Frank Field’s review of child poverty policy covers a daunting expanse of ground. From breast-feeding to the little society (“the younger sister of the Big Society”), it’s stuffed with more ideas than reviews that are twice the size – and will take some time to digest properly. But, in a way, that’s precisely the point.
Yesterday, Coffee House recommended that disappointed English football fans take solace, as always, in memories of 1966. To that end, here’s The Spectator’s review of England’s World Cup victory at the time. These were clearly more innocent times, as evidenced by the closing observation: “whether we win or not is not a matter for negotiation
Bad news, I’m afraid: Russia has won the contest to host the World Cup in 2018. According to some sources, England didn’t even make it beyond the first round of voting. So, not the fairytale result that David Cameron, or most English football fans, would have wanted – nor, indeed, the one that was expected
Coffee House has wrung today’s party expenditure figures through the calculator to produce the colourful graphs below. As the headings suggest, they show how much was spent by each party* for every individual vote and seat they won in the general election: *That is, each party that received over 100,000 votes. Excluding Northern Ireland-based parties.
Football and Coffee House rarely mix, except of course when Manchester United win the European Cup. Yet I’m sure plenty of CoffeeHousers want to see England come out on top when the winning nation of the 2018 World Cup bid is announced later today. This morning saw the English delegation – including Davids Cameron and
Yesterday’s PMQs already feels like a turning point. It wasn’t so much the nature of David Cameron’s victory – comprehensive though it was – but rather the way Labour MPs have reacted to Ed Miliband’s defeat. Whatever doubts some of them held privately about their leader have suddenly spilled out, mercilessly, across the snow. In
Forget the children of Thatcher, here’s what the Americans were saying about the Iron Lady herself when she became Tory party leader. The source is a confidential cable from the American Embassy in London to the US State Department, dated 16 February 1975, and referenced in Claire Berlinski’s book There is No Alternative: Subject: Margaret
No doubt, the theatre of PMQs resonates more inside Wesminster than out. But I suspect this line might have some purchase beyond the bubble:
VERDICT: A freewheeling, swashbuckling sort of performance from Cameron today, that was encapsulated by a single line: “I’d rather be a Child of Thatcher than a Son of Brown”. Sure, that may not go down too well with lefty Lib Dems nor, indeed, many Scottish voters. But, in the context of PMQs, it was a
The leak that keeps on leaking has one or two embarrassing titbits about our domestic policymakers this morning. Yet far more noteworthy are the documents on Pakistan. While they don’t tell us too much that is surprising – being mostly about the duplicitous game that country is playing with the West – they do highlight
This from Matthew Taylor – the former No.10 head of policy, speaking to the Times for their series (£) on the fall of New Labour – deserves a post of its own: “For me, New Labour died when Tony bought Gordon an ice cream in 2005. I remember sitting in Downing St two days after
On the surface, there are one or two baubles to delight a Labour supporter: their party leader has just had a second son, of course; they are pushing ahead of the Tories in a number of polls; and the coalition will surely come under sustained and heavy attack as the cuts make themselves felt. But
The Spectator held its annual Parliamentarian of the Year Awards ceremony this evening. Here, for CoffeeHousers to deliberate over, is the full list of winners: Newcomer of the year: Caroline Lucas Inquisitor of the year: Tom Watson Peer of the year: Lord Young of Graffham Speech of the year: David Cameron (for his “big comprehensive
I kid, I kid – but it’s still striking that Labour are pushing ahead in the polls as soon as Ed Miliband takes his paternity leave. According to today’s YouGov poll, they are now 5 points ahead of the Tories: their biggest lead since 2007, and an escalation of the 2-point advantage they recorded in
VERDICT: Harriet Harman’s questions must have looked quite clever on paper: a heavy emphasis on police cuts, followed by a quick dose of indigation over the vanity photographers. But, in reality, they were breezily repelled by Cameron. All he had to do was cite the words of Alan Johnson and refer to a list of
The superb Slugger O’Toole blog highlights what is certainly the most resonant quote if the day: “When you borrow, you lose a little bit of your sovereignty, no matter who you borrow from.” Those words were uttered by the Irish finance minister Brian Lenihan this morning, and they capture his country’s grisly predicament perfectly. The
I’m sure we’ll all be bombarded with footage over the coming days, weeks and months – but, in the meantime, here’s the first post-engagement interview for any interested CoffeeHousers:
After being pre-empted by the morning newspapers, Ken Clarke’s statement this afternoon contained nothing that was unexpected. “We’ve paid the money so we can move on,” he said. And he went on to emphasise that the Guantanamo payouts are not an admission of culpability, but rather all about sparing the public’s money and the spooks’
It’s not just the embarrassing and the difficult that will be buried underneath the Wills ‘n’ Kate coverage tomorrow – some good news will be too. Among it is the coalition’s plan to expand the provision of personal budgets. According to the Lib Dem health minister Paul Burstow, speaking today, some one million elderly people
Slap all kinds of health warnings on this, but – in view of speculation that the Wills and Kate nuptials might work in the coalition’s favour – I thought CoffeeHousers might like to see what happened to the the Tory government’s poll rating in 1981, around when Prince Charles married Diana. So here’s a graph
