Boles beats his old drum

Verity

"The Coalition has enabled the Conservative party to be more radical than it would have been able to had it formed a government on its own with a small majority..".

Translation: Has provided cover for Shameron to suck up to more untrustworthy people.

TrevorsDen

I find it inconceivable that the Tories and LDs will not at least campaign on a list of shared and agreed policies with a few other items kept separate. But most of such items will be peripheral to the main issue - the economy health and related social issues.

How on earth can they campaign against each other. How can they put candidates up against each other?
Not least this gives a maximum chance of ALL of them staying in power.

I also suspect the next election will be fought against a background of a big increase in tax thresholds. I also think the coalition will fight the next election following a 3 or 5 year financial settlement/ projection including significant tax cuts. 'The fruits of prudent financial management'. By then 20% VAT will be bringing in shedloads of money.

charles hercock

Boles is a stuck up Wykehamist who should go back to Longwall Holdings instead of pedalling this claptrap

We actually want rid of Tinsel Clegg and his lefties

Charles Martel

Utter hyper-bole(s).

Having failed to beat Celia Barlow (ex-BBC journalist) in Hove 2005, he is parachuted into a Tory safe seat 250 miles away come 2010 (Quentin Davies old seat).

He owes loyalty to Cameron for his seat, not the party or the constituency, so view anything this sycophant says with the irrelevance it deserves.

PeeJay

"Liberalism?" "Modernisation"?

Cameron's illiberal and patriarchal politics are a throwback to the late 1950s.

whatawaste

You lot in the Westminster Village need to go to Specsavers as you cannot see the wood from the trees. In Buckinghamshire the Tories will be routed unless Turncoat Cameron does not do a swift U turn on HS2. It is not just the contested seats but also the vast majority of funding for the party comes from Bucks.

Tory party movers and shakers are ramping up the anti HS2 campaigns and this will get very ugly and nasty - and the tories do this very well. Cameron is toast.

Neil Turner

Cameron to trusted aides... "let's become **** as long as it means we stay in power"

For ****, please substitute
- New Labour
- LibDem
- Monster Raving Loony Party
- Socialist
- ANYTHING other than CONSERVATIVE

Here we see modern British politics in action

Baron

if a merger does go ahead, Labour could send Millipede on an extended holiday now, select baboons with Alzheimer as candidates, publish a manifesto of one-liner jokes, and still win.

TrevorsDen

So a government that has instituted cuts bigger than Thatcher is either softy/lefty or all things to all men?

How does Coffee House attract these arseholes ?

Shock horror - a train line goes through Buckinghamshire. There was me thinking we lived in the 21st century.

TrevorsDen

Massive attempt to shoot the messenger again. Hard to say if he is 'stuck up' - but he has certainly been far more successful than anybody likely to post on here. He has probably got fewer chips on his shoulder as well.

And to be factual ConHome reported back in 2007 (pretty soon after Davies' defection)...
"A rollercoaster few months for Nicholas Boles - and for the Grantham and Stamford Conservative Association - has ended in success with his adoption as the Conservative candidate to succeed Quentin Davies.
Nick skipped Tory Conference in order to dedicate himself to the selection process that concluded tonight.
He beat Steve Barclay, James Brokenshire and Vicky Ford"

Now my definition of parachuted is where there is no selection process.
Barclay and Ford both also failed for Widdicome's old seat - so they get around as well.

Charles Martel

TrevorsDen, your loyalty to the Cameron project is astounding, in a slow-clap sort of way.

But lets be clear, Boles was on the top 10 of Cameron's A-list.

http://conservativehome.blogs.com/goldlist/2006/05/as_promised_thi.html

Boles is at the heart of the Cameroon project, he founded Policy Exchange - which is Cameroon's 'brain' - if indeed he possesses such a device, but I digress. To make him out as some sort of struggling outsider is utterly ridiculous.

Just as I would expect the Pope to provide a Catholic sermon, so I would expect a Cameroon Conservatives™ one from Mr.Bolesy.

normanc

Expect a lot more of this type of thing in the months to come.

As it becomes clearer and clearer that the Lib Dem vote is collapsing the only hope the current crop of MP's have of holding on to their limos and expense accounts is that the Tories give them a clear run so that they may, in some seats, hold off Labour via a combined Lib Dem / Tory vote.

If that does happen Labour is guaranteed to win the next election big with the doubly whammy of disaffected Lib Dem voters going to them and the disaffected Tory voters either staying at home or protest vote for UKIP.

With Cameron refusing to cut spending until 2014 maybe he actually wants Labour to win and carry on spending?

He's certainly no fiscal conservative, as the new tranch of tax rises whilst at the same time increasing by spending by an inflation busting 5% in the six months since May shows.

Vulture

The Tory party has been captured, or rather re-captured, by a bunch of trustafarian public school toffs with no understanding of finance ( they have always had oodles of boodle) or what the average Joe in the street thinks or feels.

Boles is a typical representative of this unpleasant type. All the feather-bedding and coddling in the world will not save the Lib dems from the hammering that awaits them at the polls. And then God help Dave when the stupid party realises that he has lost them another election.

davidk

Tories and Lib Dems huddling together for security - an unedifying sight. I bet Labour are delighted they have a clear run at the centre and left ground.

Phantom

In the words of Admiral Ackbar: "It's a trap!"

With the Hefferite righties foaming at the mouth on their favourite subject - Internal Tory politics.

They won't be sticking their nose into how the country is being ran.

TomTom

"So a government that has instituted cuts bigger than Thatcher is either softy/lefty or all things to all men?"

Iain Martin over at WSJ thanked you in print for your adulation of Cameron throughout 2010, you do make heroic efforts.

The cuts are not cuts at all. They are reductions in rate of growth leaving Government Spending higher in 2015 than 2010 but hoping the economy will grow to mask the increase.

In an economy driven by the housing market since the 1930s and especially so since the 1970s, it seems Slump is the prospect ahead. Not just VAT but Insurance Premium Tax, NIC as food and energy prices soar thanks to banks speculating in commodity markets.

This Government may well crash and burn. It does not matter whether Nick Boles wants to hug a LibDem or not. These parties are defunct and dying. They are losing membership and activists and voters. Having experienced LibDem-Con Councils in Northern England there is no point in voting for either party as they represent noone but themselves. They are a conspiracy against voters building a cartel to marginalise opposition.

When Germany had a Grand Coalition after 1966 it produced the APO - Extra-Parliamentary Opposition which mutated into Baader-Meinhof and Revolutionary Cells - as no alternative opinion was possible.

Worse still we have the SED - the GDR Socialist Unity Party which embraced ALL parties under the one Monolith. On all key issues all Parties have The One View.

The System is now locked into Crash-Dive and the voters are walking away

yank

TomTom's pretty much on to it.

Here, the Tea Party is a populist movement that recognizes something's rotten. They've been engaging in a targeted hunt of incumbent politicians (the rot), and the whining and squealing against that hunt comes from across the rotten political spectrum. Thus, the Tea Party may rightly be defined by their enemies, who know what truly threatens their sinecures.

As a formal group, the Tea Party are a vapor, as all populist groups are. They are not engaging directly in politics, but are acting to influence politics as it currently exists.

Yes, the political parties are dying. They are collections of special interests, not of the people, and there'd be no such strong populist movement against them if that wasn't so.

Only a matter of time, and that impetus will manifest in the UK. And actually, it long has, with the UKIP movement re the EU. It's just needed the soil tilled a bit, which the Cameroons are helpfully doing now, in order to spread out and grow.