At last, the Tories get organised

MisterE

Perhaps they'd do well to replace Osborne with Clarke completely...?

wrinkled weasel

"conviction will have replaced brand politics" Yeah. And I am a marmalade sandwich. Dream on. Conviction is a well-spring, an irresistible fountain of belief that bubbles up regardless of strategy. Do you think for one moment that Thatcher sat there thinking, How can we make it look as if we are conviction politicians? Damn right she didn't. Her problem was keeping her convictions under control, not scratting about on the substrate of pragmatism and public relations.

Jonathan Hall

I don't think the Tories have thought this through. How can a Shadow Chancellor go AWOL during an election campaign, especially when the economy is the no.1 issue?
Cue planted stories in the left wing press and the BBC about Tory splits i.e. Clarke vs. Osborne, George not up to the job, etc…. What we need is a professional campaign manager, and not a politician playing at the job. Osborne should have one role and only one role in this election, i.e. Tory spokesman on economic affairs. Besides, with the economy the way it is, I’d have thought that Shadow Chancellor was a full-time job.

Furthermore, if Dave wants to shore up his core vote, then I wouldn't have thought that putting Clarke front and centre, is the right way to go about wooing or holding on to potential UKIP supporters, do you?

Of course, this reorganisation begs one simple question – why now? What have Dave & Co been doing for the past 3 years? Preparing their election strategy/management team should surely have been one of their primary concerns.

Robert Williams

With UniCredit adding to fears of a gilt meltdown, I hope Cameron ensures maximum exposure for Osborne giving the best chance of a return of a Brown government. Let that man sort out his own mess.

G Butler.

It is hardly incompatible for Osborne to be based in Tory HQ and figure in the GE campaign, especially as Tory HQ is in the same building as the likes of Sky News.
It just means that he will be studio based, while the rest of the team will be field based.

Nicholas

Oh, dear. One bit of optimism and the first three posts are predictable whinges.

They really can't win can they? Some might interpret this as being flexible in the light of unexpected shifts. But, no, no pleasing the doomsayers here.

strapworld

Conviction is not something you can take down from a shelf. It is something that shines through your whole being. Your direction in life. What makes you tick.

People have no belief in Cameron & Co. because of the obvious lack of conviction. We are now told that, privately, Cameron is more Conservative than we think! That sums it up, we have to rely on others telling us what they think he is like. NOT us getting our opinion by what Cameron says and does.

When you hear Andrew Neil say that he thinks that Brown would take on the Unions but does not consider Cameron or boy george would!, that should bring it home to people that the problem is not only the disorganised organisation at the top of the conservative party, the problem is David Cameron.

Will the real David Cameron stand up please!

Rhys

Sounds more like it. Crow and the union barons would blackmail this country and not enough is being done to highlight this at this fragile time.
From my seat, me and the rest of us in the private sector are rolling around to another consecutive pay freeze. These barons should be painted as the greedy, sleazy enemies they are for wanting more for doing less.

The Man

@Mister E,

I've long thought that making Ken Clarke Shadow Chancellor - and then Chancellor - is an obvious step to take; it completely neutralises Labour attacks on Tory economic policy and competence and allows the Tories to argue that things are so bad under Labour, they've brought back the man who last sorted out the nations finances before they were blown apart by Brown. It's not without risk and I'm not sure that Clarke necessarily has the appetite; plus of course, the Euro-Bores will be up in arms. But it's the kind of bold step that Cameron needs to take.

stephen

Better late than never as you say but is the team of juveniles in the Boy George Bunker going to deliver the goodS? Osborne and Hilton share god children with Dave and each other. This is not an ideal environment for Dave to get tough with a team that don't look as if they have yet given Dave the tools to KO Brown. Bunny huggy and other frilly pink Notting Hill policies may feel good from inside the Boys' Bunker but are they going to win the hearts ad minds of the Tory foot soldiers in the Shires; you need to have to read le Monde to know the Boy has not always treated these sort of people as well as he could! Lets hope its not all too late and the Tories on the ground get on with it!

Alex

Lipstick on a pig.....

toco

Now that the Unions have complete control of Labour with the brothers calling all the shots the election is over before it has even started.The brothers are the only people left who believe the Communist Bloc still exists and by controlling Labour have extinguished any remote chance it had of hanging on to power by deception.We can now all look forward to a decent future.Phew!

Tanuki

@wrinkled_weasel why is it that when I see any sentence containing the words "conviction" and "politician", my immediate thought is "how many months in jail did he get?".

Ben

It won't help. The Tories have already lost the intellectual argument over the economy. Did you see Osborne's face at PMQs when Brown told him that virtually all reputable economics, including Sir Alan Budd (!), have concluded that cuts this year would destroy the recovery. The phrase "a rabbit transfixed in the headlights" does not do justice to the Oik's expression at that moment.

No amount of spin will compensate for the lack of bomb-proof policies.

Short the UK

Cynicus Economicus - 11/3/10:

What we are now seeing in the UK is the brewing of a perfect storm. The underlying size of the UK economy, the size of the economy without borrowing, is very much smaller than many imagine. It simply can not support the level of borrowing that has been undertaken by the government. This was true even before the borrowing binge following the onset of the economic crisis, but the difference is now that the borrowing is concentrated in the government rather than consumers. The real size of the economy in relation to borrowing is the underlying problem, but other factors are adding to this fundamental problem.

http://cynicuseconomicus.blogspot.com/

=====

Pity the Tories if they win: strikes, collapsed pound, hyper-inflation, pay cuts, spending cuts, riots = IMF (I AM F****D).

Hawkeye

To hell with what Labour thinks or says - they make it all up anyway and it bears no relation to reality in any case.

The best thing the tories can do is point out Labour's screw-ups and where they are taking us next. Point out what the bond market is doing and bang on and on and on about the unions running the country. The unions now truly OWN Labour

Paul B

This is good stuff. Clarke to front the economic teeam. The public know Clarke, like and trust him. He will be a winner. Up to now its been phoney war, the real battles are just about to start and Cameron seems to be upping his game. A marathon is won at the end , not the beginning of a race. My pint (of Jouster by Goffs Brewery, delicious) is half full.

denis cooper

It'll be a puzzle for some people when Cameron becomes Prime Minister and appoints a little known character, one George Osborne, as Chancellor instead of the man who'd been leading the Tory election campaign on the economy.

If he becomes Prime Minister, and if he appoints Osborne as his Chancellor.

Regarding "conviction politics", wrinkled weasel has made the point.

It's all a bloody game, a pretence, a show, a charade ... there's no principle, no honesty, no sincerity, no integrity.

Maybe enough voters will be fooled by it to get Cameron installed in Downing Street, or maybe after Blair too many will decide that they're not interested in furthering the personal ambitions of another charlatan.

Stevie

So you must be 'interested in furthering the personal ambition of the incument charlatan' then denis?

stephen

Reading the CH piece about Sam Cameron maybe Dave should make her shadow chancellor she has experience of running a business to Boy George whose closest foray of retailing experience[which Sam excells in] was reputedly being turned turn for a holiday job in Selfridges!

Marcus Cotswell

@Jonathan Hall: I think you'll find that GO is a professional campaign manager playing at being a politician rather than t'other way about. :-)

TrevorsDen

"People have no belief in Cameron & Co. because of the obvious lack of conviction." Der mr Strap - simply mouthing this rubbish does not make it true.

There is na huge debage going on in UKPR and PB.com over how YG can turn (statisticalise) 12 point tory leads into 5 point leads.
The polls, unless to methodise them to suit your prejudice, do not support your assertion. Indeed one ARS do show a 12 point lead.
Strange that the Speccy do not mention this poll, whereas they leap on a YG tracker which embarrasses Cameron. The fact that these 'trackers' are uising totally untried and novel methodologies to weight the results (labour up tory down) seems lost on the Speccy.

denis cooper

@ The Man

"the Euro-Bores will be up in arms."

There speaks the true controlling voice of the modern Conservative party, which is being kept in existence for one reason above all others - so that it can continue to block the election of patriotic MPs of a right wing disposition.

Slim Jim

G. Butler: 'It is hardly incompatible for Osborne to be based in Tory HQ and figure in the GE campaign, especially as Tory HQ is in the same building as the likes of Sky News.
It just means that he will be studio based, while the rest of the team will be field based.'

Well, if that's the case, then the team need to get a grip of Jeff Randall and put him in front of the cameras. They also need to get him to interview Brown. Of course, Brown's just a great big feartie, so he won't. He would absolutely rip him up for arsepaper! I have read Jeff's articles in the Telegraph, and I wonder why the Conservatives just can't seem to articulate their points like he can. Yes, he's my hero...

Nicholas

TrevorsDen, indeed. Before the peculiar YouGov weighting kicks in the baseline figures are Conservative 537 and Labour, loyal and disloyal combined, 442. After the curious weighting which pushes the Labour percentage up and the Tory percentage down this becomes, miraculously Conservative 456 and Labour, loyal and disloyal 559. Hmm. What you see is definitely not what you get.

And judging by some of the posts here YouGov should also consider a Conservative loyal and disloyal demarcation.

Natasha

This sounds like a risky strategy. Either Clarke will stick to the script, in which case he will have no answer to critics who point out that most economists are opposed to a sharp fiscal tightening in 2010. Or he will use his brains, in which case he will be accused of departing from the official line and undermining Osborne.

Clarke is an independent thinker, so I think he is more likely to use his brains and be criticised for 'mis-speaking'.

It's risky, but there's a chance it may work. There's a lot of respect for Clarke out in the country.

denis cooper

@ Stevie - I'd happily string up the present incumbent charlatan, but if you think that means I'll vote to replace him with your charlatan you're mistaken. The present charlatan and his friends are already largely discredited and ahve nearly exhausted their political lifespans; to instal your charlatan instead would be to give our national betrayal a fresh lease of life.

Verity

Jonathan Hall, good post. "What have Dave & Co been doing for the past 3 years? Preparing their election strategy/management team should surely have been one of their primary concerns."

I think, actually, that they were preparing their election strategy. The one flaw is, it was all wrong. Everything. Wrong. What the voters either didn't relate to, or positively loathed.

Smug, smug, smug Dave & Co. (Except William Hague.)

And now, because they are failing so badly, they've come up with another trite, copycat idea! They think that seeing Dave's wife on TV is going to alter people's perceptions of the Conservatives as the Notting Hill Vapid Liberal Party.

The blind stupidity beggars belief.

JONNY

Who takes the amusingly vicious and left-wing-bent destructive Andrew Neil at his word?
And believes everything tease he comes up with?
strapworld... so it might appear.
Can't he even comprehend the obvious truth that since the Unions are Brown's paymasters he will always defer to them.
Cameron has no such obligation.

JONNY

Stephen you are becoming ridiculous.
Trouble is I don't think you know you are.

Anan

Oh Great, Clarke as the economic face! Sigh... Just sit back and wait for the gaffes and idiotic nutty statements from this has-been. And wait also for the Tory party to be mauled by the media attack dogs as soon as the nonsense comes out of Clarke's mouth. Pathetic.

El Sid

Hurrah - this is long overdue. Jonathan Hall (11:15) - you say that Shadow Chancellor should be a full-time job in the current circumstances. Most people would agree with you, but allegedly Osborne was quite proud that he was spending as much as 30% of his time on economic matters.

He's very much a political animal with a secondary interest in economics, and almost no interest in the nitty gritty of things like financial regulation. So very much in the Brown mould. Like that worked well.

By all accounts he's very good at the schmoozing side of things, and I've long called for him to be moved to a party chairman type role. I guess it's taken some dodgy Yougov polls and perhaps that CityAM one of the City to finally wake CMD up from complacency.

If nothing else, it gets the Bullingdon/Notting-Hill double act off the agenda - if this election will be decided in the Birmingham-Manchester-Leeds triangle, it makes sense to give a leading role to someone popular from Nottingham.

Verity

David Blackburn - call me picky, but why did you place an apostrophe after the word James in your first sentence?

Right On

@Natasha,

I'd say quite clearly "most economists" are not against cuts - they are pretty much split down the middle.

Surprisingly the ones who have long subscribed to Keynsian economics believe that cuts would be bad.

There are just as money monetarists or supply side economists who believe that cutting the deficit is the only way to stimulate growth.

It's a social science, not a science. It doesn't matter if 2000 economists write letters, none of them can know the consequences of their suggested approach.

Where the Tories haven't succeeded is that they have failed to make clear that all public spending isn't directly stimulative - there are parts of public spending that can easily be cut without having a negative impact.

If you get rid of wasteful spending and reinvest the money by cutting corporation tax you could in theory jump start the economy quicker.

David Blackburn

Verity,

Thank you. Originally, it had the word column after it.

Paul B

Natsha,if most critics believe there should not be a tightening in 2010 (and I`m not sure that most critics do believe this) then most of the critics would be wrong and can be safely disregarded. We needed to start the tight 10 years ago, not in 10 months time.

Victor Southern

My memory goes back some while and I do remember my party being deservedly kicked out of office in 1997. Amongst those Ministers who lost their jobs that day were Clarke, Redwood, Hague, Howard, Major, Tebbitt, Heseltine, Portillo. Now the right-wing so-called Tories are desperate for those men to be recalled, to be given new responsibilities, to be in the inner councils of the party. Get real folks - they became yesterday's men because they had yesterday's politics. Of those, only one man, William Hague, has made any mental, philosophical or political progress in the ensuing 13 years, perhaps Redwood a little.

Clarke will not become, must not become Chancellor. He is still a lazy politician with little grasp of facts and figures.

Zoo keeper (Elephant House)

You keep telling 'em, Shorty @ 12.25p.m.
By the time they get the message it'll be too late.

They're arguing now about "slogans" !!!
I ask you.

It's "poets day" so they're all going round with their fingers in their ears singing "la-la-la". Trouble is... they do that Mon-Fri (incl.) too.
You keep it up, old son.

The Man

'denis cooper'

You're wrong. I'm not a member of the Tory party. Just a would-be Tory voter for whom the issue of Europe is entirely secondary (if not tertiary) to the critical business of winning the election with a sufficient mandate to do what is necessary to save our economy.

You, on the other hand seem content to march into the arms of the IMF by voting for a marginal party with no earthly prospect of election.

Verity

David Blackburn writes: "Thank you. Originally, it had the word column after it."

So what, David B? James is a name, not a plural. It should be James's.

David Blackburn

Yes Verity. I deleted the word column and the 's' at the end of James's name, but neglected the apostrophe in my haste. I hope it doesn't happen again.

TomTom

Look like they are all working hard for a hung Parliament. That would please voters as politicians would be terrified of losing seats in a second election, and their arrogant disdain for voters would have reaped just deserts

TGF UKIP

How vastly amusing all this is. 8 weeks max before the GE and the Clique are in the state of chaos that was always predictable.

This was always going to be an economic election above everything else and now thanks to Dave's instinctive nepotism, they go into it with their Shadow Chancellor unable to appear before the media so unconvincing and obnoxious do the voting public find him.

There are three reasons why the Tories are so massively failing against Britain's worst ever government and its most evil PM, Cameron, Osborne and Hilton, but it was the Stupid Party who allowed itself to be conned and put them there, but unfortunately it's all of us who are going to be paying the price for their credulous stupidity in 2005.

Verity

David B - Well, I certainly hope not! I despair!

denis cooper

The Man @ 5:10pm -

I apologise for assuming that you were a Tory member, but stand by the rest of what I said.

How we are governed, through the law with coercive force at its disposal, can never be a secondary or tertiary issue.

Holly ......

Ben,
An even better example of faces was at PMQ's
on Wednesday...
David Cameron said,"The Prime Minister answers every question by talking about Urgent Operational Requirements,of course they didn't reject those,but they never thought..what did that mean for the defence budget.
The fact is he's tried to fight two wars on a peacetime budget".
WHOOOOSH!!!!!This went straight over the heads of Milliband MK2 and Balls.
It is visible that Milliband's brain cell is trying to work out what was just said.
Tango'd the pair of them.
Have a look..it's about 41 minutes in.

2trueblue

Victor Southern, agree with you about Clarke,. He has not done very well recently, too many pauses allowing the opponent to forge ahead and steal the show. He is also a bit of a loose cannon, useful but should not be given too much air time, he is too slow.

2trueblue

Holly, well spotted. What is more worrying is it was not taken up by A Neil on daily politics. You have to forgive the wee Millie but was disappointed by the Daily Politics lack of pickup.