Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Alex Massie

A Question for the Nudgers

As we know, Team Dave are fans of Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s Nudge. The authors advocate something called “libertarian paternalism”. Steve Hilton, Cameron’s style guru, is especially enthusiastic about using insights gleaned from behavioural economics to advance “progressive Conservatism”. Here’s one example he cites in a recent strategy memo: A few years ago, the

The Tories are frustrating, but Labour is unelectable

Ok, Coffee House has given the Tories short-shrift in recent weeks, but this is a reaction born of frustration. The election should be a walkover. At their best, the Tories have the radical policies, and to a certain extent the team, to rescue Britain from its current Labour-inflicted quandary. Yet the party remains tentative, fearful

Brown and out?

Whether anything comes of it is a different matter altogether, but this insight from the Standard’s Joe Murphy deserves pulling out: “A senior minister is said to be close to quitting in a move to destabilise Mr Brown, the Standard has been told. There is speculation among MPs that a big beast such as Chancellor

Is this Labour’s election slogan?

I wouldn’t be surprised if this Gordon Brown snippet gets deployed ad nauseam between now and the next election: “[Brown] described Labour as the party of ‘prosperity not austerity'” If so, it’s worth noting that it’s a phrase that Ed Miliband used in several speeches last year (e.g. here, here and here).  But, whoever its

James Forsyth

Will CCHQ impose an all women shortlist in East Surrey?

East Surrey will be the first seat where Tory central office gets to impose a shortlist of three candidates on a local association. Peter Ainsworth, its MP, has today announced that he is stepping down and because he has waited until the New Year to make this announcement CCHQ’s emergency candidate selection rules now apply.

War of attrition may prove to be Labour’s downfall

The party that nearly bankrupted Britain has bankrupt itself. The Times reports that, once again, Labour’s coffers are bare and that the party is technically insolvent. David Blunkett, chairman of Labour’s election development board, is unequivocal that Labour cannot withstand an interminable election campaign, which is precisely why the stinking rich Tories have opened one.

Clegg keeps them guessing

Yesterday was all Labour, Tories, Labour, Tories.  So, today, enter the Lib Dems.  Nick Clegg has an article in this morning’s Times which, to be fair, is actually quite noteworthy.  His main point?  That the Lib Dems are a party in their own right, and will not be engaging in “under-the-counter deals” with the Big

Alex Massie

A Case Against Profiling

In the wake of the Knicker-Bomber’s attempt to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner it’s hardly a surprise that plenty of folk are calling for more rigorous profiling of muslim (or arab) passengers wanting to board aircraft. Some go so far as to suggest that all young muslim men should be strip-searched. Brother Blackburn doesn’t go

James Forsyth

A man bites dog story

Here’s something we won’t see very often during this election year, a candidate breaking with his party to praise a policy of the other’s side. But that’s what Alex Hilton, Labour candidate for the rock solid Tory seat of Chelsea and Fulham, did today—and all credit to him for that. Hilton, a veteran Labour blogger,

Alex Massie

Christmas Quiz! The Answers!

As promised, here are the answers to this year’s Christmas Quiz. It turns out that it was perhaps a little harder than I’d appreciated since no-one (or at least no-one who sent me their answers) came very close to getting it right. The most valiant efforts – and most efforts were most valiant now that

Fraser Nelson

Is Cameron cowering in the face of Labour attacks?

Say what you like about the Cameron project, but at least they are strongly committed to marriage. Aren’t they? Well, it seems, not now. I always suspected that the wonderful strength of Cameron’s rhetoric on marriage was not really matched by his policy – a rather paltry tax break. Now, it seems not even that

James Forsyth

Why the Tories started with health

The Tories today rolled out the first section of their manifesto this morning, the chapter on health. The reason the Tories started with their plans for the NHS, as they did when setting out their priorities for government last autumn, is quite simple: the leadership thinks that every time Cameron talks about health the party

CoffeeHousers’ Wall January 4th – January 10th 

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

James Forsyth

The Tories accuse Labour of telling “lies”

The Toryies are busy rebutting Labour’s claim that there is a £34bn black hole in their tax and spending plans. The most striking thing is how strong the language Conservative sources are using is, Labour’s document was described to me as ‘a “dodgy dossier” full of lies’. It is quite remarkable that Labour has the

Two new Tory health policies

Localism and results-based healthcare are central to the Tories’ NHS reform measures. They plan to arrest the widening gap between the life expectancy of rich and poor by introducing a Health Premium, a new policy, to direct funds to the poorest communities. The second new initiative is the creation of ‘maternity networks’, which will link

James Forsyth

The shape of things to come | 4 January 2010

Today is a taste of how politics is going to be until the election: competing Labour and Tory events, claim and counter claim. Alistair Darling kicked off proceedings with an event setting out the supposed £34 billion black hole in the Tory’s plans for the public finances. This took some chutzpah considering how vague Labour’s

Just in case you missed them…<br />

…here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the New Year period. Fraser Nelson asks David Cameron not to take voters for fools, and wishes everyone a boozy New Year. James Forsyth reflects on the Detroit bomber’s radicalisation, and debates the tensions in the Cameron circle. Peter Hoskin says that the Tories are

Alex Massie

English Schadenfreude

Everyone always says that there’s no english equivalent of schadenfreude and I’ve always assumed, recklessly as it turns out, that since everyone always says this it might be true. Not so! Hats-off to Mr Ciaran J Breen of Celbridge, County Kildare for writing to the Irish Times to explain that: But there is a one-word

Endangering impartiality

Labour’s rapid rebuttal service will respond to the Tories’ policy blitz by questioning George Osborne’s spending pledges, of which more later. No objection can be raised against this action except that the government enlisted the Treasury to deliver very detailed costings under the Freedom of Information Act. The Times reports that the Tories are understandably

James Forsyth

New Year, same old Brown

Gordon Brown was on Andrew Marr this morning. Brown didn’t make much news but I thought there were three aspects of the interview that tell us much about how Brown intends to campaign. First, take his response to Marr pressing him about how Labour would cut the deficit: “No, we’re raising your taxes to do it.

Tories struggling to find a line on tax

After the platitudes in David Cameron’s speech yesterday, comes the bluntness of Ken Clarke in today’s Sunday Telegraph.  Interviewed by the paper, the shadow business secretary says that it would be a “folly” to rule out tax rises: “It is something that every Conservative tries to avoid but I didn’t avoid it when I was

Alex Massie

The Myth of Gordon Brown the Eternal Battler

Self-delusion is an important skill in politics. If you can’t convince yourself that what you’re saying is true then good luck with convincing the electorate. Among Gordon Brown’s difficulties is the unfortunate truth that he’s not an accomplished liar. So, for instance, when he tells Andrew Marr this morning that “Everything I have ever won

Alex Massie

Rory Stewart’s Long March to the Border

It’s a curious feature of British politics these days that an ex-army, ex-FCO hand educated at Eton and Oxford can reasonably considered a “new” kind of politician. Then again, Rory Stewart isn’t your average Old Etonian. Assuming, as seems likely, he wins Penrith and the Border he seems likely to be the new member of

Fraser Nelson

Don’t take the voters for fools, Mr Cameron

David Cameron can give rousing, mature, insightful speeches. Yesterday’s was not one of them. It used the word ‘hope’ 7 times and ‘change’ 27 times and that, I suspect, was its entire purpose – because there was precious little content in it otherwise. In the News of the World today, I describe the speech as

James Forsyth

Tensions in the Cameron circle over election strategy

There is a fascinating glimpse at the tensions inside the top echelons of the Conservative party in The Times today. Francis Elliott reports that Steve Hilton is trying to veto the appointment of James O’Shaugnessy, head of policy for the party, as head of the Downing Street policy unit should the Tories win the election.

Why profiling is essential

It is a truth, yet to be universally acknowledged, that the overwhelming majority of global terrorism is committed by radical Muslims. However, the Guardian reports that Whitehall has reached that conclusion and passenger profiling is “in the mix” of the latest airport security review. Thank God, sense prevails at last. The previous airport review, conducted

James Forsyth

Fact of the day

the National Security Agency alone now gathers four times more data each day than is contained in the Library of Congress. From David Brooks’s column in the NYT today

By marginalising Mandelson, Labour has put itself in a half-Nelson

The Dark Lord’s grip is weakening. Lord Mandelson’s waning status dominated headlines in the prelude to Christmas, and today the Telegraph reports that Harriet Harman, and not Mandelson, will lead Labour’s election battle. Mandelson’s marginalisation is understandable. He has been the government’s fire-fighter, deployed to defend the indefensible and bamboozle voters with a fantasia of