Fraser Nelson

Why increase aid to Afghanistan by 40pc when troops are dying from a lack of body armour and helicopters? The pledge to not just protect but vastly increase the aid budget is one which, polls show, leaves the public puzzled.  I was on the Politics Show with Jon Sopel, who was putting to Andrew Mitchell some very sharp questions about all of this. Why build schools in Afghanistan, but cancel them in Britain? Worse, in fact, DFID has a habit of building schools but not finding teachers for them - its ideology states that teaching should be a job for central government, just like it is in Britain. The Afghan government is corrupt and pays a pittance for teachers, who can usually earn more as translators for other foreigners, etc.

David Cameron has today told the News of the World that he is "terrified" about the prospect of sending his children to an inner-London state school. This is quite some statement, given how many tens of thousands of parents are in the same predicament. Isn't it the classic politician's error? To betray how his aloofness from voters by showing how he fears what ordinary parents have to put up with? That's what Tony Blair thought – so he'd pretend to be happy with state schools while sending his kids to the ultra-selective Oratory School. That is hypocrisy. What David Cameron has said represents honesty. After all, why shouldn't he be terrified? As I say in my News of the World column today, the record is appalling.

Michael Gove's welcome freeze on Building Schools for the Future will invite tomorrow's press to claim only that this means 715 various building projects are not being carried out. In fact, what it means is that the fund will be open for the Swedish-style new schools. The budget will be transferred from bureaucratic priorities to those of communities, as expressed by those who wish there to be a new school. One of the great tragedies of the politicians' stranglehold over education is that they just love huge, shiny buildings to point at, complete with new whiteboards and all the latest gadgets. The Swedish experiment has shown the parents care not one jot about how grand the building is: their value is placed on the importance of teaching.

When the coalition was first formed, I expected it to collapse in months. But, then, I was expecting the type of coalition that I’d seen in the Scottish Parliament when Labour and the Lib Dems kept their distance (and their mistrust). But what has emerged is a far tighter coalition – and one that may even end up in a merger. Cameron has been very generous to the Lib Dems, in both Cabinet places and policies. But since then, he has just grown more generous. In the News of the World today, I wonder if he’s playing for keeps.   It was great to welcome Nick Clegg to The Spectator’s summer party last week, and the other Lib Dems who turned up to raise a glass to the return of fiscal sanity.

Although David Cameron said later that he didn’t mean it, there was no mistaking the sincerity when he told Adam Boulton that “We cannot be there for another five years having effectively been there for nine years already”. In my News of the World column  today, I say that it’s pretty clear his Afghan strategy is to secure the earliest dignified exit. But I also say that this does not necessarily bode ill for defence more widely. I gather that George Osborne, fresh from the success of his Budget last week, is working on a plan that will freeze defence budget in cash terms (an 11% real terms cut over five years) thereby saving the military from the 25% average cut for non-ring fenced departments.

This is a slow-burning budget. Not because Osborne has concealed, like Gordon Brown did, but because the reverse is true. The budget is, as Osborne says, a third of the size but with three times the amount of information. It has layers: some policies and language are there just to assuage the LibDems. Some are pure Tory. James has a brilliant cover piece in tomorrow’s magazine which spells out the political, rather than economic, forces at work in this budget. Osborne, that great player of three-dimensional chess, sees in this budget plans to restore a Tory majority government. The Red Book itself is, for wonks like myself, a joy to read: straight figures, with nothing concealed.

I knew it was time for me to leave the Scottish Parliament press corps when I was in Deacon Brodie's Tavern one night and pulled into a game of "name the top ten sexiest MSPs". On my first day there, September 2000, the journalist next to me was in trouble for headbutting a politician in the pub the night before. It's an unusual place with antics that make Westminster look like a nunnery: I remember one set of political awards where a Labour MSP drunkenly set fire to the curtains and was imprisoned. I feel sorry for the poor members of the general public who come into contact with these MSPs - primarily through the Petitions Committee. It's chaired by Frank McAveety, who forgot to turn his microphone off when leering after a member of the public.