Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Much ado about Brussels, bailouts and budgets

The news that the European Union has decreed that its Budget be increased by 4.9 percent in 2012 ties a knot in the stomach, as I ponder an Easter weekend spent in Margate rather than Majorca due to austerity. As Tim Montgomerie notes, the government is taking this opportunity to assert its euroscepticism. Stern communiqués

James Forsyth

A question of leadership

This morning’s speech on AV by Nick Clegg has prompted another round of Lib-Lab backbiting over whom is to blame for the troubles of the Yes campaign. In its leader column today, The Times (£) joins in on the Lib-Dem side, criticising Miliband for not having done more for AV. It even suggests that he’d

Clegg reaffirms the coalition’s wedding vows

It’s a funny thing, reading the speech on AV that Nick Clegg delivered to the IPPR this morning. It starts off as you might expect: putting some distance between his party and the Tories. Everything is Liberal-this and Liberal-that, while “conservatives” are cited as the opponents of change and choice. But then, from nowhere, comes

The Libyan intervention needs to be stepped up

The government is rightly proud of the Libya intervention. Not only did it save thousands of lives in Benghazi but it was conducted in way that learnt the lessons of the past. The Foreign Secretary took pains to get a UN resolution, making the mission legal, and kept the shape-shifting Arab League committed throughout. But

James Forsyth

Ed Miliband will hire tails for the Royal Wedding

If you’re fed up with stories about what politicians will wear to the Royal nuptials, look away now — for I can confirm that Ed Miliband will wear a morning suit on the 29th of April. Miliband takes the view that a Royal Wedding is no time for gesture politics.   A Labour spokesman told

The profit motive would boost Gove’s Free Schools agenda

The promise of Michael Gove’s Free Schools programme — as distinct from his Academies programme — is slow to materialise. What seemed like the government’s most radical and important reform has stalled as expected take-up has fallen far short of expectations. 350,000 new school places are required to meet increasing demand by 2015 — to

Alex Massie

The Man Who Should Be President

It’s not at all fair to call Gary Johnson the pot-candidate but that’s how the former governor of New Mexico is going to be known, to the extent he is known at all, in this depressing, currently-witless, Republican primary. From a personal point of view I give not even half a hoot about marijuana or

Alex Massie

The AV Game is Lost

I despair. Or, if it makes any of us happier, I give up. When even a chap as intelligent as my friend Daniel Korski completely misunderstands everything about the Alternative Vote I can only conclude that the game’s a bogey. It’s done and First Past the Post will be with us for at least another

James Forsyth

How the Finns might rock the European boat

Normally, the results of the Finnish elections don’t merit much discussion. But the success of the True Finns, the only party to put on seats in the elections there last week, could have a major impact on this country.   The True Finns ran almost as a single issue party during the final week of

Obama’s budget: faster, but not further, than Osborne’s

Barack Obama’s budget plan has become a political debating point on this side of the Atlantic. Ed Balls set the ball a-rolling in an article for the Guardian this morning, which effectively claimed that the President isn’t planning to cut the deficit as quickly as George Osborne is. “The truth is that it is Osborne

The systematised madness of AV

This morning on BBC Breakfast Nick Clegg made his key argument for AV: it will make politicians work harder for the vote, he said. The point is that politicians will have to court the votes not only of their natural supporters, but reach out to people who would not traditionally back them. This, however, is

Ed Miliband by numbers, April edition

It’s just a single poll, sure — but Ipsos MORI’s latest is still fairly eye-catching stuff. And this is why: it has the Tories level with Labour for the first time since October. Anthony Wells serves up a pinch of salt over at UK Polling Report, saying that this “unusual” result is most likely down

The NHS furore rumbles on

Another story to sour Andrew Lansley’s cornflakes this morning: the King’s Fund has released a “monitoring report” into the NHS which highlights, among other things, that hospital waiting times are at a 3-year high. The figures they have used are available on the Department of Health website — but unshackled from Excel files, and transcribed

Alex Massie

The Billy Boys are Back in Town

Neil Lennon, the Celtic manager, is not normally an especially sympathetic figure. But so what? Here’s the big news from Scotland today: Three prominent figures associated with Celtic Football Club have been sent potentially lethal home-made letter bombs. Celtic manager Neil Lennon, his QC Paul McBride and the politician Trish Godman, a Celtic supporter, were

Labour are drawing the wrong lessons from America

The global debate about how we live within our means is moving fast. I spent a week in Washington while Congress and the President hammered out their deal on this year’s budget. The deal was significant because all sides agreed on the need to cut spending now. After days of brinkmanship, they agreed to £38

Fraser Nelson

An appeal for reading suggestions

Inspired by Cameron, I’m off on an EasyJet holiday to Spain this week — and would like to make an appeal to CoffeeHousers for Easter reading suggestions. When I did likewise before, the suggestions were good enough to keep me in reading material for the rest of the year (especially The Sixty Minute Father, which

Councils can seriously damage your health

There’s a fantastic post by Nicholas Timmins at the FT’s Westminster blog. Using the example of Enfield Council, which has just blocked moves to close failing wards in a local hospital, Timmins argues that councils commissioning healthcare is a recipe for disaster: ‘The reason council commissioning of care is a not a good idea is

Hague: advisors on the ground is not boots on the ground

William Hague let the cat out of the bag on Sky News earlier, arguing that military advisors sent to aid the rebels in Libya did not constitute ‘British boots on the ground’. He said: “This is an expansion of the diplomatic presence we have in Benghazi…It’s not boots on the ground. I stress it’s not

James Forsyth

There are more attacks on Clegg to come

As the chances of AV passing diminish, the Lib Dems are complaining with increasing volume about just how directly Nick Clegg is being targeted. Up to now, they have kept their concerns about what, they are calling, the swift boating of Nick Clegg relatively private. Last night, Chris Huhne said that he was “shocked that

Is Syria next?

I used to think that Syria was some way off a revolution. The protests were geographically limited; Bashar al-Assad was willing to use Libyan-style violence against them and the West seemed uncharacteristically mute. What’s more, demands for the Syrian president to go were limited. And then there’s the real fear that Syria, made up of

James Forsyth

Cameron quells the storm

David Cameron turned in an emollient performance on the Today Programme this morning. He declined to stoke the coalition row over immigration, heaped praise on Vince Cable and stressed that the Liberal Democrats have been good coalition partners. Even when pressed on the question of whether Britain would block Gordon Brown from becoming director of

Alex Massie

We’re Gonna Need A Bigger Mini-Van

Sure, the Scottish edition of the Sun splashes with Play It Again Salm as it endorses the SNP but its Irish sibling has a much better story:   River Beast’s Rampage and Farmer Attacked by Furbag are just extra, glorious, titillating teasers. But this is what happens when you forsake the Horse Outside for a

Alex Massie

The Sun Shines on Salmond

Severin Carrell reports that tomorrow’s edition of the Sun will endorse Alex Salmond and the SNP. This should not surprise anyone. I suspect most of the Scottish press will support, albeit with significant qualifications, the Nationalists. The most significant of those qualifications is that this is a Holyrood election, not a Westminster one. Endorsing the

Lansley needs to get his quiet friends talking

Is Andrew Lansley hearing rather than listening? Dame Barbara Hakin, one of the Department of Health’s national managing directors, has written a letter to some GPs that suggests the pace of health reform will not be affected by the ‘legislative pause’. Hakin writes: ‘Everyone within the Department of Health is very aware of the support

Support for AV collapsing

An ICM/Guardian poll suggests that 58 percent of those likely to vote will back the No campaign. The Guardian reports: ‘Three-quarters of Conservatives are planning to vote will vote against, as will a small majority of Labour supporters. Only Lib Dem voters are firmly in favour, with more than two-thirds saying they will vote for

Alex Massie

The AV Referendum Discredits Referendums

The only thing that has been proved by this referendum on changing the electoral system used for Westminster elections is that referendums are a hopeless way of deciding these matters. Neither the politicians nor the press have distinguished themselves during an affair that’s been distinguished by the mendacity of almost all the protagonists, the hysteria

Cameron: Gordon Brown could have remained as PM under AV

Here is David Cameron at this morning’s event, arguing that FPTP produces decisive results, even in the event of a hung parliament. He argues that Gordon Brown’s denuded Labour Party could have remained in office after the last election had AV had been used. Perhaps, but I’d point out that Brown could easily have remained

CoffeeHousers’ Wall, 18 April – 24 April

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

The Odd Couples

It must be Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau season at the Commons’ film club. A string of odd political couples has stalked stages across the land this morning, supposedly pronouncing the merits or demerits of the alternative vote. David Cameron and John Reid were the oddest: the Prime Minister’s well-heeled insouciance contrasting with his lordship’s