All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories
Vince Cable’s reputation might be another over-inflated bubble that will have to burst at some point, but there’s no doubt he’s a formidable politician. Alistair Darling should be extremely worried that Cable is now demanding his scalp because of his property flipping. “When he was accused of ‘flipping’ homes and getting the taxpayer to pay
There’s something grimly hilarious about the frontpage headline of the Sunday Times today: “Gordon Brown wants Ed Balls as Chancellor”. Sure, we’ve known that for years, but now it sounds as though the Dear Leader may actually be on the verge of making it happen. The story goes on refer to a “top-level leak” from
There was something entirely predictable about the mortgage on David Cameron’s constituency home getting drawn into the expenses scandal. Even Tory MPs supportive of the line Cameron has taken on this issue have, in private, pointed to it; noting that Cameron himself had found the most politically palatable way to make the system work for
The Obama administration is planning to rewrite the rulebook for warfare establishing new laws for war in cyberspace including a series of international agreements that will spell out just what actions are permissible and what will be considered an act of war. For the first time, countries like China, which launch millions of attacks every
Well, well, well – it just goes from bad to worse for Labour. A new ICM poll for the Sunday Telegraph has them behind the Lib Dems when it comes to general election voting intentions. The Tories are well ahead on 40 percent (up 1), then it’s Clegg & Co. on 25 percent (up 5),
Barack Obama’s speech in Cairo next month is being hyped as a major part of his administration’s outreach to the ‘Muslim world’. One can only hope that it is a better, more realistic speech than the one Obama gave in Berlin last July setting out how trans-Atlantic relations could be improved. In that speech, Obama
Having ruled out in almost Shermanesque terms standing in a leadership contest this side of the election, Harriet Harman is now one of the kingmakers. In an interview with the Guardian magazine, she makes a couple of key points. First, she’s clear that we haven’t reached the end of this crisis yet: “And there’s still
Once the local and European elections results are all out on Monday the eighth, we can expect Gordon Brown to try and launch a fight-back. Two predictable elements to it will be a reshuffle, designed to bind in those who could credibly wield the knife against him, and a constitutional reform package. As Prime Minister,
If today’s Populus poll in The Times is accurate, then Gordon Brown’s will be fighting a last-ditch battle to save his premiership nine days from now. The poll has Labour heading for a 16 percent share of the vote at the European elections behind both the Tories, 30 percent, and UKIP, 19 percent. The Lib
As a couple of commenters noted I was shamefully remiss in forgetting to post some quality country music last Saturday. My excuse? I was en route to the Heineken Cup final (Yay. Leinster!) but, frankly, that wasn’t good enough. Today? I’m off to Langholm, representing Selkirk Cricket Club in our, possibly futile or at best
This is one of the Big Questions. Nate Silver was one of the biggest winners in last year’s election and one is wary of suggesting that he’s got this question wrong. Nevertheless, I rather suspect that he may have. He suggests that, in 2012 at least, the GOP could, perhaps should, consider giving up on
More riffing on Nelson! Fraser, that is. His Telegraph article and subsequent Coffee House post on future spending cuts argue that the Tories are, defensively, planning to leave the NHS budget untouched (and international development!) and that doing so will require 10% cuts across every other department. Including defence. Since most people would, I think,
Why should Labour keep Gordon Brown as their leader? If Labour come third behind the LibDems at the Euro elections, this question is certain to be raised in public by someone. I hear that the Dear Leader has prepared an answer: green shoots. Seriously. Look, he will say, the economy is on the turn. And
Here are some of the posts made over the past week on Spectator.co.uk: Fraser Nelson highlights the numbers which undermine the Budget deceit, and sets out the choice David Cameron faces now that we’re over the cliff. James Forsyth outlines the grim international situation, and wonders whether Labour will dump Gordon Brown. Peter Hoskin gives
The Independent’s gossip column reports that Labour is having some trouble recruiting celebrity talent to us annual fundraising dinner: “Party press officers insist that they have a “surprise singing performer” to compound [Eddie Izard’s] credentials. Who could it be? The usual cast of characters (Mick Hucknall, the Bee Gees, Heather Small) refuse to respond to
As it’s Friday, and with the elections coming next week, here’s a poll triple-header (after the jump) for CoffeeHousers. The three questions are very much interrelated, and are certainly doing the rounds here in sunny Westminster. We’ll keep them running until 1230 next Monday. Online Surveys & Market Research Online Surveys & Market Research Online Surveys & Market Research
This story in The Sun today does make you wonder what on earth is going on: “One adult in 12 convicted of the most serious sex assaults on kids walks free from court. The maximum punishment for rape or attempted rape of a child under 13 is life. But new figures show ten people were
This snippet from today’s Guardian tells you everything you need to know about Labour morale at the moment: “Gordon Brown is facing an escalating crisis of confidence inside the parliamentary Labour party as record numbers of his MPs apply to sit in the House of Lords after the next general election. In the clearest indication
Now that Damien McBride’s out of the picture, just who will Brown use to take out his political opponents? Well, David Blunkett seems like he could do a thorough job. He’s got an article in the Guardian which takes the fight to the AV+ voting system proposed by the Man Who Would be King, Alan
Fraser’s piece on the BNP is well worth your time. Parts of it were eerily familiar as I had the feeling that I’d been down this road before. That’s because I have: the BNP’s strategy is pretty much the same as that employed by Sinn Fein in the Republic of Ireland. There wasn’t much talk
I’ll give Lance Armstrong’s fans this: they know how to count to seven. Beyond that, however, they’re rather like members of a cult who refuse to accept that there could even be such a thing as another way of looking at matters, let alone the idea that there might be some merit to that alternative
Responding to today’s Telegraph story which quotes Major-General Antonio Taguba as saying that the unreleased interrogation photos show “torture, abuse, rape and every indecency” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had this to say: “I want to speak generally about some reports I’ve witnessed over the past few years in the British media. And in some
I have the dubious honour of being cited by Ed Balls in a press conference as proof that the Tories are hiding a cuts agenda. I say in the Daily Telegraph that the Tories’ plan is for a 10% cut across defence, education, transport and the Home Office. In typical word-twisting fashion, Balls said it
Three MPs have announced they are standing down at the next election today; proof that the expenses scandal is getting more deadly for MPs as it goes on. But, in the background, the conversation about whether Brown can survive what Anne McEloy has dubbed the Ides of June is getting louder. Over at the always
Carol Sarler may be correct to argue, as she does in this week’s edition of the magazine, that we have an unhealthy fascination with sex crimes that is both prurient and puritanical. But I’d suggest that, whatever the merits of her wider argument, she doesn’t know very much about Ireland: In Ireland, some 2,000 adults
At a press conference at the Hay Festival this week, broadcaster-comedienne Sandi Toksvig began with a wistful reminiscence of what arts broadcasting used to be like when she started out. ‘You could have an idea, go and see your editor, and they’d say okay, let’s do it’ she explained. ‘Now, you go to, ahem, certain
The Daily Mail has paid a small fortune to secure the rights to a dull book, which has taken three years to publish, by a minor Scottish aristocrat, who runs a jewellery business, used to sit on the Court of St Andrews University and is distantly related to the Queen through marriage to James Ogilvy,
The game is afoot. When you talked to Labour people about an attempt to remove Gordon Brown they always used to use say ‘if’. Now they say ‘when’. The view is that June 4th will be grim for all the major parties, but particularly grim for Labour. Oddly, the worse the Tories do, the worse
It is the very ordinariness of this case that makes it worth mentioning. From this week’s edition of our local paper, the Southern Reporter: Unhappy with conventional treatments, Jean Sherlow turned to cannabis in a bid to relieve her pain, Selkirk Sheriff Court heard on Tuesday. The 59-year-old decided to cultivate her own supply at
It’s typical, isn’t it? Coffee House decides to stop working for a couple of hours and, in the meantime, two MPs confirm that they’re going to stand down. You’ve probably caught the news elsewhere on the good ol’ blogosphere but – yes – Margaret Moran and Julie Kirkbride won’t be running for Parliament in the
Will the elections on 4 June finish off Gordon Brown? The theory that an embarrassing result for Labour – finishing behind the Lib Dems and/or UKIP – could trigger a leadership challenge gets frequent hearings in Westminster. And now Guido blogs that plans are afoot, with David Miliband and Alan Johnson readying their “campaign teams”.
You’ve got to love Nick Clegg’s declaration that “warm words, rhetoric and consideration are not enough,” in an article for today’s Guardian, and hot on the heels of some, er, “warm words” in the Independent yesterday. Although, in seriousness, I imagine that one of Clegg’s proposals will be fairly popular: no more holiday time for
British politics is currently suspended in one of those strange Road Runner moments, when we’ve run over the cliff but haven’t looked down. From April 2011, spending on public services will start to fall by a cumulative 7 percent over three years, according to Budget 2009. And given its fairytale economic assumptions (trampoline recovery, etc)
As North Korea continues to ratchet up the nuclear rhetoric, the US and its allies have publicly determined that ‘something must be done’. Barack Obama, in what is the first and most serious test of his Presidency, announced that the world must ‘stand up’ to North Korea. But behind the bluster from Pyongyang and Washington