Rafael Behr

The party's plan to integrate health and social care makes sense fiscally and clinically but the politics could be more difficult to navigate.

Conservatives are winning a cultural campaign to nationalise their political bereavement and it will do them no favours in the end.

The soap opera saga needed bringing to an end and the thwarted brother's emigration does the job as well as reconciliation.

The Chancellor's gamble remains that the growth will come, that the pain will be followed by gain. But he has been wrong every time so far.

The Labour leader's stance won't win him many friends on Fleet Street but no one should believe the press will swing the next election.

When Conservatives, including Cameron, indicate their eagerness to be a little bit more like UKIP, all they do is give Nigel Farage the credit for setting the agenda.

Coalition was meant to be a journey to political maturity and professionalism. But it's amateur hour yet again.

The "game-changing" pledge may be seen as just another slippery politician's promise.

A half-hearted commitment to renewal would make an easy concession to Lib Dems in future coailtion talks.

All parties love the easy, polarising rhetoric of “us” against “them” – but how distinct are their ideas? In a new weekly series, Rafael Behr finds out.

Tory MPs are in no hurry to dismiss the possibility that Downing Street leaked the story to expose a small rebel cell early in its development.

The decision to make the next head of the No.10 Policy Unit a political appointee, rather than a civil servant, shows the PM has listened to complaints from Tory MPs.

Is Miliband's "One Nation" Labour pro-integration? Is EU membership an advantage in Cameron's "Global Race"? They don't really know.

Rather than arguing about policy and practice, both parties encourage a futile debate about motivation and motive.