Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, has taken a swipe at the coalition today in an editorial in the New Statesman. And we've also had an intervention from one of Britain's other great godly figures, Tony Blair. In a new foreword to the paperback edition of his autobiography, he has said the west needs a wider plan to respond to the Arab spring. Blair has also given a wide-ranging interview to the Times, and he has been giving interviews this morning to BBC News and Today. I'll provide a full summary shortly.

Otherwise, it's a fairly routine day. David Cameron is visiting Northern Ireland, where he will address the Northern Ireland assembly. There's a written ministerial statement on royal air travel, which could be interesting. And here are the items in the diary.

10am: William Hague, the foreign secretary, hosts a UK/South Africa bilateral forum.

10.30am: Damian Green, the immigration minister, publishes a "work routes to settlement" consultation.

Around 12pm: Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, announces his decision about whether or not to hold a full inquest into the death of David Kelly.

Today as usual, I'll be covering all the breaking political news, as well as looking at the papers and bringing you the best politics from the web. I'll post a lunchtime summary at around 1pm, and another one in the afternoon.

The Times has published a wide-ranging interview with Tony Blair this morning (paywall), and the former prime minister has also been on BBC News and the Today programme. Here's a full summary of his key points. I've taken some of the quotes from PoliticsHome.



• Blair says the EU should have a directly-elected president. He was an unofficial candidate when the EU chose its first president, but the job went to the low-profile Belgian, Herman Van Rompuy. Van Rompuy was chosen by EU leaders, who had an interest in ensuring that they did not choose someone who was going to overshadow national presidents and prime ministers. Blair says a directly-elected president would give Europe the clout to compete with powers like China.

If you want to have a debate about the direction of Europe it seems to me very hard to have that on a European-wide basis unless you have some means by which people elect something that is Europe-wide in nature ... For Europe, the crucial thing is to understand that the only way that you will get support for Europe today is not on the basis of a sort of postwar view that the EU is necessary for peace. For my children's generation, that is just a bizarre argument. They don't see that as a real threat, that European nations will go to war with each other. But what they can understand completely is that in a world in particular in which China is going to become the dominant power of the 21st century, it is sensible for Europe to combine together, to use its collective weight in order to achieve influence. And the rationale for Europe today therefore is about power, not peace.

But Blair also concedes that his proposal for a directly-elected president "has no chance of being accepted at the present time".

He also identifies five areas where the EU should forger links to "make us more powerful as a unit". They are tax policy and reform of the social model; completion of the single market; a common energy policy; a common defence policy; and a common policy on immigration and organised crime.

• Blair says he supports Ed Miliband. "Let me say by the way, just for the avoidance of any doubt, I will give him 100 per cent support, and I will always do that for the leader of the Labour party," he says.



• But Blair also criticises the "Blue Labour" philosophy that appeals to Miliband.



I'd be worried about indulging a nostalgia which suggests a great emotional empathy with someone when you don't have a policy to deal with it, and so you end up in a small 'c' conservative position. The attraction of a concept like Blue Labour is it allows you to say that there's a group of voters out there we can't reach at the moment, so what we should do is really empathise with their plight. But I think you should always offer a way forward for the future. The way the Labour Party wins, is if it's at the cutting edge of the future, is if it's modernising. It won't win by a Labour equivalent of warm beer and old maids bicycling.

• Blair reaffirms his opposition to the decision to raise the top rate of tax to 50p. "I wouldn't have done it," he says. Miliband has said that scrapping the 50p rate will not be a priority for Labour.

• Blair says he supports elements of what the coalition is doing.



There are elements of the reform programme that we were doing in government that the present Conservative government are continuing, in other areas they're not. So it would be bizarre if I were to say, you know I don't agree with them doing the academy programme — why would I want to say that?





• But he also suggests that the coalition is, in the long term, unsustainable. "The only coalitions that work in the end are ones where there's a genuine coalescence of ideas," he says. The problem is that the Lib Dems are essentially a leftwing party, he suggests.

It's very hard to fight three elections to the left of Labour and then end up in a Tory government. You can slice and dice that any way you want, but you have a bit of a problem with it, and I don't really have an answer to it.

• He welcomes AC Grayling's decision to set up a private university charging £18,000 a year. Asked if he is in favour of the initiative, he replies:

Yes! Let a thousand flowers bloom. I haven't studied it in detail, but should it be right that people come forward with new ideas and new concepts? Of course.





• Blair says that the west must support evolutionary change in countries in North Africa and the Middle East.

What we should be doing is, where countries are prepared to make steady evolutionary change we should back that because the problem with revolution is not how they begin but how they end .and we know enough about chaos and instability in that region to realise where that can lead to ... We've got to realise, one – we are involved, like it or not. Two – our plan for involvement has got to be one that it's about, not just about changing the politics of those countries, but changing the economic and social reform programmes of those countries also.

• He says there should be a Mashall Plan-style aid package for Egypt.



I would focus on Egypt very clearly at the moment and say we really do need a type of Marshall Plan, a huge plan of economic and social reconstruction to help that country get to where its people really want it to get to.

• He rejects the suggestion that there is any need for a new inquest into the death of David Kelly. (Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, will make an announcement about this later.)

There was an inquiry which went for six months headed by a senior Law Lord ... I think what he will focus on is whether there really is anything left from the inquiry that went over six months and was one of the most detailed inquiries that has taken place.

• Blair says that he does not know if his phone was hacked.

Listening to the news this morning, you could be forgiven for thinking that Rowan Williams, the archbishop of Canterbury, is auditing for the job of leader of the opposition. He has criticised the government in an editorial in the New Statesman, which has described his intervention as "the most significant by a church figure since Faith In The City, an excoriating critique of the Thatcher government". The Daily Telegraph has called it "the most outspoken political intervention by an archbishop of Canterbury for a generation". Several Tory MPs have already taken to the airwaves to denounce him.

The editorial isn't available online, but I've now had the chance to read it the old-fashioned way. It's interesting, and certainly very newsworthy. But it doesn't bear comparision with Faith in the City, a report that is still being talked about almost 30 years after it was written. (No one will remember this in 30 years' time; people have already forgotten that Williams launched a reasonably strong attack on the government's welfare policies only last year.) It is also written in Williams's characteristic woolly, discursive manner, which makes it hard to rate it as a masterpiece of polemic. But it is thoughtful. Here are the main complaints Williams is making about the coalition.

• Williams accuses the government of pursing policies that do not have public support. "With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted," he says. He cites education reform as an example of this.

• He says the government does not appreciate how much "fear" its policies are generating.

The anxiety and anger [that people feel] have to do with the feeling that not enough has been exposed to proper public argument ... Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around ... To acknowledge the reality of fear is not necessarily to collude with it. But not to recognise how pervasive it is risks making it worse.

Williams also says that it is not enough just for the government to blame everything on the last Labour government.



• He says he is concerned about "a quiet resurgence of the seductive language of 'deserving' and 'undeserving' poor".

• He says the localism agenda is confused. He says he does not think that localism is just an excuse for Whitehall cost-cutting. But he goes on: "There is a confusion about the means that have to be willed in order to achieve the end."

But there are two other important points to be made about the article.

Firstly, Williams praises the government for not cutting the aid budget.

Secondly - and more importantly - Williams is also quite critical of Labour. This has not been reflected in any of the coverage so far - the full text of the editorial wasn't available last night - but Williams is not just having a go at David Cameron. He is also complaining that Ed Miliband has not set out an alternative. In his first paragraph, he says that he wants to encourage a debate - "and perhaps even to discover what the left's big idea currently is". He goes on to say that the debate in the UK has become "pretty stuck".

We are still waiting for a full and robust account of what the left would do differently and what a left-inspired version of localism might look like ... The task of opposition is not to collude in it [the fear felt about government policies], either, but to define some achievable alternatives. And, for that to happen, we need sharp-edged statements of where the disagreements lie.

For the record, here are the latest YouGov GB polling figures.

Labour: 42% (up 12 points since the general election)

Conservatives: 37% (no change)

Lib Dems: 9% (down 15)

Labour lead: 5 points

Government approval: -21

Here's a round-up to some of the reaction to the archbishop of Canterbury's article. (See 9.35am.) I've taken the quotes from the Press Association and PoliticsHome.



From Vince Cable, the Lib Dem business secretary

The two parties of the coalition got substantially more than half the total vote at the last election and the public knew that we were going to have to embark on very difficult changes, connected with sorting out the massive budget deficit problem ... The point which he seemed to be making was that there wasn't enough debate around health reform, for example, which I don't understand because there's a very big debate. My party has triggered it, we're having a pause, rethinking the reforms. So he's obviously had his views and it's welcome that he pitches into political debate but I think he's actually wrong on the specifics.



From Downing Street

This government was elected to tackle the UK's deep-rooted problems. Its clear policies on education, welfare, health and the economy are necessary to ensure we're on the right track.

From the Conservative MP Roger Gale

For him, as an unelected member of the upper house and as an appointed and unelected primate, to criticise the coalition government as undemocratic and not elected to carry through its programme is unacceptable. Dr Williams clearly does not understand the democratic process. If he did, he would appreciate that elected members of the House of Commons are not mandated. We are sent to Westminster by our constituents to face and address the situation as we find it, to use our brains and to endeavour to act and to legislate in the best interests of those that we represent.

From the Conservative MP Matthew Hancock

This is one member of the Anglican church. When I go to my church in Suffolk there are people of all political persuasions, so I think we're talking about the views of one man, rather than representing the Anglican church.

From the Conservative MP Gary Streeter

I think the people are with us on this and the archbishop, sadly and unusually for him, has ill-judged his attack. I would just guess that most people would be slightly baffled by the archbishop's comments.

From Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative chairman

No one would dispute the right of the archbishop to make comments of a political kind in this area - it is part of his job, I think, to do so - and he is quite right that there are policies of the coalition for which nobody seemed to vote and policies for which people voted which are not being carried forward by the coalition, but that is the problem of coalition.

I missed the fact that there's a byelection going on in West Belfast today. Henry McDonald has more details. Sinn Fein's Paul Maskey is expected to win comfortably, replacing Gerry Adams.

You can read all today's Guardian politics stories here. And all the politics stories filed yesterday, including some in today's paper, are here.

As for the rest of the papers, I've already mentioned the Times interview with Tony Blair (see 8.37am) and the Rowan Williams' editorial in the New Statesman (see 9.35am). Here are some other articles and stories that are particularly interesting.

• Douglas Carswell and Daniel Hannan, the Tory authors of the devolution manifesto, The Plan, say in an article in the Daily Telegraph that the government's plans to transfer power away from Whitehall are being "frustrated by the mandarinate".

Councils are being told by Whitehall how often they must empty bins. Universities are told whom to admit. Local authorities are told how much council tax they can raise. National plans to protect designated wildlife sites are being formulated. Decisions over sea defences continue to be made with almost no regard to the communities who live along the coast. Food hygiene quangos centrally determine the price they might extract from farmers for laboriously inspecting them. There is to be a massive house-building programme on public sector land. The much heralded White Paper on public service reform, which we were promised would "signal the decisive end of the old-fashioned, top-down, take-what-you're-given model of public services" seems to have been abandoned. Far from revolutionising choice over who provides state-funded services, we learn that the process of public procurement within the public sector is actually being centralised around the Cabinet Office.

• Steve Richards in the Independent says David Cameron's speech on the NHS this week "signals the end of a particular dream envisaged by the political romantics in his entourage".

Cameron is surrounded by a surprisingly large number of Tory romantics. They include his senior advisers, Steve Hilton and Rohan Silva, and influential ministers such as Oliver Letwin. I do not describe them as romantic to be disparaging. On the contrary politics desperately need more like them on the left and the right, original thinkers driven by ideas, vision and with the courageous guile to follow through with policy implementation. Several senior Labour figures tell me they lack the equivalent now. In the case of this trio, and a few others, they transformed traditional Tory values and placed them in a modern setting. They did so much more effectively than New Labour on the centre left, where some values went missing in its modernisation project ... There is still enough to excite the romantics in the coalition's agenda, or so some of them tell me. I am pleased. Politics is managerial enough already without them all leaving in a state of wretched disillusionment. They still hope to implement parts of their programme with more political skill and media preparation in the future. But their day in the sun has passed.

• The Sun has splashed on a picture of Kenneth Clarke dressed as a Telly Tubby.



Angry Tories last night urged the PM to sack tubby Ken Clarke over his soft sentencing fiasco. MP Philip Davies led calls for the Justice Secretary's head, saying: "Ken's been living in Laa-Laa Land."

Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, will soon by making a statement in the Commons shortly about the call for a full inquest into the death of David Kelly. We don't know exactly what he's going to say, but given that David Cameron told PMQs recently that he thought an inquest was unnecessary - the result of the Hutton inquiry was "fairly clear", Cameron said - it would be very surprising if Grieve were to call for a full inquest.

There has not been an inquest into the death of Kelly, the government scientist who killed himself after being identified as the source of the BBC report claiming that Tony Blair's government "sexed up" the dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, because the Hutton inquiry took over the role of considering the cause of his death.

But some doctors, the doctors, led by Stephen Frost, have complained that Hutton only spent half a day considering the cause of Kelly's death. They claim that the Hutton's conclusion that Kelly committed suicide was "unsafe". In a letter to Cameron, they said refusing an inquest would amount to a conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.



Lord Hutton's finding of suicide is clearly unsafe and may, especially given the extraordinary context of Dr Kelly's death, represent one of the gravest miscarriages of justice to occur in this country. If an inquest is denied, despite all the evidence carefully provided to the attorney general, there is a real and grave risk that your government will be seen as continuing, and being complicit in, an enormous conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Further, any 'no' decision will be vigorously contested in the courts via judicial review by the doctors' lawyers.

For the record, here is what the Hutton inquiry said about the death of David Kelly.

I am satisfied that Dr Kelly took his own life and that the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body. It is probable that the ingestion of an excess amount of Coproxamol tablets coupled with apparently clinically silent coronary artery disease would have played a part in bringing about death more certainly and more rapidly than it would have otherwise been the case. I am further satisfied that no other person was involved in the death of Dr Kelly and that Dr Kelly was not suffering from any significant mental illness at the time he took his own life.

Norman Baker, the Lib Dem transport minister, does not seem to be in the chamber for the statement. He, of course, has floated the idea that David Kelly was murdered. He even wrote a book about the subject.

Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, is speaking now.

He says he is routinely asked to consider making applications to the High Court for an inquest. He does not normally make statement in the Commons about these matters. But he is on this occasion because of the level of public interest.

(Grieve can't actually order a new inquest himself. He can just make an application for one to the High Court.)

Grieve is now recounting the events that led up to Kelly's death.

Kelly's body was found on the morning of 18 July 2003. It appeared Kelly had slit his wrist. But Thames Valley police launched a homicide investigation.

An inquest was opened. But the then Lord Chancellor (Lord Falconer) transferred the powers of the inquest to the Hutton inquiry.

The coroner ruled that the wounds to Kelly's wrist were the main cause of his death.

Grieve says he has received a large amount of information from people who think there should be a fresh inquest.

He says he has considered this in a non-partisan way. He has consulted experts, including medical experts. He also consulted Lord Hutton, the Oxfordshire coroner and the Thames Valley police.

Having considered the material, he thinks that the evidence that Kelly took his own life is "overwhelmingly strong".



• Grieve says the evidence that Kelly killed himself is "overwhelmingly strong".

• No evidence supports claim that David Kelly was murdered.

• Grieve rules out fresh inquest.

• Grieve says it is inconceivable that a fresh inquest would reject the conclusion that Kelly killed himself.

Grieve says he is setting out his reasoning in a document that will be placed in the Commons library.

Grieve is still speaking.

He says those demanding a fresh inquest cited apparent inconsistencies in the evidence given to the Hutton inquiry.

But it is not unusual for there to be minor discrepancies in the evidence given to a court, he says. As an example, he goes through some of the claims made about how the body was found.

Grieve says that he has not been told what to do by the prime minister.

Anyone with "an open mind" would come to the same conclusion, he says.

He says he hopes "a line can now be drawn under this matter".

In response to a question from Catherine McKinnell, the shadow solicitor general, Grieve says that if new information were to come to light, it would be possible to hold a full inquest.

Richard Ottaway, the Conservative chairman of the foreign affairs committee, and a member of the committee when Kelly gave evidence to it shortly before his death, says he has never doubted the fact that Kelly took his own life.

Sir Alan Beith, the Lib Dem chair of the justice committee, asks what would be lost by allowing an inquest to go ahead.

Grieve says there is no basis on which the High Court could order an inquest. If Grieve were to make an application for one, it would be dismissed by the court with some irritation, he says.

In practical terms, the inquest has already taken place, he says.

Here's the key quote from Grieve's statement.

Having given all the material that has been sent to me the most careful consideration, I have concluded that the evidence that Dr Kelly took his own life is overwhelmingly strong. Further, there is nothing I have seen that supports any allegation that Dr Kelly was murdered or that his death was the subject of any kind of conspiracy or cover up. In my view, no purpose would be served by my making an application to the High Court for an inquest and I have no reasonable basis for doing so. There is no possibility that at an inquest a verdict other than suicide would be returned.

Labour's Tom Harris says Grieve's statement will do nothing to stop the "paranoid conspiracy theorists". And he goes on to mention Norman Baker. When Baker said last year that corners were cut in the investigation, was he speaking on behalf of the government?

No, says Grieve.

Here's the news release from the attorney general's office about the decision. It includes a link to the documents being placed in the Commons library, but the link does not seem to be working.

The material being released today by Grieve includes a more detailed statement of his reasoning, copies of independent reports he commissioned, replies from Lord Hutton and others and a 60-page schedule giving his response to all the arguments put to him by those challenging the Hutton inquiry's suicide verdict.

Grieve says that he hopes Norman Baker will read the new evidence and conclude that David Kelly did commit suicide.

Grieve says he hopes that those campaigning for an inquest will not seek a judicial review of his decision, as they have said they intend to do.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, a Conservative MP, says that he expected to be sceptical about this decision. He has spoken to a senior cardiovascular surgeon who said it was impossible for Kelly to have killed himself by slitting his wrist. But, having heard Grieve, Clifton-Brown says he found the attorney general's arguments persuasive.

Grieve says the wrist injury was only one cause of death.

Grieve says that he recently did apply to the High Court to re-open an inquest. That was in a case where a body was only identified some time after the original inquest.

Grieve's statement is now over. Essentially, Grieve seems to have conducted his own detailed inquiry into the death of David Kelly - and concluded that the conspiracy theorists are wrong. It would be nice to be able to look at his paperwork, including his 60-page document rebutting the "Kelly was murdered" claims, but the link on the attorney general office's website still isn't working.

Here's a lunchtime summary.

• Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, has ruled out a full inquest into the death of David Kelly. There was no evidence "whatsoever" to suggest a cover up or a conspiracy, he said in a statement to MPs. Grieve has effectively conducted his own inquiry and he is publishing his own 60-page document rebutting the charges made by the conspiracy theorists. In his Commons statement, he said that the evidence that Kelly killed himself (as the Hutton inquiry found) was "overwhelmingly strong". Even if he were to apply to the High Court for a full inquest, he said, the High Court would refuse, because there is no evidence to justify one. (See 12.48pm.)



• David Cameron has rejected criticisms of government policy made by the archbishop of Canterbury. Speaking in Northern Ireland, where he is meeting political leaders, Cameron said: 'I profoundly disagree with many of the views that he has expressed." Rowan Williams said in a New Statesman editorial that the government was generating "fear" and that it did not have a democratic mandate for the radical policies it was pursuing. Cameron said: "By all means let's have a robust debate, but I can tell you it will be a two-sided debate." In his article, Williams also accused Labour of failing to provide a "full and robust account of what the left would do differently". (See 9.35am and 10.36am.)



• Tony Blair has said that Europe needs a directly-elected president. He did not quite go as far as nominating himself for the job, but in one of several interviews he has given to publicise the paperback edition of his autobiography, he set out the agenda that he thought a directly-elected EU president should pursue (as well as saying that there is no chance of such a post being created "at the present time"). He also back AC Grayling's decision to set up a private university charging £18,000 a year, criticised "Blue Labour" and described the coalition as unsustainable. (See 8.37am.)

• Damian Green, the immigration minister, has launched a consultation on plans to stop migrants coming to the UK to work on temporary visas being allowed to apply for permanent settlement.

• A scheme has been launched to allow people from disadvantaged backgrounds to apply to do a paid internship in parliament. Hazel Blears, the Labour former cabinet minister, who helped to set up the scheme said: "Over the past few months the role of internships has been under intense scrutiny, and those of us who work in politics know too well that the system of unpaid internships freezes people out of political life. Our scheme will make parliament more open and accessible. It will give people from working class backgrounds the opportunities that currently just aren't open to them, and take an important step towards making our politics more representative of ordinary people." Details of the scheme are on the Social Mobility Foundation website.

The Scottish government will be given early access to capital borrowing powers to help fund projects such as the new Forth crossing, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has announced. According to the Press Association, the powers were expected to be in place by 2013 as part of the Scotland bill, but will now be available this year. Clegg made the announcment in South Queensferry during his first visit to Scotland since the Holyrood election in May.

Tony Blair has given another interview, to Sky's Adam Boulton. Generally he's been trying not to say anything particularly controversial about British politics, but he did come close to predicting that the Labour party would veer off to the left. PoliticsHome were monitoring. Here are the key points.

• Blair said there was a risk of Labour turning to the left.



I agree there's a risk, and you know there is a pattern that the Labour Party and indeed other progressive parties follow - they lose an election then they go off to the left. But I meet a lot of the younger Labour people now and that gives you great cause for optimism about the future.

• He said Labour had to be "at the cutting edge of the future".



I think [Ed Miliband's] perfectly sensibly created some space for himself now to put forward policy and my only statement on this, if you like, is that progressive parties win when they're at the cutting edge of the future, when they're modernisers.

The link to the page on the attorney general's office's website containing all the documents relating to the death of David Kelly is now working. The key document is the 60-page schedule of responses to issues raised (pdf). It contains Grieve's response to 169 points raised by those demanding a full inquest.

David Cameron has delivered his speech to the Northern Ireland assembly. I was expecting something fairly routine, but it was actually rather tough-minded and far-reaching. I'm going to be winding up shortly, and so here's a summary combining Cameron and other stories since lunch.

• Cameron urged Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland to integrate. In his speech, he said that it was "depressing" that the number of "peace walls" in Northern Ireland has gone up from 37 in 2006 to 48 now.

It is disappointing that in too many places Protestant and Catholic communities remain largely segregated, sharing the same space but living their lives apart. According to one survey the costs of division through the duplication of public services alone is around £1.5bn a year. But this not just about the economic cost, it's about the social cost too. It's these divisions that help to sustain terrorism and other criminal activities particularly within deprived communities.

• He said that eventually he would like to see a "normal" political system evolve in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland has a power-sharing executive formed under rules designed to ensure that both communities are properly represented. But this means that there is effectively no opposition. Cameron said in time he would like this to change.

The government's view is that, over time, we would like to see a more normal system, with a government and opposition, consistent with power-sharing and inclusiveness. We agree with Bertie Ahern who said in 2008: "There will come a time when people say 'you need an opposition, you need us and them'."

• He suggested that eventually UK spending in Northern Ireland would have to go down. Northern Ireland did proportionally better than other parts of the UK in the spending review, he said. But he hinted that this would not go on indefinitely.

Northern Ireland continues to receive 25 per cent more per head in public spending than England. But the days are over when the answer to every problem is simply to ask the Treasury for more money. That applies here as much as it does in other parts of the UK. So, like you, the government is looking at new ways to revive the private sector and turning Northern Ireland into a dynamic, prosperous enterprise-led economy for the 21st century.





• He suggested former terrorists should do more to acknowledge the crimes they committed during the Troubles.

Through [the Saville inquiry into Bloody Sunday] we've shown that where the state has acted wrongly, we will face up to, and account for, what we have done. Others too must think about how to face up to their part in the mistakes and tragedies of the past.

• Tony Blair has said there is a danger of Labour turning to the left. (See 2.42pm.)

• Nick Clegg has announced that Scotland will get new borrowing powers from this year, not 2013 as originally planned. This money will help build the new Forth bridge. (See 2.15pm.)

That's it for today. Thanks for the comments.