A debatable triumph
Fraser Nelson 8:21am
Last night I was at a Policy Exchange debate where I was proposing the motion that Cameron has changed the Tory party for good. They expected 40 guests, but had 300 applications so we moved to a larger venue. Why the crowd? Part of it is this strange, voracious appetite for debate in London right now reflected in the phenomenal success of the Spectator/Intelligence Squared debates. And part of it is the simple pulling power of the Gover. At the end of it, a queue formed to speak to Michael Gove, who was like me proposing the motion. He was on classic form, dividing leaders into fag-enders (Eden after Churchill, George Bush after Reagan) and agenda-setters (Thatcher, Clinton, Cameron). Cameron had "diverted deep currents" in the party, he said. I said he had reoriented it to the classic Tory mission: liberating people from state socialism. We won the motion on a show of hands, but only one bloke said he had changed his mind.
As for the other side, Liam Byrne said Cameron was a coup of spin, and credited Andy Coulson with the success. His backup was David Aaronovitch, who said Cameron still had the nasty old approach to Europe and a dismal foreign policy.
Anyway, a great event. It got me thinking that interest in political ideas is of the same level that propelled Will Hutton's book to such levels. There is a huge appetite for political argument right now. And a huge opportunity for Cameron if he can satisfy it.
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Peter Dawson
December 6th, 2007 11:59am Report this commentIf I may make so bold as to say so, I think you are mistaken. You are making the classic mistake of thinking that because you are interested in something, others must be. I happen to think that Michael Gove is a complete star, but I'm dismayed on a daily basis by how few to none of my friends/acquaintances know the first thing about politics, don't know anything about current debate, don't know the main players, read the Mail, have state-of-the-art computers that they use to log on to Facebook. It simply doesn't occur to them to explore the richness of information available on the internet, to look at the websites offered by all our mainstream media and try to gain a balanced opinion. Occasionally I'm stupid enough to enquire "have you read Coffee House, or Dizzy, or Iain Dale, or Guido, or whatever - Boulton & Co, the great new Three Line Whip? A gawp is the usual response. Political horizons bounded by the BBC and the Daily Mail are unlikely to result in informed votes. Shame, but that's the way it is.
David Lindsay
December 6th, 2007 5:32pm Report this comment"Cameron had "diverted deep currents" in the party, [Gove] said." Well, he's got that right. If the Tories win the next Election, then it will have been "because of Cameron", just as Labour's 1997 victory is even now depicted as "because of Blair" rather than as the foregone conclusion that it had in fact been ever since September 1992. So that will be the permanent "diversion" of the "deep currents" in favour of national sovereignty, family values, real education, and so forth (who got nothing out of Thatcher or Major either, of course). New Labour hasn't even made good John Smith's promise that employment rights should begin on day one of employment and apply regardless of the number of hours worked, which was hardly nationalising the top 100 companies, was it? Now think of something comparably moderate in its Toryism. A Cameron or successor (Gove?) government wouldn't even do that. Instead, such "deep currents" have been "diverted".
Anan
December 6th, 2007 7:34pm Report this commentI really do wonder what your obsession with this Gove character is. This is the second time you've written a piece about him, and in both you really do sound like you have become infatuated with him.
No matter how long a line of foolish people (like you Spectator lot) forms who want to suck up to him, someone like Gove is completely repulsive to look at - I don't mean this as an insult, merely as a statement of fact in today's age of personality politics where being telegenic is extremely important (another reason why Bowswer Brown is so unpopular). This man also looks like an idiotic version of Woody Woodpecker. At least Woody was lovable!
Go DaveC!!!
Dominic Graham de Montrose
December 6th, 2007 10:13pm Report this commentIt was a great event - although as you noted, I fear pretty much everyone had already made up their minds and voted along party lines.
Shame, as there was a lot which could have been discussed on the stated theme - whether interpreted as changing the party 'for the better' or 'for the long-term'.
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