How Alan Johnson nearly became PM – Media roundup: April 29th, 2013

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Hospitals and schools face cuts to boost defence

“Philip Hammond, the Defence Secretary, is in talks with the Treasury about transferring money earmarked for the Department of Health and the Department for Education and using it to ease the impact of cuts on the Ministry of Defence. The Daily Telegraph understands that the plan could see as much as £500  million from the two protected departments’ budgets reallocated to defence. The MoD plan is set out in a confidential document being drawn up as part of the Government’s increasingly acrimonious Spending Review, which will allocate departments’ budgets for 2015-16.” – Telegraph

How Alan Johnson nearly became PM

“Actually he says casually, there was a time when he did come very close to standing for the leadership. “There was one period when we were negotiating because it was a hung parliament and the Liberal Democrats had talked to the Tories and it had broken down on the Sunday over the Alternative Vote, and Sunday night/Monday they came to talk to us. It looked as if we might form a coalition with the Lib Dems. The condition they laid down was that Gordon had to go and we all knew that anyway, he was going to step down, and I thought, well if there’s a leadership election in these circumstances I’ll stand because it would need someone just to hold things together for three years and then hand over to the younger generation.”” – Guardian

Other highlights

• Team Cameron must put some tiger in his tank – Tim Montgomerie, Times(£)
• An attack on pensioners? This is an attack on all of us – Owen Jones, Independent