All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Compared to many CoffeeHousers, I don’t find the Liberal Democrat’s foreign policy positions as problematic. Nick Clegg is smart, internationalist and has – unlike David Cameron and Gordon Brown (and Tony Blair) – plenty of foreign policy pre-leadership experience. But looking through the Lib Dem manifesto, I came across its pledge on Iran, which is
As Lance Price wrote yesterday, venerating your opponent is an odd campaign strategy. But Gordon Brown is an inveterate flirt, and he’s at it again this morning, fluttering his eyelashes at Nick Clegg across the pages of the Independent: ‘We have to show people we are in the business of the new politics and we
Tonight’s YouGov poll has the Lib Dems three point ahead. They are on 34, the Tories on 31 and Labour on 26. In terms of working out what this would mean in seats, I doubt that uniform national swing is that useful. But for the sake of argument, let’s imagine that did occur. These poll
Oh, sure, the rise of the Liberal Democrats is a problem for the Conservatives too and it doesn’t help their chances of securing an overall majority. But it may be an even bigger problem for Gordon Brown. Can anyone really remember anything Labour have said since Thursday’s debate? Not really. It’s as though Labour have
Fleet Street resounds to just one gag today: every ash cloud has its silver lining. Tony Blair is marooned in the Middle East and won’t be plugging his memoirs at this week’s London Book Fair. I wonder if he’ll adopt a few Semitic shrugs to accompany the gauche Cary Grant accent. Still, we must wait
How valuable was the TV debate to the Lib Dems? Well, we’ve seen the poll numbers, of course. But the Electoral Commission has just released some figures which shine a different light on proceedings. They show that the Tories received party donations totalling £1.46m in the first week of the campaign. Labour, nearly £800k. And
This feels like a first for this election campaign: a poster which gets quite specific on policy – and not another party’s policy either. It comes courtesy of the Conservatives, and, as you can see above, carries the message: “Let’s cut benefits for those who refuse work”. You can expect plenty of handwringing about whether
Well this was entirely predictable. The authoritarian right insist that Dave’s efforts at making the Tory party electable are in fact what has prevented the party from storming to a landslide victory. We’ll be hearing a lot more of this nonsense if the Tories fail to win a majority but Melanie Phillips’s most recent post
Another day, another TV debate – only this time it was Alan Johnson, Chris Grayling and Chris Huhne behind the lecterns, talking crime on the Daily Politics. Just like yesterday’s debate, the questions were incisive and insistent. But the politicians conspired to turn proceedings into a mush. There was very little clarity, a sizeable dollop
Who would have thunk it? Inflation has again “surprised” on the upside – 3.4 per cent against a 2.0 percent target. Why so high? Even the return of 17.5 percent VAT does not justify this bounce. Might it have something to do with all those bank notes which were being printed by the Bank of
So, as Daniel Korski wrote earlier, a vote for Nick Clegg keeps Labour in office – surely fertile territory for a killer poster? Here’s a selection of CoffeeHousers’ ‘Vote Nick Get Gordon’ posters. Remember him? – Sam Davidson ——————————————————— Buy one, get one free – Disillusioned ——————————————————— Don’t get duped again – Hamish
You English, sometimes you are the crazy people. Here’s Iain Dale for instance, dismissing any notion of a Tory-Liberal arrangement: All coalitions end in failure, the partners don’t agree, postponement and indecision become the order of the day. Britain today does not need a two-headed donkey. This, as anyone with any knowledge of politics anywhere
Gordon, meet disillusionment. Disillusionment, the Prime Minister. Ask him questions on whatever you want: the economy, jobs, immigration, expenses – the ball is in your court. Make him squirm, if you like. Confront him. He is, after all, here at your pleasure. For that was the set-up of Radio One Newsbeat’s interview with Gordon Brown
Nick Clegg’s response to Andrew Neil’s question about his expenses at the Lib Dem press conference this morning, highlighted Clegg’s greatest vulnerability: he’s just another politician. As the question pointed out, Clegg’s own expenses were by no means perfect. The danger for Clegg is that many of his new supporters see him as totally different
I notice that the journalist Suzanne Moore is standing against Diane Abbott in Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Good for her. I know some of you may consider an Abbott-Moore contest to be on a par with, say, Gaddafy versus Assad, but Suzanne is at least not a hypocrite. She’s got a fight on her
“All my life, I’ve opposed the old politics,” says Nick Clegg ad nauseam. Not so it seems. Peter Oborne’s Mail column reports that one youthful indiscretion has been omitted from Clegg’s CV: ‘In fact, he has a background as a Westminster lobbyist with the firm GJW, where he worked as an account executive for 18
Most politicos agree that a vote for Nick Clegg will likely prop up a Labour government, even if it will be led by someone else than Gordon Brown. Most voters, however, may not realise this. So what the Tories need is a poster which shows in easy-to-understand ways, the causal link. CoffeeHousers, surely the idea
Things have clearly moved on since I wrote this back in March. From Rachel Sylvester’s column today: “…those close to Mr Clegg have made it clear to senior Labour figures that it would be difficult for the Liberal Democrats to do a deal with a Labour Party led by Mr Brown. ‘The whole notion of
And not in a Cleggover* or Rentoul-bait sense either. No, you remember The Candidate? Of course you do for you enjoy political movies as much as we do. Which means you’ll also remember the movie’s strapline: Too Handsome. Too Young. Too Liberal. Doesn’t have a chance. He’s PERFECT! And you’ll also recall the movie’s final
Earlier in the camapign, a two point lead in the YouGov tracker poll caused panic in Tory ranks. But tonight, there’s a certain sense of relief that the Tories are back ahead by this margin with You Gov. The numbers are Tories up one to 33, Lib Dems down two to 31 and Labour up
Every time a Conservative is asked by the media about Nick Clegg they should reply, ‘Nick Clegg’s a clever politician, a formidable opponent.’ This formulation won’t make the voters think that the Toires are being nasty about their opponent but it will remind them that Clegg is a politician which is a problem for him
Well, what do you guys think of it? Not bad, I think, especially for a broadcast put together at the last minute (the Tories having pulled their planned anti-Brown PEB), But, as ever, there’s the problem that if people think Cameron a little too slick, a little too polished, a little too much the salesman
These have been a grim few days for the Conservative party. But there is a sense, just a sense mind, that the worst might be behind them. Today’s ICM poll shows the Lib Dems still surging, up 3 to 30, but Tory support is only down one from Sunday’s ICM poll to 33. Labour is
The FT’s Jim Pickard writes: ‘Cameron will be cursing the order of the debates. He’d much prefer to be attacking Nick Clegg on domestic issues than foreign affairs on Thursday.’ I’m not so sure. Foreign Policy is the arena where the Tories are concrete, populist and accessible. The same is not true for the Lib
Only defuse. That seemed to be the approach of all three participants in the Daily Politics’ foreign affairs debate this afternoon. The frequent questions from Andrew Neil and Mark Urban put David Miliband, William Hague and the Lib Dems’ Ed Davey on the collective back foot. It was all they could do to take some
A quite bizarre report from the IPPR which attempts to prove that it is not immigration which tempts people to vote BNP, but a lack of “resilience”. This fatuous word, resilience, is used more and more by government and quangos and local councils, usually to transfer blame to ordinary people for the crimes of those
I don’t really know if the Tories “Vote Clegg, get Brown” argument will work but if I had to bet on it I’d guess that it won’t. There’s a large enough constituency out there that doesn’t want either the Tories or Labour. Nevertheless, the post-election environment now becomes very interesting. Suppose, just for now, that
Labour’s press conference this morning was a surprisingly cheery affair. Peter Mandelson was very much in control of proceedings and the media mob was clearly feeling benevolent on a lovely spring morning. I’m not sure it was entirely wise to run a spoof post-election news broadcast on the double-dip recession caused by Tory economic policy.
In the book a World Without the West, the authors invite the reader to imagine the non-Western world where South-to-South grow so strong that they bypass the traditional Euro-Atlantic powers. Stuck in southern Europe because of Eyjafjallajokull’s eruption, I have begun thinking about life without airplane travel. The last 15 years have not only
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
That would be Scotland, of course. Dear old Scotia, meek and mild and quiet as a well-nursed child. There was another YouGov poll released at the weekend and this Scotland on Sunday survey had its own startling findings. To wit: Labour – 40% SNP – 20% Lib Dems – 19% Tories – 16% Others –
Ross Douthat uses his New York Times column today to update Manhattanites on the British election. As you might expect, Ross is broadly supportive of Cameronism and goes so far as to call it “a more detailed and specific vision of what conservative reform might mean than almost any English-speaking politician since the Reagan-Thatcher era.”
Haven’t we been here before? Investment versus cuts, I mean. Because that appears to be the main message of Labour’s press conference this moring. Gordon Brown set about the Tories’ Big Society, claiming that it “means big cuts in public services”. Hm. It’s certainly a punchier, if similar, message to the “agenda of abandonment” one
A freewheeling, shirt-sleeve kind of speech from Cameron in Kennington this morning. But not one that was without substance. His main purpose was, as he put it, to “redouble the positive” – which meant more about the Big Society. Cameron has fashioned a persuasive narrative out of this, but question marks still remain over whether