Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Brown’s personality defines the character of his government

David Cameron will re-launch his election campaign with a personal attack on Gordon Brown. Cameron will embark on the straightforward task of proving that the Road Block is not a moderniser – the Prime Minister’s sudden avowed passion for PR is merely a marriage of electoral convenience. Cameron has led the expenses reform debate and

Just in case you missed them… | 8 February 2010

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the weekend. Fraser Nelson thinks that massive cuts in public spending are inevitable, and is pleased that rationalism has entered the climate change debate. James Forsyth sees Sir George Young favouring elected committee chairmen, and believes that the tradecraft in Brown’s Morgan interview is bizarre.

Clegg must resist Brown’s sweet nothings

Gordon Brown is usually at his most patronising when confronting Nick Clegg. Last week, however, hectoring gave way to affection. Brown was almost tender. Of course, this sudden change has an obvious explanation. Brown and Clegg are brothers in arms: devotees of electoral reform, or so the Road Block would have us believe. Robert McIlveen

Gita Sahgal: A Statement

Gita Sahgal has now published a statement following her suspension from Amnesty International. I have seen it at Stroppyblog, but please circulate it as widely as possible. Gita has been an active member of Women Against Fundamentalism for many years. Perhaps the publicity around this case will allow their voices to be heard. Amnesty International

Brown wants to discuss nothing besides the middle class

Aspiration is Gordon’s middle name. The Observer has an extensive interview with Brown and though the classification has changed class remains his obsession: Brown wants to fight the election on the middle classes. He spoke of little else. Education and family policy will be defined by Sure Start, child tax credits and the school leaving

James Forsyth

The tradecraft of Brown’s Morgan interview is bizarre

If an event is going to have dramatic impact we can’t know it is coming. So the emotional moments in Gordon Brown’s interview with Piers Morgan have lost much of their potency through being pre-briefed to today’s papers. It also strikes me as rather bad tradecraft to have let it be known that Alastair Campbell

Fraser Nelson

The cuts consensus

John Rentoul today puts Trevor Kavanagh and myself in the dock for demanding “massive spending cuts” and concludes that if we “had any power” we would be “about as helpful to Cameron as Sarah Palin was to John McCain” but believes Cameron “will hold to his strategic course”. I mean: massive cuts. How crazy is

Beyond doubt

For a moment, Andrew Marr had Alastair Campbell by the short and curlies. Marr attacked (that verb is not an exaggeration) Campbell over his clarification to the Chilcot Inquiry, the phrase ‘beyond doubt’ and the possibility that Blair knowingly misled parliament over the strength of WMD intelligence.   Marr was at his incisive and dramatic

Alex Massie

Until 3pm Sunday, Hope Lives!

This is optimism’s optimum moment. Twelve hours from now everything will change. That’s when, alas, France will most probably begin to take control of this afternoon’s encounter with Scotland at Murrayfield. And yet, stubbornly and despite logic that dictates Chris Cusiter’s boys have just a one in four chance of prevailing, hope still flowers. That’s

Alex Massie

Raping Haiti!

Connoiseurs of the Guardian will not be surprised by this masterpiece from Mike Gonzalez. The only thing that could improve it is if his piece also found a way to blame the Israelis: News reports still insist on the question of security, as if the pressing problem were the need to maintain public order. This

Alex Massie

Jim Devine

It would be easy to highlight this Channel Four News interview with disgraced Livingston MP Jim Devine and observe that it highlights so much of what is so wrong with the Scottish Labour party. Easy and true. But while it’s obvious that the Jimmies are pretty grim, the broader point is that there are clueless

James Forsyth

Young in favour of elected committee chairmen

It is interesting that Sir George Young took the opportunity of his interview with The Times this week to reaffirm the Tory leadership’s support for electing select committee chairmen. In the last fortnight, two Tory MPs who would like to be select committee chairmen in the next parliament have complained to me that the leadership

Fraser Nelson

Rationalism enters the climate change debate

I have been gripped by The Guardian’s climate change investigation and reporting these last few days. We do like to tease George Monbiot but he was one of the first to denounce spinning of the data and science by the University of East Anglia’s climate unit. It’s a mark of his professionalism and seriousness: global

Parris versus Nelson

Here’s a question: to be a good angel or a bad angel? We know what Fraser thinks; Matthew Parris differs. Writing in the Times today, he asserts that he would give David Cameron the same advice he offered Margaret Thatcher in 1979: agree a gloriously unspecific manifesto. The details of hard-edged manifestos are ambushed well

Another very good Friday

Yesterday, Gordon Brown was less Macavity, more the Cheshire cat. Now both he and Blair have helped to bring a modicum of peace to Northern Ireland, and Brown was a ubiquitous, beaming presence on the TV throughout the day – jaunty not jowly. Naturally, Brown’s confidence fell victim to the absurdity that lurks behind him like some familiar. Sky Sports News

Smoking Guns and the Morality of Parliamentary Privilege

The MPs’ expenses scandal has taken another extraordinary turn. Jim Devine, David Chaytor and Elliott Morley were already humbled and now they face criminal charges. With political scandals there are rarely any smoking guns. Cash for Honours was the last police investigation to come close. But this time it doesn’t look good for the miserable

James Forsyth

John Terry and politics<br />

John Terry’s sacking as England captain tells us something interesting about what is considered a sackable offence in today’s world and what is not. When the story was just about Terry allegedly cuckolding a team mate his position as captain seemed safe. As Danny Finkelstein argued on the Today Programme, modern society is reluctant to

The week that was… | 5 February 2010

Here are some of the posts made on Spectator.co.uk over the past week: Fraser Nelson explains why winning is not enough for the Tories, and sees nothing to get excited about in George Osborne’s “new economic model”. James Forsyth reveals how to set up a school, and observes that the Old Lady is becoming more

Brown and Blair, together again

Strange that there’s really only one major political point arising from Gordon Brown’s interview in the Standard today.  But, then again, maybe that is the point.  Like the PM’s interview with the News of the World a few weeks ago, the emphasis is far more on the personal than anything else: his relationship with Sarah

The Tories need to push the fiscal case for public service reform

Andrew Haldenby’s article in the Telegraph this morning got me thinking: when was the last time the Tories really pushed the fiscal case for public service reform; that the government can indeed deliver better services while spending less money? By my count, you’d have to go back around six months to George Osborne’s speech on

Four Parliamentarians to be charged over expenses

It’s just been announced which Parliamentarians will face criminal charges over their expense claims. They are: David Chaytor Jim Devine Elliot Morley Lord Hanningfield So, three Labour MPs and one Tory Lord.  Expect plenty more public anger – the Legg report has no way near drawn a line under this issue.

Post-election Entene Cordiale?

If there is a strategic thought lurking inside the Tories’ grab bag of foreign policy ideas, it seems to be closer cooperation with France, particularly on defence matters. Should William Hague become Foreign Secretary after the election, he might end up working with a new French counterpart, as rumours persist about Bernard Kouchner’s imminent departure

Rod Liddle

Another blow for the climate change lobby: Prince Charles

This has been an appalling couple of months for the climate change lobby and now there’s been another, sickening, blow – which some of you, undecided in the debate, may well feel is the clincher. Prince Charles has waded into the issue, eviscerating climate change sceptics. “Please be in no doubt that the evidence of

Fraser Nelson

In response to CoffeeHousers

CoffeeHousers have left some characteristically forthright and thoughtful comments on the blog about my Keith Joseph lecture, and I thought I’d answer them in a post.   Tiberius says that I don’t mention voters very much – I talk only about ideas. The voters have been taught Labour ideas: isn’t this something the Tories have

James Forsyth

The Old Lady is becoming more pessimistic

Faisal Islam, Channel 4’s economic correspondent,  is one of the journalists who best understands what the Bank of England’s institutional view is. So it is interesting to see him writing this today: “I’m convinced that at Threadneedle Street, they were shocked by the limpness of Britain’s exit from recession. They have been running their big

Alex Massie

New US Army Division: The Fightin’ Hermaphrodites

Given that homosexuals are permitted to serve in the armed forces of, I think, every NATO country bar Turkey and the United States and that none of these countries have reported any great difficulty as a consequence of ending this discrimination, it’s hard to see how lifting the ban on gays serving in the military

Fraser Nelson

Why winning isn’t enough – and a response to The Fink

I delivered the Keith Joseph lecture last night, entitled Winning Is Not Enough. My point: that the Tories have adopted so many Labour policies out of tactical considerations that they are in danger of getting to office only to find they have signed up to continuing Gordon Brown’s agenda. The problem is not so much

Legg latest

The Legg report is about 240 pages, if you can manage it.  But the message you can take from it is short enough: there’s going to be plenty more public anger with our political class.  Guido’s post here should tell you why.  But, suffice to say, there are MPs paying back up to £42,458.  There