James Forsyth

It is imperative that the coalition keeps its nerves and its composure during the months ahead. 2011 will try the coalition’s fortitude, its deficit reduction plan and its public service reform programme will both come under sustained attack. It is vital that the coalition continues to explain clearly and patiently why it is doing what it is doing. Watching the Andrew Marr show this morning, I was struck by how tetchy Andrew Lansley was during his interview. Right from the off, he seemed irritated at Marr’s questions. Some of this irritation was understandable. Lansley’s reforms are always treated as if they have come out of the blue, when Lansley talked extensively about most of them in opposition.

Sitting in London it is hard to know what is going to happen next in Egypt but one particular detail in the New York Times’ latest report makes me think that Mubarak’s fall is fast becoming more likely than not: “In Ramses Square in central Cairo Saturday midday, protesters commandeered a flatbed army truck. One protester was driving the truck around the square while a dozen others on the back were chanting for President Mubarak to leave office. Nearby, soldiers relaxed around their tanks and armored vehicles and chatted with protesters. There were no policemen in sight.

In another sign of how the pace of Gove’s reforms is quickening, the education secretary has told local authorities that all new schools should be free schools or academies. This is a big step towards changing the default nature of the system from state-funded and state-run to state-funded but independent.   Local authorities will not be able to open a bureaucrat-controlled school unless they can satisfy the Secretary of State that there is no free school or academy provider willing to step in.   Gove has always argued that once free schools and academies become a significant part of the system it’ll be no more politically possible to abolish them than it would be to take sold-off council houses back into public ownership.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, has written a highly readable piece chronicling his paper’s tempestuous relationship with Julian Assange. Keller does a good job defending how The New York Times handled the documents that Wikileaks passed it, the steps it took to minimise the risk posed to the lives of the people mentioned in the documents. But the part of the piece that sticks in the mind is how the man Keller sent to meet Assange described the source to his editor: “He’s tall — probably 6-foot-2 or 6-3 — and lanky, with pale skin, gray eyes and a shock of white hair that seizes your attention,” Schmitt wrote to me later.

These provisional GDP figures showing that the economy shrank in the fourth quarter have come as a shock, the consensus was for growth albeit at a slower pace than in the third quarter. These figures can, obviously, be significantly explained by the winter weather which brought the country to a halt. The ONS is saying that without the weather growth would have been flat. George Osborne is stressing that he won’t be ‘blown off course’ by these weather-affected numbers. But it’ll be fascinating to see how Ed Balls responds to these numbers. Does he double-down on his warning of a double-dip recession—which would damage his credibility if it did not come to a pass—or does he play a more careful game?

David Davis’ interview on Jon Pienaar’s show this evening has revived the debate about whether or not it matters how posh the Cameron top table is. Andy Coulson was the most senior person there who understood what it is actually like to work your way up the ladder and with him gone that experience is missing. But what matters far more than the personalities involved is the policy outcomes. As I said in the Mail on Sunday, the most important thing for Cameron to do is to deliver for these voters. To cut their taxes and give them public services that offer them value for money.

Charles Moore has an important piece in the Telegraph today criticising Baroness Warsi’s muddle-headed speech [a speech which interestingly doesn't appear on her page on the party website]. In it, he reveals that the Prime Minister himself has been devoting much thought to the question of how to deal with Islamic extremism. Charles writes that Cameron will give a significant speech on the matter in the next few weeks in which he’ll argue that the government and society need to tackle extremism per se, not just violent extremism. This is welcome news. To say that extremism only becomes a problem when it turns violent is to miss the point. If you only ever address the symptoms you’ll never cure the disease.