Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories

Alex Massie

Drug War Madness: Canadian edition

Most of the time the most lunatic examples of Drug War mania, at least in the English-speaking world, come from the United States. but not always! Today’s villains are Canadian. Chris Snowdon has the details of the murderous contempt police in British Columbia have for their citizens. It seems there is a batch of contaminated

Fraser Nelson

Inflation at 4.2 per cent is nothing to cheer

Are today’s inflation figures cause for celebration? The Consumer Price Index rose a mere 4.2 per cent in the year to December, down from 4.8 per cent in November. So, yes, a sharp drop — but only a statistical boffin could describe this as good news. Sure, a similar drop can be expected when the

Rod Liddle

Beyonce of many colours

Do you prefer the singer Beyonce when she is black or when she is white? Or could you not give a monkey’s either way? I think I prefer her, marginally, when she is white, although it’s a close call. If she were black and not singing, that would be pretty good. It would be better

Scottish independence by numbers

It’s far from the first poll on Scottish independence in recent years, or even in recent days, but YouGov’s effort for Channel4 this evening contains some noteworthy findings nonetheless. What is does is replicate the conditions that — for the reasons that Peter Kellner explains in a very useful blog post here — Alex Salmond

A joke too far?

Tom Harris lost his job as Labour’s ‘Twitter tsar’ today after uploading this Salmond-themed Downfall video onto YouTube. A pity it’s not even one of the funnier ones: And here is, erm, Ed Miliband responding to the news:

James Forsyth

Gove’s Royal yacht proposal in full

This morning’s Guardian scoop about Michael Gove’s suggestion that the nation should present the Queen with a new Royal yacht for the Jubilee is the talk of Westminster. But the full correspondence indicates that Gove was not proposing any taxpayer funding for a new Britannia.   Gove refers to ‘David Willetts’s excellent suggestion for a

Clegg versus vested interests (and the Tories)

‘Another week, another speech about the evils of capitalism.’ So joked Nick Clegg at the start of his speech to Mansion House earlier, and there was some truth in this particular jest. All three parties are jostling to be seen as the harbingers of a new economy at the moment — one that doesn’t reward

James Forsyth

A Cameron-friendly backbench group

The 301 Group is the nearest that David Cameron has to a loyalist backbench support group; it is named after the number of seats the Tories will need at the next election to win a majority. The Times today reports the group’s concerns that the Tories are in danger of forgetting the importance of a

Osborne visits China, but can’t escape Europe

Yet another day here in Westminster that’s all about the economy. Nick Clegg has just delivered a speech on the subject to Mansion House, focusing on ‘responsible capitalism’, which we’ll blog shortly. And two prominent forecasting groups, the Ernst & Young ITEM Club and the Centre for Economic and Business Research, have suggested that we’re

Just in case you missed them… | 16 January 2012

…here are some posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the weekend: James Forsyth reports on Ed Miliband’s defiant performance on the Marr show, and reports on Simon Hughes’ comments about the benefits cap. Jonathan Jones reckons that Ed Balls’ attempt at credibility fell short, and sees Miliband trump Miliband in the polls. Martin Bright says that

No more Mr Nice Guy | 16 January 2012

So Jon Huntsman is dropping out of the US Presidential race today. Apparently a battle with Rick Perry for fifth in South Carolina didn’t appeal. Even though he looked like the best bet to beat Obama, Huntsman was never likely to win the Republican nomination. When many Republicans were desperately searching for a more conservative

Miliband beats Miliband in the polls

Ed Miliband’s poll ratings are going from bad to disastrous at the moment. Last week his YouGov approval rating dropped to its worst ever, with just 20 per cent of respondents saying he’s doing a good job, and 66 per cent saying he’s doing a bad one. And today they slip even further. Again 20

James Forsyth

Miliband, dented but defiant

In the news bulletin after Ed Miliband’s interview on the Andrew Marr show, the headline was about Miliband saying he does listen to criticism of his leadership. It rather summed up Miliband’s problem at the moment: he can’t get beyond all the chatter about his leadership. In terms of the substance, Miliband’s explanation of Labour’s

Labour’s new strategy in the cuts blame game

Even as Ed Balls embraces the need for austerity today, he takes a very different position to the coalition on why it’s necessary. The government has always blamed the need for cuts on the ‘awful economic inheritance’ bequeathed it by Labour. Balls, on the other hand, puts the blame squarely at George Osborne’s door. In

Labour is the third party, get used to it

This has been a terrible week for the Labour leader – truly, bone-crunchingly awful. Inevitable comparisons have been made with the IDS era of the Tory wilderness years, but this is different because it is Labour. Conservative leaders are trophies, symbols of the best or worst the party can aspire to at any given time.

Balls’ attempt at credibility falls short

‘I must be responsible and credible in what I say.’ No, it’s not Bart Simpson writing on the blackboard at the start of The Simpsons, although it may have been said with just as little enthusiasm. It’s Ed Balls on the Today programme this morning, explaining his decision to endorse George Osborne’s public sector pay

James Forsyth

Simon Hughes speaks out against the benefit cap

In the Cameroon effort to redefine the politics of fairness, the benefit cap of £26,000 a year is key. When George Osborne announced it in his 2010 conference speech, he explained it – rightly – as a matter of fairness that ‘no family on out-of-work benefits will get more than the average family gets by

Hague’s misplaced optimism

William Hague has an article in the Times today arguing against what he refers to as the ‘pessimism’ of those who have expressed concerns about the direction of the ‘Arab Spring’. As somebody who cannot see the virtue of either optimism or pessimism as policy, and preferring facts to moods, I think the Foreign Secretary’s central points

James Forsyth

S&P to downgrade France and Austria

The word is that France will be downgraded by Standard and Poor’s tonight. AFP is reporting that French officials expect France to drop to a AA+ rating, losing its treasured AAA status and increasing how much it will have to pay to borrow money. 2012 has, so far, been relatively quiet on the euro front.

From the archives: Saving the Union

With Scottish independence very much the issue of the week, we thought you might enjoy this Spectator leader from 1979, arguing for a ‘No’ vote in that year’s referendum on Scottish devolution: To preserve the Union, 24 February 1979 ‘So, Sir, you laugh at schemes of political improvement?’ ‘Why, Sir, most schemes of political improvement

The hypocrisy of Cameron’s Saudi trip

A year ago, Tunisian strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled Tunisia for Saudi Arabia, thus ushering in the Salafi Spring. No doubt now bored out of his mind, this once stubbornly secular leader is said to have caught religion of the deranged Wahhabi variety propagated by his oil-rich hosts.   In turn, the Saudis

Alex Massie

The Tories & A Third Way: Real Home Rule for Scotland

How brave are the Scottish Tories? Brave enough to appreciate that they might have to risk the Union to save it? Bold enough to recognise that much greater powers for Holyrood are in their interest just as much as such additional powers are something the SNP craves? Because how can there be a right-of-centre revival

Transcript: Gove on sacking teachers

This morning, the Education Secretary went on the Today programme to explain his plans to make it easier to sack teachers. Here’s the full transcript: James Naughtie: From the start of the next school year in England, head teachers will find it easier to remove teachers that are considered to be under-performers.  The Education Secretary,

Osborne sparks the unionists’ fightback

Edinburgh It became clear last night why George Osborne was put in charge of the Coalition Government’s fightback against Alex Salmond and separatism: he is the only one who has the ability to really score points off the Nats. The Chancellor’s intervention on currency and bank notes – suggesting that an independent Scotland might not

The week that was | 13 January 2012

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson says the battle for Britain has begun, and explains why IDS’s welfare reforms are so important. James Forsyth looks at the battle lines being drawn over Scotland and wonders if Spain might prevent its independence. Peter Hoskin reports on Ed

Fraser Nelson

IDS must stay the course on welfare reform

Welfare wars are erupting again, with Iain Duncan Smith’s bill amended in the Lords and more showdowns ahead. Number 10 has been completely robust, threatening to use rarely-invoked powers to overrule the Lords. In my Telegraph column today, I say why it’s so important that David Cameron does not go wobbly – as his predecessors

Gove takes on bad teachers

Michael Gove’s giving a robust defence of his plans to make it quicker and easier for schools to sack bad teachers. ‘You wouldn’t tolerate an underperforming surgeon in an operating theatre, or an underperforming midwife at your child’s birth,’ he says in the Mail. ‘Why is it that we tolerate underperforming teachers in the classroom?’

James Forsyth

Cameron hints at child benefit taper

David Cameron’s comments to The House magazine on child benefit are causing quite a stir this morning. The Telegraph splashes on the PM’s line that ‘Some people say that’s the unfairness of it, that you lose the child benefit if you have a higher rate taxpayer in the family,’ he said. ‘Two people below the

The Obama-Romney electoral map

Of course, Mitt Romney hasn’t secured the Republican nomination yet. But now that the bookies have him odds on at 1/9, it’s definitely worth thinking about how he’d shape up against Barack Obama. Does he have much of a chance? Well, yes, actually. The head-to-head polls so far point to a close fight between Obama and