The Tories shouldn't let Brown provoke a split

Nicholas

The "wicked Tory right" need to understand that the real enemy is Gordon Brown and New Labour, not David cameron.

Ken

Somehow, and I really don't know how, I detect the hand of the Prince of Darkness behind all this anonymous muttering.

Tiberius

I don't see, Fraser, how the spending commitment was ever a vote of confidence in Brown's economic policy.

It was politically fruitful, and until the banking crisis, probably an economic necessity (turning the ship around etc), even though it would never have to be put into operation.

Rhoda Klapp

steak through the heart? Nosedrive?

You have the wrong end of the stick. Cameron can lead his way out of this, by being more robust and less amenable to the govt and the media. If he can't lead his way out, well, he shouldn't be the leader of the party. This is an opportunity for him.

Matthew Blott

Theresa May NEVER said the Tories were the nasty party. She said they were perceived that way. It's an important distinction.

Short the UK

The reason GO & DC are being attacked by their own troops and having a mini mutiny, is us soldiers want a war with GB & AD.

I want to see Scuds, Daisy Cutters, Bunker Busters and tactical Nukes fired into the Brown camp.

Matthew Blott

Fraser, the Tories did not get more votes than Labour in 2005. They did win more votes in England which is perhaps what you meant but that's a pretty bad error. You are constantly blogging about Mr Brown's clever accounting methods so I'm amazed you can come out with something like that.

David

" us soldiers want a war with GB & AD."

There's your problem. You should want to win the election. The two are not necessarily the same thing.

TGF UKIP

Oh dear, Fraser, 5%, 3% -whatever next, the unthinkable?! Your Precious Pair are now on the edge of the political precipice, reaping the rewards of their months/years of Dave-Lite conviction free, green obsessed, let's go along with Blair politics.

The daft thing is that they have had so many opportunities where "with one bound they could be free" and despite much chivvying from hacks like you and Janet Daley they stayed on their disastrous course. And yet you still believe them to be a pair of political geniuses.
Incredible! Such loyalty hath no man to his own misjudgements.

Unfortunately, though, Fraser, I am beginning to detect a distinct note of wishful desperation among the today's posts by the fanzine hacks and not least in the last lines of your penultimate paragraph here.

PS Short the UK is dead right about why so many Coffee Housers have been so impatient with DC & GO. The problem now is that by being so dilatory, they have allowed the enemy to select the battlefield and the ground most advantageous to him

Verity

Short The UK - My kind of guy and me too. Mmmmm ... tactical nukes ...

Ivy Eileen

It's quite simple ... part of a psychopath's strategy is to get the oppo to turn in on itself and tear itself to bits.

If that cannot be achieved, at least the oppo will have been wasting valuable time and energy in maintaining order and peace within itself - result is pyschopath sails along with his own agenda and free (comparatively) from disturbance BUT also able to set the agenda, the rules and the interpretation of everything and anything.

The further result (trick ?) is that, in setting the agenda, no other item, approach, interpretation or fact (false or accurate) is allowed to intrude - they run the show.

What is now wanted is for ALL to make their views and disgust known .... at present, too much is being left to DC and GO who are bound to feel the strain (pyschos actually feed off the strain) and it's about time the rest of the Opposition Front Bench plus former Cabinet Ministers and Big Beasts started throwing their weight about.

Tiberius

"The man was shameless. And the trouble with people who are shameless is that they are curiously invulnerable."

(Sebastian Foulkes writing as Ian Fleming in "The Devil May Care".)

It's also curious that TGF and Verity maintained their position on the Cameroons when they had poll leads of -10%, +20%, and probably would if Cameron won the election ("ah yes but the majority would have been bigger if they'd followed the suicidal policies of 1997 to 2005" - or something like that.)

Brown is shameless. It is also almost impossible to conceive a GE result giving 40 - 42% for the Tories, and 37 - 39% for Labour.

And it is the Labour share of the vote that's uncertain (33 - 37%)

Carol-Ann

The Tory right aren't gunning for anyone least of all Cameron. It is the public at large that do not like or trust Osborne. It is nothing to do with Cameron.

Kevyn Bodman

Short the UK and Verity are almost right.
Stategic nukes, not tacticals.

Earlier someone said that Short the UK should want to win the election rather than wanting a war.
Fair enough, but what do you want to win the election FOR?
To be in government is a wholly inadequate answer.
I don't want a nice ,fresh-faced young man with a nice thick head of hair continuing the disastrous policies of the last 11 years. I want an aggressive destroyer of tnhe NuLab legacy and a proud and vigorous defender of civil liberties.
Cameron and Osborne have come in for stick because many people are not convinced that they are aggressive enough on this.

TGF UKIP

Ah, Tiberius, getting rattled are we? It would certainly seem so from the tenor of this post.

I can't speak for Verity or, indeed, for any of the other Cameron sceptics on this site, but I have never been anything other than consistent in my view of Dave.

He conned his way into the leadership in 2005 with the help of his co-conspirators in the media (very well represented in this fanzine) and, in the mantle of Heir to Blair, very stupidly, with the assitance of Boy George and the Shaven Headed One, set about trying to convert the Conservative Party into Blue Labour with predictably disastrous results.

So far as my reaction to polling goes I have been entirely consistent. As you may recall when the headline lead was 20+ I was pointing out, amidst all the Coffee House gloating at the time, that the lead was both soft and geographically patchy and that a detailed look demonstrated that the Tory polling support was more anti-Brown than enthusiastically pro Cameron.
You may indeed also remember the contrasts drawn between the positions of Dave and Co in the Summer and Blair and his gang pre 97.

So far as your final two paragraphs go, the blunt truth Tiberius, which you seem increasingly disinclined to face, is that if your lad was the political genius you and your teenage alter ego believe him to be, the Tories would now be 1/100 favourites to win the GE anytime to get rid of the worst government in living memory.

And that is the tragedy of our age the worst government faced by the worst and most feeble opposition.

Thomas Cussans

There is no mystery here. Cameron has been slow off the mark because he has been conditioned to believe that only a Blair-like approach will win elections. So he has attempted to turn himself into Blair Mk.II, cuddly and green, albeit with a Tory tinge.

It was always a reasonable approach when the Tories looked unelectable and Blair, whatever his grinning short-comings, was making the electoral running.

That said, no one can deny that he and Osborne have been worryingly slow off the mark as the true extent of McNutter's financial Armageddon has become so clear. If even I can understand that Brown will drive us all to penury and beyond if it means he can stay in power, then it is surprising, to put it no higher, than Cameron should have reacted so tentatively.

But better late than never. He must, however, drum into his team that the ONLY purpose of a Conservative victory in the next general election is not so that he can swank around in Downing Street and fly off to international conferences but to put right, however painful the process, the near limitless horrors unleashed on Britain by the Labour party. And he must of course make clear that Brown is not merely seriously nasty but properly crazed.

TGF UKIP

Fraser, tonight's 6 0'clock News, BBC1, Jo Coburn reporting and I quote verbatim, "David Cameron will go into the next election saying the Tories will spend less on schools and hospitals than Labour."

Now is the hatche-faced Jo a) conflating you with David Cameron bearing in mind your piece in the fanzine last week b) reporting thus based on a briefing from the Tories or c) saying what she was told to by Campbell?

I think we should be told.

Tiberius

Am I rattled, TGF?

I merely try to point out the absurdity of your interpretation of Cameron's performance in the light of the task he faced and still faces, a task which is the consequence of a badly led Conservative party, which espoused for too long and to no avail, the approach you have advocated.

As far as the things we have previously said, you have also denied Cameron could embody the swan created from the ugly duckling. I have argued it is a matter of time, and would probably be in government that we could expect it to be politically successful to dispose of the New Labour legacy, because of the disposition of the electorate. If I'm wrong on that, and the time has arrived sooner, so be it.

As for the timing of the reaction the the economic crisis, I have seen enough in my job recently, and found reason subsequently to concur with Martin Vander Weyer, that watching the financial news with a stiff whiskey at your side, is about as useful a reaction as possible. There is no one sure-fire way out of this crisis, and only Brown is cynical enough to think he has one. I understand even Darling has disagreed with him.

So if it has taken Tory high command until now to resolve the most likely of successful outcomes on this, that's fine. We know whatever they do, the BBC and most of the rest of the media will try to rubbish it, so it has to be watertight in construction.

Perhaps you will give it a least a chance to fail before further condemnation?

TGF UKIP

Tiberius, I am touched by the stength of your loyalty and the depth of your faith in Dave.

The worst government ever with the most sinister, evil and repulsive pm and the best your boy can do is a 3-5% lead probably a few months before a GE. Now that really is belief.

No doubt, though, even as we swop these exchanges you are lining the excuses up ready for when Dave fails to achieve the decent overall majority any opposition worth its salt should expect. I can tell you now, though, that "it was the BBC wot done it" simply won't wash.

Funny how things change, though, isn't it? Just a very few months ago in our exchanges it was about judgement on Dave being suspended to 2012 to see if he really had morphed into the beautiful conservative swan.

Now though, it's two hurdles, so disfunctional have your two boys been lately. First can they win at all and then the morphing test.

I think you realize that I'm going to be even more insufferable and unbearable than usual if they do fail to win a decent majority.

Tiberius

A fair position to leave things after a hectic day's events yesterday, TGF, but can I just finish with the comment that my "faith in Dave" is a mirror image of lack of faith in anyone else in the Tory party to do a better job.