Fraser Nelson

Before the last election, I had dinner with a Labour minister who told me her number one fear about the Tories getting in would be seeing David Cameron lap up the Olympic limelight. The Olympics, she feared, would hugely benefit whoever happened to be in power - and that was, she feared, going to be Cameron. She needn't have worried. The Prime Minister was barely visible during the Games (to his credit, he's not the type to hog limelight). Boris was Boris. But now the games are over, which party leaders have benefited the most? Oddly, all of them - and Ipsos-Mori polling suggests the number one winner was Ed Miliband. The percent having confidence in his ability to do his job properly has jumped eight points,  to 41 per cent.

With apologies to his Royal Highness, the most popular boy’s name isn’t Harry -  in spite of what you will have read in the papers this week. It’s Mohammed, under various spellings. The Guardian hasn’t even worked this out, in spite of its pretty data table. Table 6 on the ONS results shows: some 8,018 baby Mohammeds came kicking and screaming into the world last year, well clear of Harry (7,523) and Oliver (7,007) Harry had his turn, and John was the most popular name for decades. We are now living in the age of Mohammed, a name that has been growing (on average) for 5 per cent a year. Here’s the trajectory. Does this matter? Not to me.

David Cameron has not sought to seek personal or political capital from the Olympics, for which he deserves much credit. It doesn't take much to imagine how Gordon Brown would  have behaved had he been in power. But this is politics, Cameron is under pressure to establish an "Olympic Legacy" so he will today announce two hours of competitive sport every week in schools. In so doing, he highlights the contradiction in his education policy. On one hand, he wants to devolve power to schools and get politicians out of the education process. But like his predecessors, he also can't resist pulling the levers of power and telling head teachers what to do.

Nick Clegg's decision to scupper boundary reviews in retaliation for the failure of his Lords reform programme is the very opposite of 'mature' government. It is the politics of the sand pit: you have annoyed me, so I'm going to kick your sandcastle down. It's his way of putting a horse's head in Cameron's bed, and the public will be appalled. The coalition has entered a new, destructive phase where Lib Dems will now pride themselves on what Tory measures they can frustrate or destroy (O Levels, profitmaking schools etc).

Nick Cohen’s Spectator cover story on Olympic censorship has been a smash hit, and is still being tweeted all over the world. It was followed up this morning by BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on its 8.10am slot, and CoffeeHousers who missed it can listen again here. Freddy Gray, assistant editor of The Spectator, is quoted at the beginning on the appalling heavy-handedness of it all. Even the Cubans didn’t copyright the now-famous Che Guevara image (which was drawn by an Irishman in any case). A liberal society like Britain should let people do what they want with words and images of major people and events. Including words like 'Olympics' and those rings.

James Forsyth’s Mail on Sunday column is my first read every Sunday, and it’s choc full of details as ever. Here is his account of the Liberal Democrat reaction to last week’s House of Lords defeat:   On Thursday morning, Nick Clegg and David Cameron agreed a new phase of the Coalition after what one No 10 insider called ‘the Coalition’s Cuban missile crisis’.  Tensions were so high amid the vote on Lords reform that some feared the Coalition would implode, but things have now begun to ease.  Both sides stress ‘this  isn’t back to the rose garden’, and what is needed is not  ‘an idealised romance but cold, hard purpose’.

David Cameron said in Prime Minister's Questions today that there have been 800,000 more private sector jobs under his government. This is almost true, and — I thought — worthy of elaboration. Government cannot, of course, ‘create’ jobs — all it can do is move jobs from the private to the public sector. Every penny of public sector salary is taken from the real economy, and is a penny that someone isn't being paid (or isn't being spent). Now, if you're the BBC it doesn't seem that way. It seems like the sky is falling in, because your own state-mandated budgets are being cut.

The Lib Dem dove has been shot by a well-aimed Tory arrow tonight, and you can bet that more than a few of Nick Clegg’s allies will feel deeply betrayed. The Lib Dems walked on the coals of the tuition fee rises, and for what? The Tory leadership cannot really claim to be giving its full backing to Lords reform. Yes, William Hague was sent on the radio this morning – in theory to urge obedience over the reform. But when the Foreign Secretary started laughing you had the feeling that he did not quite take his mission very seriously. Every Tory MP knows that the whips have given mixed messages, and did not tell them that there was no way back if they rebelled. You can't send the majority of your backbenchers to Siberia.