Fraser Nelson

David Cameron has an interview with tomorrow's FT where he comes up with lots of reasons why there will be no tax cuts. Here's the gist. 1. The tax burden is a not a useful yardstick to judge a government by. As he says: "Using the tax burden is never a good idea because you can reduce or increase the tax burden depending on what you do with government borrowing. It is not a good measure of our success.” 2. The “success” of a Conservative government should be judged not on tax cuts but on whether it delivered economic stability. 3. Public finances are in a “bad state” although that does “not necessarily” mean tax cuts would be impossible in the first term of a Conservative government.

My, what a lot of Brownies. I can only assume today’s PMQs was one of those weird things, where no two people can agree. Many of my colleagues in the press gallery thought it was dull. I was riveted. Cameron was taking Brown on home turf and having him resort to his litany of fake facts. Cameron was full of unscripted remarks, showing fluency and confidence. Sure, his gags weren’t roof-raisers, but it’s like Dr Johnson’s dog with improvised lines at PMQs. It’s not that improvisation is done well, it that it’s done at all. You could almost feel the two men’s contempt for each other. Brown dismissing Cameron as man who can’t do his arithmetic and Cameron responding that one duff PM plus one duff Chancellor equals one mammoth economic mess.

The Tory inflation report has splashed today's Mail, got (another) p1 in the Telegraph, p2 lead in The Sun - the list goes on. A direct hit. Proof of Coulson's nous, but also of Labour's strikingly ineffective rebuttal mechanism. Most goods on the Tory list are cheaper, in real terms, than ten years ago. Other items, like instant coffee and bananas, are lower even in nominal prices. And where was the Labour person making this point? I may be reading too much into this. But with Balls running DCFS it seems Labour's financial force field is down. Time, then, for the Tories to strike.

The Conservatives have today published one of the best pieces of research I have seen them do in some time – a “cost of living” report to coincide with David Cameron campaigning in London today. Following on from a spread in The Sun last week, it focuses on what inflationary pressure means to families. Butter: up 37%. Eggs: up 34%. Bread: up 28%. Milk: up 17%. All since Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. Can we blame Brown for such high inflation? Not really. But this blows a hole in his risible claims to be providing record low inflation.   With this research the Tories are brilliantly exploiting Del Brown’s addiction to statistical chicanery. We explain his various inflation tricks in Brownie no1.

The Spectator recently ran a letter from Lord Adonis saying the Swedish schools revolution which I said David Cameron would bring to Britain was in fact being delivered under Labour. Huh, I thought, keep telling yourself that - if it makes this whole Brown thing better for you. But today I picked up my local newspaper to find a striking splash: two City Academies run by Kunskapsskolan, the Swedish company I interviewed for my cover piece, are coming to my borough.   Things move quickly. Just last month Per Ledin, the head of Kunskapsskolan, was in his office asking me: “City Academies? What kind of a beast are those?” Now he’s saying “I’ll take two, please”.

John McCain is doing Europe tomorrow: Brown for breakfast, Cameron for afters and Sarkozy in Paris in the afternoon. It's significant that he's setting aside as much time for Cameron as Brown. In Bournmouth 06, Cameron hailed McCain as the next president of America - not a claim he (or anyone) would have repeated in Blackpool last October. But Cameron was right first time, and his initial bet has paid dividends.  Normally, American presidential candidates resist being photographed with Opposition leaders, but I understand McCain is happy to pose with DC. Let's see if footage of them together makes the news tomorrow. UPDATE: McCain arrived a little early (I wonder why…) and I bumped into them both as I came into the Commons.

From his deckchair in Vietnam, Guido blogs on the latest openings for the revamped (and, perhaps, jinxed) Team Brown – two web experts. He certainly needs them - Labour’s internet operation is indeed dire, and the No10 website is little better (save for the wonderful glimpse it offers of what UK government may look like under a restored caliphate).  Perhaps he should pay them to blog instead. Old Alex Hilton needs reinforcements – the left is heavily out numbered by us here on the right, for reasons I’ve never quite understood. The strange thing about the web is that individual people are far more popular and effective than hired hands. Brown may have a huge budget to get the brightest whiz kids. But what he needs most is a left-wing Iain Dale.

Now the Fed has cut US rates by another quarter, what’s next? The City expects UK rates to fall to 4.75% by year-end. Now and again, Gordon Brown likes to boast that he is able to reduce interest rates – unlike the Tories in early 1990s. One of Magician Brown’s favourite tricks is the “false proxy” – saying “base rates are falling, so homeowners can rest easy.” But as I have blogged before, the distinguishing feature of this credit crunch is the decoupling of the base rate from de facto mortgage rates, as the graph below from John Charcol shows. We are entering new territory, and the old financial relationships are not a reliable guide to what lies ahead.