John Rentoul is chief political commentator for The Independent on Sunday, and visiting fellow at Queen Mary, University of London, where he teaches contemporary history. Previously he was chief leader writer for The Independent. He has written a biography of Tony Blair, whom he admired more at the end of his time in office than he did at the beginning. Click here and 'like' to receive updates on Facebook
No. Still don’t understand it. I tried to understand it on Budget day. And the next day. And in my article in The Independent on Sunday today.
I thought, “Perhaps it will make sense in three years’ time.” Perhaps, by the time of the next election the cut in the 50p top rate of income tax will be [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Sunday, 25 March 2012 at 11:36 am
For a former Accountancy Age journalist I have been reprehensibly slow to catch up with the finer detail of the Budget. I must amend my post on the day, which said that one of the three main features of the Budget was a good thing. It turns out that George Osborne managed to score a [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Saturday, 24 March 2012 at 10:27 am
The cut in the 50% top rate of income tax on incomes over £150,000 from next year. No. Still don’t understand it.
I am a Blairite. I do not like the 50% rate. I want to get rid of it as soon as is sensible, but the earliest part of the biggest austerity drive for the [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Thursday, 22 March 2012 at 1:49 pm
The big surprise of the Budget turned out to be a good idea: phasing out extra personal allowances against income tax for older people. It will be portrayed by Labour in Ed Balls’s news conference this afternoon as a “granny tax” but it is a long overdue squeeze on better-off pensioners who are so far [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Wednesday, 21 March 2012 at 4:21 pm
Number 775 in my series of Questions to Which the Answer is No, asked by The Guardian recently. Grateful to Gothic Gardener not just for spotting the question but for directing me to one of the games that is in constant use in barracks (pictured).
Determined to compete with the Daily Mail, The Guardian also asks [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Tuesday, 20 March 2012 at 12:01 pm
David Cameron is making a speech today about “infrastructure”. When Downing Street put out an operational note about this yesterday, I had a Star Wars moment: “a bad feeling about this”. Infrastructure is an alarming word in politics.
So it proved when a news release followed, embargoed until 0001 hrs today, with some extracts from what [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Monday, 19 March 2012 at 12:01 am
We had a good news story in The Independent on Sunday last weekend, as part of our investigation into cheating by university students. My colleague Brian Brady used Freedom of Information requests to collate data on 16,000 cases of cheating in exams and coursework recorded by universities over the past year.
A lot of this was [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Sunday, 18 March 2012 at 8:26 pm
I did not have space in my column today about Nick Clegg for a small story about him that shines a bit more light on his plan for his party and on his relations with his MPs.
At their “Parliamentary Party Meeting” or PPM as they call it (like the Army, Lib Dems love three-letter abbreviations) [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Sunday, 18 March 2012 at 5:25 pm
Congratulations to George Parker, political editor of The Financial Times, for proving that long-form journalism is not purely an American thing. His assessment of David Cameron’s premiership, rather prematurely marking the half-way point (which is actually on 6 or 7 November this year), is a fine one with some nice quotations from the man himself [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Sunday, 18 March 2012 at 2:13 pm
Labour has regained the lead in our ComRes poll for tomorrow’s Independent on Sunday, shared with the Sunday Mirror.
Con 37% (-2)
Lab 40% (+2)
LD 10% (-)
Others 13% (-)
The figure in brackets shows the change since last month’s IoS online survey, which was the first to [...]
By John Rentoul | Eagle Eye - Breaking views from commentators - | Saturday, 17 March 2012 at 7:33 pm
1How the Mail Online turned us into misogyny addicts
2It was Bayern who denied the Germans victory in the Champions League final, not Chelsea
3Charitable rape: Peacekeepers’ dirty little secrets
4Islam is not “the enemy” – irrational hatred is
5The next couple of months could shape the future of Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal
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