All bets are off
Fraser Nelson says that the new Prime Minister has positioned himself in territory that the Tories have left vacant, and is ready to fight a cultural battle to defend the ‘British way of life’ and win over the C1 voters who decide elections
It was a phrase that David Cameron would never dare to utter. As Gordon Brown was giving his first speech as Labour party leader in Manchester, he repeatedly pledged to defend the ‘British way of life’. This dog whistle may have been missed by his audience, and was certainly neglected by the press, but resonated in Conservative headquarters. Immigration, an issue which the Tories have dropped as a frontline issue, is now firmly on Labour’s agenda. And this is simply the latest of the spin bowls being delivered by our new Prime Minister.
Mr Brown has only just arrived in 10 Downing Street but is already proving a more agile foe than the joyless curmudgeon against whom the Conservatives ‘war-gamed’ in their strategic meetings. Their belief was that, if they gave Mr Brown the space to reveal himself, he would blunder, scowl and scare off the electorate. In fact, precisely the opposite has happened: the Tories have made fools of themselves with the grammar schools civil war, while Mr Brown has grown into his new role.
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Where is the Arthur Seldon for our own era?
Colin RobinsonColin Robinson, biographer of the sage who so influenced Thatcherism, says that Seldon has no counterpart now — the Tory party is no longer receptive to such challenging ideas
Sarkozy’s burqa ban panders to racism, not feminism
Rod LiddleRod Liddle says that the French President may be right about Islam’s ideological content but that his proposal is shockingly illiberal and wrong-headed
No more consensus: this time there is a choice
Irwin StelzerThe next election will present voters with two distinct futures, says Irwin Stelzer: Labour’s rising taxes and love of the EU, or the Tories’ spending cuts and plans for the ‘broken society’
A Yorkshire genius in love with his iPhone
Martin GayfordMartin Gayford talks to David Hockney about drawing on his mobile phone, life on the Yorkshire coast, and planning lunch around the blossoming of hawthorn
The secret Iraq deal that bought Mandelson’s loyalty to Brown
John KampfnerJohn Kampfner unveils the ignominious truth about Sir John Chilcot’s Iraq inquiry and reveals Peter Mandelson’s demand, when Brown’s future hung in the balance in early June, that the hearings be held in private. Even now Mandelson’s priority is to protect Brand Blair
