Palin's media strategy

Boston, Massachusetts

One of the striking things about the week since the election is the sheer amount of media Sarah Palin has done. She has sat down with the local press in Alaska, Fox News, NBC and is doing CNN tomorrow. By contrast, McCain is making his first post-election appearance on Leno tonight. Palin has evidently decided that she can’t leave the stage with the impression that she is a “diva” and not able enough for national politics the conventional wisdom.

But these media appearances are a distinctly mixed blessing for Palin....

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Clegg sets out the Lib Dem approach

Nick Clegg's giving a speech tonight in which he outlines the Lib Dem's approach for dealing with the downturn.  You can read the full thing here, but it's centred around these passages on taxation and borrowing:

"How should Britain deliver economic stimulus? We hear talk of tax cuts emerging from Downing Street, but they are likely to be small, and short term. Funded through borrowing, the money will have to be paid back later. So it’s meagre tax cuts today, giant tax rises tomorrow from Brown.

Meanwhile the Conservatives want a

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The worst of the markets

Ever wondered which of the world’s stock markets has fared the worst during the recent financial turmoil? Thanks to Stan Secrieru wonder no more. The winner is Russia (cue sounds of Russian national anthem). Helped by a brutal war, market-rattling commentary by Prime Minister Putin and a belligerent state-of-the-union address by President Medvedev, Russia’s RTS fell by 68 percent.

A close second is China, whose dollar-packed treasury can do little to keep up China’s economic growth if Western demand slumps. Beijing’s leaders can take comfort in Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index, which “only” saw a 49% drop.

In...

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Put your questions to Francis Maude

Francis Maude - the Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office, and MP for Horsham - has kindly agreed to a Q&A session with Coffee House. 

Just post your questions for him in the comments section below.  And, on Friday, we'll pick out the best ten and put them to him.  He'll get back to us with his answers a few days later.

UPDATE: We have now picked the questions for Francis.  Find out what they are by clicking here.

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Imprudent, and proud of it

The most interesting line in the PM’s press conference was Brown’s argument that, precisely because it is “funded”, the Tories’ latest tax proposal does not represent a fiscal stimulus. Gordon is now positively flaunting his jilting of Prudence, scorning the Tories because they are trying to cling to the fiscal principles – “stability”, “responsibility” etc – which were the hallmarks of his decade in Number Eleven .

The basis of the initial Cameroon strategy was to edge the Conservative Party towards the economic orthodoxy of the Blair-Brown years with the caveat that...

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