary, was handed responsibility for News Corp's BSkyB bid after Vince Cable was caught boasting about being "at war with Murdoch" to undercover journalists.

Before he was even handed the file he was already on good terms with News Corp officials. But even as he held a quasi-judicial role in the process, information was being regularly communicated by his staff to the media company.

The key figure is Frédéric Michel, News Corp's public affairs executive. The evidence from Leveson came from a stack of emails from Michel to James Murdoch. In them, he appears to be receiving highly confidential information from George Osborne's special adviser, Rupert Harrison, and Hunt's special adviser, Adam Smith.

What was in the emails?

Once Murdoch realised that Cable would not meet him to

They're meeting on Friday the 13th, which is never a good sign. Tomorrow, European officials get together and decide how best to stop you accessing information about their decision making process.

They will propose three quite insane things: to change the definition of what a document is, to create new exemptions from the public's right of access to EU materials and to keep the legal advice the EU receives secret. They will then present the ideas to the European parliament and turn them into law.

If you thought the EU was shady before, just you wait for what comes next.

Under the plans, a host of new exemptions would be added to public right-of-access regulations. This might take the form of block exemptions or they might be tailored specifically to three situations: competition cases, the context of court proceedings and infringement procedures.

Infringement procedures are the most important. When the European Commission initiates legal proceedings against a member state, the public

There are very few things which Andrew Lansley does well, so it should come as no surprise that reasoning and sincerity can be added to his list of failures

The health secretary, fresh from breaking several NHS eggs and failing to make an omelette, decided to distract the media with a meaty abortion story last month. Out of nowhere he demanded the supposedly-independent Care Quality Commission (CQC) drop what it was doing and carry out spot checks on abortion clinics.

Six hundred routine inspections of hospitals and care homes had to be cancelled. The interruption to its scheduled activities cost it £1 million and the equivalent of 1,100 working days.

Sinister motives lurked behind this PR campaign. Before the CQC could reveal its findings, the Department of Health was on the phone to the BBC and the Telegraph bragging about a major investigation into abortion.

A handful of private and NHS clinics had been found to have been breaking the law by allowing doctors to pre-sign consent