Fraser Nelson

Might David Cameron be a one-term wonder? The pendulum of British politics does tend to move slowly and as little as 18 months ago the Tories could expect two terms at least. But the economic stars are aligning in a way that will make sensible Conservatives shudder. Cuts – real ones, not the type Gordon Brown accuses the Tories of – are looking inevitable. Those Dublin protests could be coming here next. Brown may borrow just enough to avoid making cuts, leaving Cameron to burst the public spending bubble. I outline this scenario in my News of the World column today. I’m not saying it’s likely, just that it should be taken seriously. Here are a few factors to consider.   1)   China may save Brown from the IMF.

It is, of course, lunacy to have £2,500 of taxpayers' money sent to Abu Qatada as per the instructions of the European Court of Human Rights. But what would a Conservative government do about this? It is crucial to remember that David Cameron's proposed Bill of Rights would itself enact the ECHR and, therefore, not be much use. As it stands, it's more of a media decoy - and this need not be so. The UK remains a sovereign country - all it would take is an act of Parliament declaring that the Bill of Rights would outrank any other jurisdiction and that we have our own laws. Not that we disagree with the aims of the ECHR, it's just that its application to English law is causing too many problems and leading to a sense of injustice.

It's the anniversary of the Northern Rock nationalisation today, and I've just done a discussion on Simon Mayo's R5 programme arguing why the occasion is not to be celebrated. Rosie Winterton, the pensions minister, was saying nationalisation was a great success. Her argument is worth recording here because it gives a clue why Labour's poll rating may sink sink further. Look at the pensioners, Winterton said; nationalisation of NR rescued them from losing all their savings. Did it really? Wasn't the the savings guarantee offered on 9 Oct 07 (which stopped the run on the bank)? Nationalisation - or, as it was called then, "temporary public ownership" - came in fully on 18 Feb 08, as most people listening would know.

There is a problem hanging over British politics so big and ugly that no party wants to acknowledge it, far less discuss it: how far do we cut state spending?  Cameron's plan to outspend what he'll inherit from Brown is no longer viable. Since those decisions were taken, the UK tax base has collapsed. We can't go on forever bumming money off the Arabs and Chinese. There is a large, rusty bullet which a Conservative government will have to bite. That's why ConservativeHome's fulsome analysis today is such an important contribution to the debate. It talks about £100bn of cuts, and this is by no means a fantastical scenario.

The first serious Tory defection will be detailed in tomorrow's News of the World. David Freud, the architect of the Purnell welfare refrom that we've been admiring in Coffee House, is to become a Conservative peer and shadow welfare reform minister. So someone with genuine expertise will be in the DWP driving through a desperately-needed agenda. This is a real coup not just for David Cameron but George Osborne whom, I understand, has been working on Freud for months. Freud is a banker by training, but don't let that put you off him. He was hired by Tony Blair to think the unthinkable on welfare reform - and his suggestions (here) were genuinely radical. The sort that Blair now wishes he'd done in 1997. But this was 2007 and Gordon Brown was having none of it, so Freud was cut adrift.

Most of the stuff we do at Coffee House is for a laugh – but our wiki-investigation into the recession is deadly serious. We urgently need to find out what went wrong, and the thinking of the Westminster village consensus won’t do. We need you, your insights, your suggestions, your criticisms. If you have friends with expertise – in academia, the hedge fund industry, the quiet souls who weren’t promoted because they didn’t buy into the myth - urge them to leave their thoughts on how our investigation should proceed.  We provide the platform, you provide the energy and direction. So far it’s been great: over 40 responses to our scoping inquiry. I’ll do a revised ‘terms of reference’ later, and ask for your thoughts again.

There was a kind of grand jury feel to Gordon Brown’s appearance before the select committee chairs today. “I’m not sure I can make my hearing as exciting as the one you’ve had in the last two days,” he said. “Get started,” said John McFall.  Brown has a great genius in neutralising hostile questions by dragging it down into minutiae – a trick that Blair, the incurable thespian, could never quite master. I won’t blog the points that ran into the sand. Here’s my summary of Brown’s appearance, and my take on it: 1. Printing money. Brown said that the BoE has a “statutory duty” to keep inflation up if it falls below the 2% target. “Our target is not zero inflation”.

In PMQs today Gordon Brown said there are 500,000 vacancies in the economy - a revision from his recent 600,000 claim. But this morning's unemployment data show that even this is out of date. The number of vacancies is collapsing way below the half-million mark - so these British jobs are becoming even more scarce. The trajectory of unemployment so far the sharpest since the war. Monthly data for the Great Depression just doesn't exist, so Balls may be right after all.

Good piece by Piers Morgan in today's Daily Mail about the British talent doing well in America. He quotes an American film director saying our actors are more likely to be formally trained - and then, to America, for the big bucks. From The Wire (McNulty's from Yorkshire) to Gossip Girl (Chuck Bass is from Hertfordshire), some the best known 'American' actors over there are Brits putting on an accent - it's something of a phenomenon. But it's not restricted just to acting. One of the most under-reported stories is the silent exodus of skilled Brits to countries with better state schools and safer streets. As I blogged a while back, Britain has repelled more of its high-skilled workers than any other G7 economy: or the Brits deemed to have high skills, 15% live overseas.