Fraser Nelson

The immigration statistics saga takes another turn today, as the News of the World produces figures showing that immigrants from the 25 EU countries account for just 32% of the total. Ergo, ministers have been able to control immigration all along – and its repeated suggestions to the contrary are untrue.   It fingers Liam Byrne, who attacked Cameron’s proposals last week with a very different statistic. “His small print seems not to touch European Economic Area nationals, overseas students and dependents who made up 80 per cent of British incomers last year," said Byrne.   Now, Byrne is one of the good guys in this government, but his occupational hazard is going out there with data supplied to him by the Home Office.

There is something about impending doom which focuses the mind. That is why the Tory conference in Blackpool was perhaps the most effective brainstorming session in the party’s history — albeit inadvertently. David Cameron arrived facing an election. He left the northern seaside resort having scared Gordon Brown away from going to the polls — and, in the process, launched a policy strategy more radical than he had ever dreamt he would be pursuing. The proposal to raise the inheritance-tax threshold to £1 million grabbed all the headlines and seems to have struck a chord in the Labour marginals that worried the PM very much.

Cameron again handled the immigration issue well today, and is linking it to welfare reform. Why do we have so many vacancies in Britain, asked Humphrys? Because of the perverse incentives of our welfare state, he says. While this may perplex the pollys of this world, it will make sense to the majority. It's what David Davis calls "council estate politics". People see immigrants come in to work, see the family over the road on benefits enjoying holidays they cannot afford, and conclude that something stinks. These were Thatcher's people. It is great to see Cameron tuning in to them.

Just in case anyone was wondering, the Tories would like to hint (ever so gently) that Cameron socked it to those hand amputators in his meeting with them today. Or, in diplomatic language of a spokesman, "Most of the 45 minute meeting was spent discussing co-operation between Britain and Saudi Arabia on counter-terrorism matters, including radicalisation inside and outside UK mosques, and the importance of stopping this radicalisation and the sources of funding for it." Get your Wahhabi cash out of our mosques, in other words? Let's see how the papers play it tomorrow (if at all).

Once, Alistair Campbell would have spotted and filled the news vacuum which sucks away at the papers this weekend. Instead it the Tories have scored a spin coup. They have grabbed headlines by re-announcing their longstanding “English votes for English laws” policy which (as Jonathan Freedland said in July) is “not new but in their 2001 and 2005 manifestos”.   No one cared about the policy then: now, it hits a nerve because there’s much agitation about Scotland’s subsidy. I’ve just been doing the papers on Sky News with Dawn Butler who said this policy was anti-Scottish. Wrongly: it was originally proposed by The Scotsman many years ago. Polls show that Scots, too, consider the current system unfair.

While preparing for my first Question Time last night, talking to former panellists, I discovered a strata of politics I didn’t know existed. With five million viewers it’s the most-watched political TV programme and is taken incredibly seriously by all parties. Blair expected his Cabinet to do it, and face the public (although one G. Brown never did). “Clear the whole day for it,” one Shadow Cabinet member advised me. “No lunch, no nothing, just prepare”. Some of the advice was chemical (half a beta blocker to calm the nerves, it turns out, is a trick of the trade). Most MPs advised ignoring the questioners, and saying what you wanted to say. Melanie Phillips’ advice was to do exactly the opposite.

I’m just out of the Public Administration Select Committee meeting with John Yates. No revelations, but a clear clash of cultures – and philosophies. Tony Wright, the PASC chair, said that cash-for-honours has been going on for years. “It’s the way of the world,” he said at one point. So why, they wanted to know, did Yates investigate? One line of his sticks out, in response to Paul Flynn (who had been asking him why he caused an “ordeal” to those interviewed). “Mr Flynn, when I joined this organisation I took an oath as an officer of the crown to work by four guiding principles: fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality. And that was the touchstone I used throughout this investigation”. They looked at him blankly.