Blog Posts by Alex Stevenson

This midterm review is littered with half-truths tailored to help David Cameron and Nick Clegg cling on to power. They are complicit in the same deceits: what better reason to continue to stick together?

This review has been fashioned towards a single goal: boosting the odds of the coalition making it all the way through its self-proclaimed five-year term.

Going the distance has started to seem less certain in the last 12 months or so. Grumpy Conservative backbenchers have begun muttering about ways to kick the disrespectful Liberal Democrats out of power before 2015. Some have wondered whether the flakier Lib Dems' chances at the next election would be better without Clegg at the helm.

On a day-to-day basis, there is little the prime minister and his deputy have been able to do to head off these rumours. Today is different. Today, with that bright new year feeling of optimism making us all the more receptive to their messages, the leaders are refreshing the case for power once again.

I hear Argentina is causing trouble again over the Falklands, eh?

Yes. President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner has placed adverts in a number of national newspapers, in which she complains about the 'blatant' colonialism displayed by us British.

Actually, when you read her advert it does seem like they have a bit of a point. The Falklands are a tiny clump of islands 8,700 miles away from mainland Britain, and they're just off the coast of Argentina. So surely they belong to them?

Their geographical location doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. They are a British Overseas Territory and as such should remain British, permanently and forever. We've even fought a war over them.

Hmmm. If you say so. Weren't the Malvinas, as Kirchner and her compatriots call them, Argentinean before they were British, though?

You might think so from reading Argentina's nationalist propaganda. Especially given the date her advert refers to, January 3rd 1833, when a Royal Naval vessel turned up and

At first glance, 2013 offers a fresh opportunity for David Cameron to show off his statesmanlike qualities. In reality, British diplomacy is up to its grubby old tricks once again.

It's simple, really. Take the EU and the US, two of the biggest players in the global economy. Combine them together to create a single market area making up one-third of its trade. Take that, China. Take that, Brazil, India, Russia. This could be Cameron's biggest contribution to the history of the planet we live on - a major shot in the arm for the nations of the industrial west, helping the most established economies on the planet fight back against the young challengers emerging from the east. A glittering prize for whoever achieves it, that's for sure.

For the first time since 2005, when the British-led Gleneagles summit notched up a real triumph for the Tony Blair/Bob Geldof combo, the UK is once again in the driving seat of the G8's presidency. Cameron has spelled out his agenda in a letter to the

Photo: Parliament/Catherine BebbingtonImpatient speculating about the fate of the coalition and bickering over the economy mask the true scale of the challenge facing Britain's politicians in 2013. It is the national crisis of confidence in the people who run this place which matters most to ordinary voters. But these are problems caused by political elites as much as fixed by them, and MPs and ministers are simply not programmed to address the true scale of the problems facing the UK. British politics in 2013 will be about important issues, but relatively petty ones.

The next 12 months will see the realities of hung parliament bite, as the coalition's midgame turns to endgame. British politics is not really suited to five-year parliaments. The tradition is one of intense anticipation in the buildup to general elections, as newspapers speculate about whether the prime minister will decide to go to the country early. Robbed of this treat by the UK's first fixed parliament, journalists and politicians will instead spend

Gaffes are tricky to define. The classic trip-up is an error of the tongue (Jeremy C***), a consequence of a temporary absent-mindedness. But motivations are never entirely clear in politics, so we think the best way of sizing up whether a misguided comment is really a gaffe is to ask: did the person uttering these pearls of calamity really mean them to cause a massive stink? On that basis, here's our top ten gaffes of 2012...

10 - Francis Maude: Don't panic!

With the nation facing the spectre of a fuel strike back in March, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude took to the airwaves to calm the nation. Yes, the situation was a bit wobbly, he said, and there might be a few fuel shortages here and there. So "a bit of petrol in a jerry can in the garage is a sensible precaution to take", he suggested. Maude didn't actually have the foggiest how much petrol you can cram into a jerry can; if every motorist were to have followed his not-so-sage advice, petrol stations would have been running

Such is the extent of the turmoil which British society now finds itself in that it's hard to tell where political scandals end and begin. They bleed into each other, prop each other up and together create a firestorm of anger and resentment at the UK's ruling elites: those in charge of our politics, our financial system and our media were all battered by public hostility in 2012. Mix all that up with the return of some old favourites (expenses, anyone?) and you get a mouth-watering pot pourri of outrageous, unacceptable failure. Prepare to get worked up.

(Last year's position in brackets. We've assessed these by looking at their impact on the political world, rather than the country as a whole. Which might explain why Chris Huhne's resignation ranks higher than the Libor scandal, for example.)

10 (-) Tax avoidance

This scandal has three parts: first came a massive £500 million move against Barclays from the taxman, who concluded the bank had been "highly abusive" and was now paying

Brace yourself, Your Majesty. The Cabinet meeting you're attending will be nothing but political theatre.

For six decades, the Queen has met up with her prime minister to talk over affairs of state. From Winston Churchill to David Cameron, Elizabeth II has talked over this and that. Their cost chit-chat usually follows a Cabinet meeting, in which the real governing is supposed to take place. Cabinet meetings are confidential because they are an opportunity for the government's senior ministers to argue about policy. The Queen is protected from this ugly side of everyday politics by the accommodating blandishments of the politician.

Not tomorrow. For the first time since Queen Victoria's reign, the head of state will attend a Cabinet meeting. "I'm sure we can find room for one more," the prime minister's spokesperson joked this morning.

Officially, this visit is the last in a right royal Diamond Jubilee tour of the establishment's great institutions. The monarch, who owes the great

Ukip appear to be the latest beneficiaries of a trend most politicians will only reluctantly admit exists. The biggest driver of national feeling about Britain's political parties is a visceral contempt for those who govern our lives.

In the old days, when Labour and the Conservatives were the established parties who took it in turns to rule Britain, there was once a party called the Liberal Democrats who filled that role. They were the party to turn to whenever an opportunity arose to reject the ruling classes. At by-election after by-election, it would be the Lib Dems who romped home. When the UK government embarked on a major invasion of a Middle Eastern power, it was the Lib Dems who reaped the rewards of opposition.

Now all that has changed. Nick Clegg is in government and his none-of-the-above bonus has been stripped away. So the real support for Britain's third party — not even managing double-figures in the polls — has emerged: they are now Britain's fourth party. After coming