Britannia Radio

Today's headline ConHome features

ToryDiary: Why are pro-EU Tories so shy of making their case?

Mark Field MP on Comment: Britain's essential deficit reduction programme can only succeed

if much more is done to promote growth

ThinkTankCentral: Here you go, George; A Growth Manifesto

Local government:

• A billion a year spent on anti car schemes
• Cllr Keith Barrow: Shropshire Council leading the way in drive to open up finances to the public
• Secretive Nottingham has competition from Labour-run Merseyside Transport Authority
• Norfolk Lib Dem councillor defects to Conservatives

WATCH: Cameron promises to build up anti-extremist capacity in Scotland Yard

Two short videos setting out the issues at the heart of the US debt deadlock: Barack Obama attacks Republicans for opposition to higher taxes... Boehner attacks Obama for opposition to entitlement reform..

Today's newslinks

Downing Street aides become increasingly impatient with Treasury over lack of growth - Telegraph

Britain's "path back to growth will be a difficult one", admits Cameron - Guardian

Britain is set to fall to the bottom of the international economic growth table today when the latest data is published by the Office for National Statistics -Independent

Osborne yesterday blamed the rest of the world for Britain's faltering economic recover - Sun

• Osborne was wrong to ringfence certain budgets but his overall fiscal plan is correct - George Trefgarne in The Telegraph
• With the gap between rich and poor widening still further, it is painfully apparent that we are not all in this together - Polly Toynbee in The Guardian

Pete Hoskin in The Times: The places of permanent recession

"In most communities here, the proportion of the population on out-of-work benefits has not sunk under 25 per cent since the Nineties. Indeed, on Merthyr Tydfil’s estates it is currently almost 40 per cent. And the tragedy is that much the same could be said of parts of Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Middlesbrough, wherever." - Pete Hoskin in The Times (£)

• The Government needs to do more to stimulate growth outside the South East - Times leader (£)

The Coalition announced two pro-growth measures yesterday:

(1) "The rules governing planning policy in Britain have been slashed from more than 1,000 pages to a single 52-page document in an attempt to bring the “chaotic” system under control." - FT (£)

(2) "The Prime Minister has announced details of radical plans for an apprenticeship programme that will see £25m support up to 10,000 advanced and higher apprenticeships in industries including manufacturing, IT and engineering." - conservatives.com

Coalition debates what more could be done:

• Tax cuts and spending rises ruled out as Cameron and Osborne refuse to retreat on 50p rate - Daily Mail | Times (£)
• Cable calls for banking competition - Express

But two reports suggest the outlook for competitiveness is worsening

• UK becoming unattractive for financial services says survey - Telegraph
• Forum of Private Business: £14,000 red tape bill for every firm: Despite its promises, Coalition is piling on even more rules and regulations - Daily Mail

At City AM Allister Heath lists the Coalition's anti-growth measures.

While growth falters, newspapers mock Cameron's attempts to measure happiness

Cameron's £2m a year 'happiness survey' discovers what we all knew: What matters to most Britons is health, family and relationships - Daily Mail | Express

• "If Mr Cameron wants to conjure up happiness to lift the national mood he can always appoint an official government jester. There's certainly no lack of talent from which to choose." - Scotsman leader
• Leader-writers at The Mail call it a report of the "blindingly obvious".
• "It is unfortunate for the Government that its search for new measures of our quality of life has coincided with some alarming figures from the traditional indicators. A study by the Resolution Foundation has found that over the past 30 years the share of national income going to those in the bottom half of the earnings spectrum has fallen by a quarter, while the rewards of those in the top 1 per cent has increased by half. Many people would probably prefer the Government to focus on determining the causes of that – and looking for ways to counter it – rather than searching for new methods of measuring the way people feel about the disturbing trend." - Independent leader

David Cameron orders review into threat of far-Right groups - Telegraph

The British far-Right is nothing but a rabble - Andrew Gilligan in The Telegraph

> Yesterday's ToryDiary: After the Norwegian massacre Cameron faces calls to monitor and curb extremist "right-wing" groups

Nick Griffin re-elected BNP leader by narrowest of margins, 1,157 votes to 1,148 - BBC

Ministers accused of massive U-turn over Libya as Hague says Gaddafi could stay - Daily Mail

"In a significant shift of position, the Foreign Secretary said that as long as Colonel Gaddafi no longer held power he could remain in Libya. David Cameron had previously said that the dictator should leave the country and stand trial for war crimes at The Hague. Britain has become increasingly isolated in recent days, however, with France and the Libyan rebels both arguing that in order to make progress they should drop demands for Colonel Gaddafi’s departure." - Times (£)

Cameron has rebuked other nations for failing to follow Britain's lead in pledging millions to help the drought-hit Horn of Africa - Metro

If the Strategic Defence and Security Review must be scrapped in order to secure the defence of the realm, then so be it - Telegraph leader

George Osborne regrets recommending Andy Coulson 'in hindsight'

"Of course, knowing what we know now, we regret the decision and I suspect Andy Coulson would not have taken the job knowing what he knows now. But we did not have 20/20 hindsight when we made that decision." - The Chancellor quoted in The Guardian

Philip Stephens in the FT (£): "The BBC needs to be at once more ambitious, and less: more for the quality of programming and the integrity of its journalism; less about the numbers game with ITV or British Sky Broadcasting."

Overweight patients 'dying because NHS is poorly prepared for obesity epidemic' - Daily Mail

• General Medical Council is too lenient with poor doctors, say MPs -Guardian
• NHS staff told to 'report concerns or risk investigation' - BBC

Politics in Brief:

• Some vulnerable benefit claimants have had payments stopped because of administrative errors in work assessments - BBC
• Theresa May has refused to accept an official "impact assessment" which put the cost to Britain's economy of her curbs on overseas students at up to £3.6bn - Guardian

Cameron unpopular, Miliband more unpopular

"The Prime Minister is now less popular than at any time since he arrived at 10 Downing Street. He is far less popular than Tony Blair or John Major after just over a year in the job, though he remains ahead of Gordon Brown. Yet the hacking scandal has not fundamentally changed the electoral landscape. Mr Miliband's ratings have simply returned to the modest level they were at in the spring. He remains relatively unpopular. At 40 per cent, Labour's standing in our latest poll of polls is unchanged." - John Curtice in The Independent

Vince Cable owes US Congressional leaders an apology for his sneering and insulting remarks about 'right-wing nutters'

"An unreserved apology from Mr. Cable to Britain’s friends across the Atlantic would be a good start for the Business Secretary if he is serious about advancing British business in the US. And the prime minister should make it abundantly clear that Cable’s sneering views do not reflect in ay way the official position of his government." - Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph

> Yesterday's LeftWatch: Vince Cable is back and he's on the warpath

Rachel Sylvester examines prospects for anti-EU alliances between Labour and Tory Eurosceptics - Times (£)

"The Independent journalist Johann Hari is set to be stripped of the Orwell Prize, the UK’s most highly-regarded political writing prize, because of growing evidence that he made up or plagiarised quotes." - Times (£)

And finally... Jedward say Twins should run Britain

"Imagine, if you dare, a coalition government run by Jedward. "I think it would be good for twins to run the country," the pop duo tell me, virtually in unison, at the launch of Cookie, a new toy dog from the FurReal Friends range, at Hamleys yesterday. "They would get much more done." Certainly, there would be no need for splits. "We know what each other is thinking. Right now, while we're talking to you, we're passing messages to each other. I think scientists need to do more research into twins because we clearly have super powers."" - Telegraph

Highlights from yesterday

VIDEO: Rory Stewart urges us NOT to believe Cameron and Obama's arguments for staying in Afghanistan. He argues:

• Afghanistan is not a threat to us.
• The Taliban could not take control of Afghanistan.
• Even if they could, they would not invite back Al Qaeda.
• Anyhow, Al Qaeda bases could be destroyed by surgical strikes if they were re-established.

...The Tory MP argues that it's time to leave Afghanistan.

WATCH: David Cameron: "People in Norway are very much in our hearts and in our minds"

ToryDiary: Greg Clark MP is appointed Minister for Cities

Andrew Lilico on Comment agrees with Charles Moore, disagrees with Tim Montgomerie: "Any right-winger must surely understand that the events of the past few years have been morally disastrous for our project. The wealthy took high returns out of the banking sector for a number of years, then when the reckoning came they used their political influence to tax the poor to keep the rich rich - and used the newspapers to tell the poor that this was done in their own interests. A more classic paradigm demonstration of how the Left's critique is correct could not be imagined."