Politics

I worry that Coffee House sometimes fails to enrage readers sufficiently, so let me run a scenario past you, suggested to me by Rafael Behr, the Observer’s brilliant leader writer. The AV referendum is going to be the oddest vote. Turnout will be low, but how low will depend on where you live. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales are having elections for their devolved assemblies. One would expect turnout to be reasonably high in all three countries, and the voters to state their preference in the AV referendum while they at the polling stations. The English are only voting in local elections, where turnout will be lower, and there will

When spring arrives in England, the Prime Minister likes to roll up his sleeves and do a spot of gardening at his constituency home. When spring arrives in England, the Prime Minister likes to roll up his sleeves and do a spot of gardening at his constituency home. This year, he’ll have to find another way to pass the time. The police can only protect him properly in Oxfordshire by taking up post in the garden, and his wife, Sam, overheard her children enthusing about their guns. So it’s Chequers for the Camerons this April, where the protection officers can be both more effective and less obtrusive. And instead of

As Portugal bites the dust – following Ireland and Greece in asking for an EU bail-out – the most important question is still not being asked by EU policy-makers, or by the British government for that matter: will a bail-out actually solve any of Portugal’s problems? The simple answer is, it won’t. Asking the European Central Bank to take on more junk bonds, or piling more taxpayer-backed loans on Portugal’s already heavily indebted economy is not a long term solution. Ireland and Greece have already sought to renegotiate their bail-out terms as they are struggling to grow fast enough to repay their EU/IMF loans (ECB rate increases like the one

Developments aplenty on the Portuguese front — the most noteworthy being that Britain is probably in for a €4.8 billion share of the €80 billion tab. Robert Peston explains the numbers here, although it basically comes down to the lending mechanisms that will be deployed. Add up our 13.5 per cent exposure to the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) with our 4.5 per cent exposure to the IMF’s pot, and it comes to €4.8 billion. Or, rather, £4.2 billion. The politics of the situation are precarious for the coalition. Yet I doubt they’ll be unduly troubled by Ed Balls’s suggestion that “it would be better if this was sorted out

Is the defence budget the most chaotic in all Whitehall? George Osborne said as much last October — and he’s still dealing with its hellish intricacies now. The main problem, as so often in military matters, is one of overcommitment. Thanks to various accounting ruses on Labour’s part, large parts of the MoD’s costs were hidden in the long grass of the future. It was buy now, pay later — with Brown doing the buying bit, and the coalition doing the paying. The number that William Hague put on it last year was £38 billion. The MoD was spending £38 billion more, over this decade, than had been budgeted. Even