Society

Conservative Home is reporting that turnout in the Totnes open primary is 25 percent. This is quite remarkable and a real vindication of the idea of open primaries: remember that the UK turnout in the European elections was only 34 percent. In Totnes, the Tory majority is less than 2,000. But by holding an open primary, the Tories have created a situation where one in four voters has been involved in the selection of their candidate. This must give the Tory candidate a significant head-start in terms of both name recognition and people feeling connected to them. I suspect that the success of the Totnes experiment means that the Tories

The Daily Mirror is very exercised by the fact that David Cameron has 12 secretaries. It reports that Cameron has “five correspondence secretaries, two diary secretaries, a personal assistant, two private secretaries, one assistant private secretary and an office secretary.” This is actually a relatively small number when you consider that Cameron doesn’t, unlike the Prime Minister, have a multitude of civil servants working for him. But Stephen Pound, the quote happy Labour MP, has seen fit to join in with the Mirror’s outrage, telling the paper, “Not even the President of the United States needs 12 secretaries.” Now, a quick look at the White House staff list reveals that

So, it took me two weeks to get out of the blogging mindset – when you read something outrageous, and start mentally composing a blog. I found out that James and Pete had a bet to see how long I’d last for while on holidays – they reckoned four days. Ha! I was back yesterday, and didn’t blog just to show that I could hold out. But there’s been plenty of temptation during these past two weeks. Not least when my friend Ed Balls tried one of his porkies again. “I actually think it’s an astonishing achievement that we’ve arrested that rise in inequality,” he said two weeks ago. I

One of the more under-the-radar, but most significant, news stories of the day is Theresa May’s suggestion that the Tories may change the terms of contracts currently being hammered out between the government and welfare-to-work providers: “‘If contracts have not been signed one of the things I’m looking at is making the changes we want to those contracts quickly, so that we would be operating on our welfare reform proposals rather than the government’s,’ she said.” The FT adds that one of the changes might be “smaller upfront payments” for the welfare providers. Why so significant?  Well, because it highlights perhaps the main dilemma that the Tories face on welfare

It’s well worth reading Ben Brogan’s lively interview with Michael Gove in the Telegraph today.  On Gove’s part, there’s an explanation of the Tories’ stance on selection in schools; a series of doting compliments about David Cameron (who is, apparently, someone “you could imagine snogging like we did to True by Spandau Ballet”); and he even tips Liam Fox to become a future Tory leader.  To my mind, though, the most noteworthy passage is Gove’s response to a question about Lord Salisbury’s claim that the Tories need to present more policy details: “The former minister ‘raises all the points we are asking ourselves,’ Mr Gove says. ‘Yes, we do need

Welcome to the latest CoffeeHousers’ Wall. For those who haven’t come across the Wall before, it’s a post we put up each Monday, on which – providing your writing isn’t libellous, crammed with swearing, or offensive to common decency – you’ll be able to say whatever you like in the comments section. There is no topic, so there’s no need to stay ‘on topic’ – which means you’ll be able to debate with each other more freely and extensively. There’s also no constraint on the length of what you write – so, in effect, you can become Coffee House bloggers. Anything’s fair game – from political stories in your local