Fraser Nelson

Britain will lose its AAA rating within 18 months because George Osborne 'no longer has credible plans to put the debt/GDP ratio on a stable or declining path' according to Citi. Its verdict is worth reading in full (pdf) and is important because it adds weight to the idea that — as a result of Osborne’s lack of progress on the deficit — 2013 will be the year of the British downgrade. What did it for Michael Saunders, the Citi analyst, was seeing Osborne take what James Forsyth refers to in this week’s political column as the St Augustine approach to deficit reduction: 'Lord, let me balance the books but not yet.' This eats away at Osborne's credibility.

And while we're on the subject of scandals in the British media, a pre-Budget ComRes poll just released by ITV News shows that just 6 per cent of the public realise what's happening to the national debt. You can (and I do) blame politicians who don't admit that the debt is rising massively - and then confuse "debt" with "deficit". We at Coffee House have called out David Cameron and poor old Nick Clegg for this. But the real responsibility lies with the media. Most people don't listen to politicians speeches, but depend on the way these speeches are reported. I suspect you can listen to ever single BBC News outlet tomorrow (save for Five Live and BBC2 Daily Politics) without being given an inkling that the debt is rising. The word "deficit" is to blame.

Our honourable members have been busy denouncing the press in the House of Commons. The debate is still going on, but The Spectator has just had an honourable mention from Jim Dowd who read out our latest leading article (PDF here) to MPs. “The idea that you can trust the press is a strange one,” he starts.

Being in government has forced the Liberal Democrats to decide whether they are liberal in the British sense of the word, or in the American, statist sense. Nick Clegg leans towards the latter, which is why he wants the state to regulate of the press. But Jeremy Browne, the Home Office minister, is emerging as a genuine Manchester-style liberal. In the Mail on Sunday today, he has come out against the illiberal strategy for the minimum pricing of alcohol. He can’t speak himself, but 'friends of Mr Browne' have this to say: 'Jeremy’s view is that the thug who has downed nine cans of lager is hardly going to think, “Oh dear, I can’t afford a tenth because of minimum pricing. I think I’ll go home to bed instead of starting a brawl.

For precisely 99 minutes yesterday, it looked like press freedom in Britain was doomed. At 1.30pm Lord Leveson announced his plans for statutory regulation of the press – with his bizarre instruction that we were not to call it statutory regulation. Worse, respectable commentators seemed to buy it. A very clever compromise, it was being argued. Self regulation really was being given another chance, albeit with a device which puts a legislative gun to the head of the press. If they obeyed his demands, he would not apply the force of the state. But at 3.09pm, the Prime Minister rejected all this outright. The existence of such a device, he said, would mean politicians setting the parameters under which the press operates which it hasn’t done since 1695.

Lord Justice Leveson reports at 1.30pm tomorrow and David Cameron has blocked out 90 minutes in parliament to respond. The big question is this: will he introduce state licensing of the media? A group of 42 Tory MPs wants him to, and No.10 apparently thinks they will rebel if he doesn’t. But this would mean revoking Britain’s 317-year history of press freedom, and give Parliament power to set the parameters under which the press operates. If the state seeks to compel publications to join the government scheme, then they face a choice: sign up, or defy the new law. In tomorrow’s Spectator, we make our choice. We say in our leading article that we would happily sign up to any new form of self-regulation which the industry proposes, no matter how onerous.

What on earth was Nadine Dorries thinking? Soon after being liberated from the jungle, she kindly agreed to be interviewed by me for Radio Four's Week in Westminster and explain her rationale. The show broadcast at 11am and you can listen to the whole thing here, but I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in Nadine Dorries' quotes as she raises interesting points about politics in general. Appearing on ITV's I'm A Celebrity, she says, was the first time she had taken time off from Westminster - while many of her colleagues sneak off the whole time. She singled out the ex-Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell:-  “What I’ve missed from parliament is three sitting days and no legislation whatsoever.

Over the summer, the balance of probability nudged away from a Cameron win towards a Miliband win in 2015. The collapse of the boundary review deal lifted the bar for Cameron, who might have struggled anyway. The Cameron operation - for all of its strengths elsewhere - has proven weak at campaigns. Failing to win a majority in a recession against a loathed opponent was one sign, the disastrous mayoral referenda another and the tragicomedy of the PCC elections completed the hat-trick. And then there were the U-turns, many of them defeats at the hands of ad hoc groups running a decent week-long campaigns: 38 Degrees on health reform, etc. The prospect of the 2010 team running the 2015 election would encourage only Labour.

Could George Osborne be in line for a genuine windfall? The Chancellor is getting quite good at conjuring fake ones (Post Office pensions, raiding £35 billion from the Bank of England) but he has yet to sell the 4G licenses. This could be more significant than next month's mini-Budget. The stunning success of Ireland's 4G auction (here) suggests that the UK auction may yield a lot more than is currently expected. A decade ago, governments world over pocketed massive windfalls auctioning the 3G licenses to mobile operators. This time Ofcom has put a reserve of £1.3 billion. But the Irish government expected to get just €170 million from its licenses. In the end, it raised €482 million in upfront fees with €373 million more to come by the end of the next decade.

The Eurozone is now in recession – this, at least, is what is implied by today’s avalanche of dire economic data. Eurostat has not (yet) made this calculation; but Capital Economics has. Take into account the relative size of the Eurozone economies who have declared figures and it suggests a fall of 0.1 per cent for Q3 which, which, coming after the contraction of 0.2 per cent in Q2, would meet the test for recession (two consecutive quarters of negative growth). So, like Britain, a double-dip recession. Greece and Portugal are still in meltdown. The Germans are doing okay, with growth of 0.2 per cent for Q3. This is mainly because of the fact that their currency would be worth about a third more if they had the Deutschmark.

Why not tax the bejesus out of the City and tighten regulation? Yes, the bankers will moan — but it’s not as if they will go abroad. The tax rate may be low in Zug, but do our pinstriped friends want to actually live there? The City's elite have their kids in British schools, the time zone is right for business and the global phenomenon of Planet London has attractions that outweigh marginal tax rates. So let bankers moan: they’ll stay. This is, more or less, the argument that you hear from MPs on all benches as they take a carving knife to the golden goose that is the City of London. But a report from the CEBR today shows that the exodus has already started.