All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Actually, Ken Clarke is one of the Good Tories. Indeed, one could spend some time speculating on how the Conservative party might have fared had it chosen him to lead it and not, say, Iain Duncan Smith. (Yes, there’s europe but…) Obviously then, this means some people think he personifies everything that is wrong with
In the midst of this ongoing row about employment numbers, it is worth noting that the OBR figures released today show that there’ll be 610 thousand fewer public sector jobs at the end of parliament than there are now. But the overall number of jobs in the economy will increase by 1.34 million. This means
Hattie came to PMQs in one of her ‘visible-from-space’ frocks. Today’s fashion statement from the acting Labour leader introduced honourable members to a shade of electric turquoise which may well be new to Newtonian physics. It was best enjoyed through sunglasses to prevent retinal scarring. Ms Harman had just one political weapon today – the
Australia’s 27th prime minister is not only the first female holder of the office, but also only the second foreign-born PM. Like the first, Billy Hughes, she is Welsh. Ironically, Wales has now produced twice as many prime ministers of Australia as it has of the UK, of which it remains a constituent part. However,
An interesting piece in The Guardian which suggests that people in warmer, hotter, more southerly countries (they mean Africa but dare not say it) might have lower IQs than people in the north, on account of some mysterious process by which the body devotes too much energy and resources to fighting infectious diseases and not
11:50: Stay tuned for live coverage from 12:00 12:02: Labour MP Kevin Brennan attacks Ken Clarke’s criminal justice prison reform: cuts or tackling re-offending. Cameron return fire by citing the need for a new approach to tackling re-offended. 12: 03: Here’s Harman with Larry Elliott’s scoop on the Budget. Cameron responds by citing the OBR’s
Just before the voting on the Budget started, all Tory and Lib Dem MPs received a letter from David Miliband calling on them to vote against it. Attached to the letter were more than 1500 other signatories who Miliband had got to sign on to his letter online. It was a gimmick, but not a
Guido reports that Diane Abbott has ducked out of doing the Daily Politics following her disastrous appearance with Andrew Neil on This Week when she couldn’t answer questions about her taxi claims or her justification for sending her son to private school. The rumour is that Abbott was unprepared to face yet more questioning from
With all the hoo-haa about Ken Clarke’s plan to reduce prison numbers, it’s worth disinterring the Spectator’s leader column on the subject from a couple of weeks ago. Here it is, for the benefit of CoffeeHousers: One of the many ludicrous Liberal Democrat policies which Tories enjoyed rubbishing during the general election was their plan
A good question! Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski suggest not. Their argument, summarised by Tim Harford, runs more or less like this: – England do about as well as you’d expect, given their size, economic power, proximity to football’s “core” in Western Europe, and footballing history. That is, you’d expect them to usually make the
Responding to this New York Times piece on Ireland’s ecoomic woes Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Kevin Drum and Steve Benen echo Paul Krugman and say: See, this just shows how stupid austerity measures are. And it’s true, Ireland really is in a terrible hole and won’t be getting out of it any time soon. As
Much ado about the Guardian’s scoop this evening: a leaked Treasury document which forecasts that up to 1.3 million jobs could be lost as a result of the spending cuts in the Budget. Or, to put it in the words of the document itself: “100-120,000 public sector jobs and 120-140,000 private sector jobs assumed to
A quick post to point CoffeeHousers in the direction of our new-look arts pages. There, naturally, you’ll find the usual archive of reviews and articles from the back half of the magazine – but there’s also a new addition. Our old arts blog Cappuccino Culture has been deposed, and in its place is Touching From
This afternoon I had the privilege to speak in a panel discussion at the National Policing Conference in Manchester, held jointly by ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officers) and the APA (Association of Police Authorities). The subject was the future of policing – a particularly important one given the potential 25 per cent cut in
Jean Chrétien, the former Canadian prime minister, has acquired an almost mythic status in certain Tory circles for the way his government cut back public spending in the 1990s. So it’s worth paying attention to his remarks about ringfencing departmental budgets last night. He didn’t quite go so far as to say that withholding the
“The Foreign and Commonwealth Office requests the honour of your company at a major address by the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, The Rt Hon William Hague MP,’Britain’s Foreign Policy in a networked world’.” Thus reads the invitation from the Foreign Office. If emails could be gold-embossed, this one probably would be.
Every conversation I have about the durability of the Coalition comes back to the AV referendum. The conventional wisdom is that if AV is defeated then it will be very hard for Clegg to keep his party in. For this reason, people pay extremely close attention to the Tory leadership’s attitude to AV. We are
Most people probably greeted Liam Fox sacking of Sir Bill Jeffrey, alongside that of the Chief of Defence Staff in that Sunday Times interview with one word – who? The department’s Permanent Under-Secretary –- or PUS — is a pretty unassuming figure especially sat next to the be-medalled soldiers he works with. Few people outside
George Osborne is an enigma. For many, his politics and personality are defined by a photograph of him sneering in the Bullingdon’s clashing colours. The determined face that presented the Budget contradicted that stereotype; it suggested that Osborne was coming of age. Paul Goodman was part of Osborne’s Shadow Treasury team and one of
Whatever happened to Sir Hugh Orde? A few months ago, he was threatening to resign over the Tories’ plans for elected police commissioners. But later, in a speech to the Association of Chief Police Officers, he seems to have come over considerably more cooperative. On spending cuts, he stresses that police numbers will likely be
In the last few days, there’s been much speculation about how many Lib Dem MPs would vote against the VAT rise. In the end, only two did—Bob Russell and Mike Hancock. I suspect that the Lib Dem whips will be quite happy that the rebellion was so small. Other Lib Dems with misgivings about the
Harriet Harman’s response to David Cameron’s statement on the G8 and G20 was noticeable for her attacking the Prime Minister for talking about bringing British troops home from Afghanistan within five years. Her criticism was that talking about withdrawal undermined the troops in the field, she sounded more like John McCain than I ever expected
First, David Miliband was telling Brownies about the public finances. Now, his brother’s at it too. Here’s what he told the Daily Politics earlier: “Over thirteen years, Labour did increase spending on public services … In the coming five years, the Conservative coalition wants to undo all of that increase in spending. So they want
This week’s New Yorker has a little piece about Cherie Blair’s efforts to get an International Widows’ day recognised. Most of it is about Blair doing the diplomatic rounds, she compares the process to the one for trying to win the Olympics for London. But there is an interesting anecdote about what happened when the
Yes, it might well, nay would, have changed the momentum of the game*. No, video technology is not needed (not least because it hasn’t improved any game in which it has been introduced). And anyway, to adapt Wodehouse, what you gain on the roundabouts of 1966 you lose on the swings of 2010. Consider this,
Who’d have thought it? There’s David Miliband getting all self-righteous about the “cons” in George Osborne’s Budget, when – oh dear – he slips in a small con of his own. Here’s the relevant passage: “[The Budget] was avoidable. Labour set out plans to cut the deficit by half over the next Parliament. The Tories
The Telegraph ran a piece which virtually repeated my blog about young black men and crime figures in London. Here it is. I’ll be writing more about this later in the week, when I’ve tied down a few more details about the original complaint, supposedly from a “private individual” to the PCC about my blog.
Robert Byrd, the longest serving Senator in American history, has died aged 92. Byrd will be remembered not only for the length of his service but also for the fierceness with which he guarded the prerogatives of the Senate. Byrd used his position and seniority in the Senate to funnel huge amounts of money back
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 general public seems split in two over who to blame for England’s latest abject failure at the world cup and our consequent exit. People who support one of the big six or seven teams in the Premier League blame the England manager, Fabio Capello. The rest of us blame the players. The division reinforces
Yvette Cooper has condemned IDS’ ‘nasty’ rhetoric this morning and claimed that the government’s proposals are about ideological cuts, not welfare reform. It’s simple, but effective. IDS’ reforms are both radical and necessary. The plan is to incentivise movement out of areas of welfare dependency with regional tax breaks and housing guarantees. There is a
…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson believes that Cameron is planning a dignified exit from Afghanistan, and sees no change in Afghan policy from the G8. James Forsyth says that the Lib Dems have survived their toughest week yet, and reveals why Obama did not consider withdrawing
George Osborne suggested as much in his Today interview last week, but now we know for sure: the government will look to cut the welfare bill even further in October’s spending review, and incapacity benefit will come in for special attention from the axemen. It was, you sense, ever going to be thus. With unprotected
This, in the admittedly short life of the Coalition, has been the most difficult week so far for the Lib Dems. The Coalition agreement had the Lib Dems winning huge concessions from the Tories. Afterwards, all the talk was of Lib Dem negotiating skills, what a good deal that they had won for themselves. But
