Fraser Nelson

For years I saw Malcolm Rifkind as an unusually principled politician, one of the very best and brightest talents in the Conservative Party. After the rout of Scottish Tories in 1997, he decided to stay and fight for his old seat, Edinburgh Pentlands, rather than follow Michael Forsyth and Ian Lang along the high road to the House of Lords. I was working covering Scottish politics for The Times then, and during the 2001 campaign I had a chance to see how hard he worked at at a time where he had little national profile. He was giving his all, fighting for Scotland at a time when his party had pretty much given up on it. Had 900 people voted a different way in Edinburgh, he would have succeeded in fighting his way back to parliament in 2001.

It seems hard to believe now, but only The Spectator supported Margaret Thatcher in the first leadership ballot.  She had been Keith Joseph's campaign director, and when he faltered she took his place. The Economist, true to its endearing habit of being wrong in major calls in modern British history, said she was "precisely the sort of candidate who ought to be able to stand, and lose harmlessly" The Spectator has different tradition: of being isolated, but entirely correct. We were for Maggie all the way, and when she triumphed we devoted a front page leading article to her triumph under the cover line "Britain's Second Lady". The leader (below) was written by the Patrick Cosgrave, our then political editor, who loathed Ted Heath.

The tragedy of the Rab C Nesbitt caricature is that there is a lot of truth in it - Scots do tend to have more problems with booze then those in the rest of the UK. Things are improving: today's figures show that the alcohol-related death rate for men in Scotland is 29.8 per 100,000 – down from 45.5 per 100,000 ten years ago. But in England, this rate stands at 17.8 per 100,000. Now, I'm all in favour of Scots who enjoy a drink – we employ one of them, the peerless Bruce Anderson, as our wine columnist.

All you want from Europe is free trade, cheap flights and the Eurovision Song Contest – the rest is bureaucracy. One of the contest's many strengths is its generous, expansive definition of ‘European’. Its soft power is awesome, and effective. It reaches out to countries banging on the door of the West - nations the European Union itself is too sniffy, paranoid and insular to include. This has led to several historic occasions, underling Eurovision's status as the world's premiere forum for the collision of politics and culture, where hatchets are buried (or dug up) and new alliances struck. Israel has been contesting since 1973, and its giving 12 points to Germany in 1982 was a landmark in rapprochement between the two nations.

Even the evening BBC bulletins are leading with this morning’s announcement by George Osborne that he will extend his ‘pensioner bonds’ programme – a glorified way of giving pre-election bungs to the over-65s. This is Osborne’s answer to Gordon Brown’s bribe, the ‘winter fuel payment’ (the word ‘fuel’ being redundant). When elections grow near, governments bribe pensioners because the pensioners are most likely to vote. The Chancellor told Andrew Marr today (pdf) that ‘backing savers is part of our long-term plan’. The opposite is true.

Gordon Brown is holding an adjournment debate on the union this evening, which comes after an Ashcroft poll which shows precisely what danger the union is in. If today’s polls were tomorrow’s election result, the SNP would have 55 out of 59 seats in Scotland. It's even set to lose Coatbridge, where it picked up 67pc of the vote at the last election. Yes, all this will help the Tories in the short term: Cameron needs the SNP to destroy Labour in the north and the SNP need Cameron in No10 – remember, their political model is based on grudge and gripe. Without a villain, Alex Salmond won't have a pantomime. But back to Brown. He designed devolution to kill off the Tories in Scotland – he succeeded, but has ended up with the SNP instead.

Newsflash! Labour does have a business supporter – or so, at least, Ed Balls was able to disclose to Emily Maitlis on Newsnight. His name is Bill. But he couldn't quite remember his surname. It was comedy gold, certainly my moment of the campaign so far. Maitlis asked if Balls was worried that in 2001 there were 58 business leaders writing to the Times backing Labour, in 2005 there were 63 writing to the FT backing Labour.  Where were they this time? Ed Balls: I've been at a dinner tonight with a number of business-supporting Labour figures [sic] Maitlis: who? who? who? Ed Balls: Well, em, Bill. The former chief executive of EDS who I was just talking to... Maitlis: The former chief executive of EDS... Ed Balls: Of course.

David Cameron has today been refreshingly honest about his plans for school funding in England: budgets will be flat, which (when you factor in inflation) will mean a drop of 7 per cent over the next parliament. Cue much mockery from Labour. But what will this mean for the future of education quality? Not very much, if the experience of the Labour years is anything to go by. Under Blair and Brown, school spending more than doubled while England hurtled down the world education performance tables. So if doubling the budget didn’t help, then why should freezing it hurt? The strange thing about education is that it's not so responsive to cash. A brilliant teacher is (alas) paid pretty much the same as a bad one.

In a Telegraph interview, David Cameron today pledges to cut the welfare cap – to £23,000 from £26,000 – to fund another three million apprentice places. He says that this:- 'Tells you everything you need to know about our values' He is refreshingly honest, in that this welfare/apprenticeships policy is designed to articulate Conservative Party values rather than actually help the country. He wants to send a message: the Tories stand for work, not welfare. So here is policy intended to take away from those on welfare, and give to those in work. It's encouraging that the Tories seem to be edging away from George Osborne’s spurious claims about the deficit and towards their most solid, spectacular achievement: the jobs miracle (below).

We’ve spent plenty time on Coffee House challenging George Osborne’s more dubious claims (‘deficit halved!’, etc) as has much of the media. But happily, there now seems to be a truce. Grant Shapps, Tory chairman, has confirmed that from now on he’ll use clear and honest language when talking about the deficit – a promise made good by the Tory political broadcast on Wednesday. In my Telegraph column today, I express a hope that the party has turned the corner and instead of telling porkies it will restrict itself to the large number of genuinely true boasts. The above chart shows Osborne’s greatest boast: he has overseen more job creation than any other Chancellor in recent history.

Today, on the Andrew Marr show, Ed Miliband repeated his porkie that David Cameron plans to reduce state spending to 1930s levels. When he first made this bizarre and obviously untrue claim, even your baristas here at Coffee House didn’t have 1930s spending data to hand. Now we do, so the extent of his deceit can be laid bare. The above graph (which you can explore by moving your cursor over the lines) shows total UK government spending, adjusted to today’s money. At £720 billion, the level of state spending in 2020 under George Osborne's plans will be almost ten times higher the levels of the 1930s.

A lot of rot is written about what MI5 thinks, because the spooks don’t talk –even to deny wrong stories (like the supposed Remembrance Day Plot to kill the Queen, etc). But now and again, they do speak. Andrew Parker, the agency’s director-general, gave a wide-ranging speech last night which worth reading in full. It makes the front pages today. Here are half a dozen points which jumped out at me: 1. The terror threat is heating up. ‘Terrorist-related arrests are up 35 per cent compared with four years ago. Since 2010, more than 140 individuals have been convicted for terrorist-related offences’. 2. Three Islamist plots have been intercepted ‘in recent months’. Since 7/7, police say the spooks have intercepted a major Islamist plot a year.