Nick Clegg arrives in Downing Street on 6 July 2010. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images This coalition heralds, Nick Clegg promised, the biggest shake-up in democracy since the 1832 Reform Act. That might have been headline-grabbing hyperbole or a ruse to camouflage modest ambitions in arcane historical reference. If he’d claimed to be the most radical [...]

John Prescott arrives at the QE2 conference centre in London to give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry. Photograph: Lewis Whyld/Press Association The former deputy prime minister, Lord Prescott, has described how he had doubted intelligence reports about Iraq before the invasion but dismissed what he called “fashionable” criticism of Tony Blair for taking the country [...]

Iain Duncan Smith has to convince a sceptical Treasury he can reduce fraud and error in an unwieldy tax credit system. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA Income support and housing benefit could be combined with the tax credit system as part of a range of proposals released tomorrow by Iain Duncan Smith to cut the welfare budget [...]