Warsi takes on the Tory right

strapworld

Before people get hysterical do not overlook the fact that Labour had put up a donkey it would have won.

Obviously the coalition is going through choppy waters but this is due to poor leadership by Cameron and a lack of good public relations, explaining with clarity why cuts are really needed.

We are facing the BBC and the Labour Party aided by most newspapers, councils and trade unions taking on the coalition and Cameron and co appear to be, like rabbits caught in the headlights.

There is no doubt that Cameron has let down the Conservative Party by giving luke warm support to the Conservative candidate. How many cabinet ministers attended Oldham (Not the Lib Dem members), junior ministers and popular MP's to garner support for the conservatives?

Warsi is wrong to take on any part of her party. She will only drive the wedge further and create a major problem which will manifest itself in an ugly confrontation in the future. Cameron will have only one person to blame. Himself.

The Sun - which is the most read newspaper in the Country is having a real go today at Cameron and Osborne over petrol prices. So we can expect a major U turn shortly!

Nick

"that this is defining proof that the public doesn't back the coalition and its economic policy."

But the coalition polled more votes than Labour !

SteveS

She is like a breath of fresh air. I am a becoming a big, big fan of the Baroness.

old fogey

THe word 'gobby' seems to be apposite for ' Baronesss' Warsi. Am I alone in finding her a burden to the Tories rather than an asset.

Derek Pasquill

Perhaps Warsi would be happier batting for another party on a different wicket?

Mark Cannon

Well pointed out Nick. Lady Warsi would have been better advised to make that point.

Vulture

I agree with Strapworld. But he ducks the logical conclusion : the Coaltion, a blue dog wagged by a yellow tail, is pursuing unpopular Liberal policies on prisons, immigration and EU-domination which is pissing off traditional Tories without attracting Liberals - who have buggered off back to Labour.

The result of this is easy to predict: Clegg will be ousted by his panicky party, the Coaltion will collapse, Labour will win the subsequent election and ( oh please God if Allah wills it) Dave and his unpleasant clique will be history.

Commentator

Warsi doing the only thing she is any good at: mouthing off. The dogs in the street know that the Cabinet took the decision of shaft the (very good) Tory candidate to "save" Clegg. It didn't work.

normanc

The thought of Dave telling the right wing MP's 'Feel free to go out to Oldham and campaign' is as ludicrous as it is delicious.

What on earth is she talking about, does she really think Dave would allow a bunch of swivel eyed right wingers out and about on their own?

As for polling more combined votes, it's unfortunate that it's a 3 Party vote. If the Lib Dems / Tories do decide to merge parties before the next election there may be something in that, or if candidates stand aside, but as things stand at the moment, in the FPTP system you don't need to beat all the other parties combined, only take the highest number of votes.

I'm sure Labour would take a count of Labour n+1, Lib Dem n, Tory n, in every seat in the country even though they'd have almost half as much votes as the coalition vote combined.

Christopher Bowring

A theory is growing up that the right-wing of the Conservative Party is particularly anti-coalition. I wonder to what extent this is true. If I may describe myself as a right-winger (anti-EU, for example), I take a different view from Norman Tebbit in that I see the coalition as the best show in town in the circumstances delivering radical policies on education and welfare which will last. I believe therefore that Sayeeda Warsi is wrong in this instance in ascribing to the 'right wing' a single view on the coalition.

Danko

Vulture, I understand your issues with DC and co., god knows as a Eurosceptic from Shipley I am no fan of his cabal, however... At the moment I am willing to overlook a number of issues, the first in my mind being CCOs treatment of the voluntary party. I am not a fan of the Strategic Defence review, the NHS or the DFiD commitments and I am not in the least bit keen on our rather flakey position on the EU.

However as I said I AM sticking with the party due to a number of reasons.

The first, I don’t see anywhere else to go; UKIP are going nowhere, the English Democ-rats have had one real success so far with the election of the great and the good Peter Davies as Mayor of Doncaster (and besides I don’t hold with the argument for an English Parliament) and the other options are even worse.

Secondly, the coalition is bringing in bringing in some good policies, the Free Schools policy is fantastic and I look forward to one day being able to send my, as yet nonexis-tent, children to one.

The Localism agenda is brilliant and exactly the way we should be heading – more power from Whitehall to the Councillors (granted I’d like to see much more of this at a far greater speed but we take what we can get in life and hope to push it further later on down the road). Make the Councils responsible and ensure that the population know that they are. Shift the agenda from London to the City Hall, it will take people time to get used to but gradually it will move the terms of the publics relationship with local Government which can only be a good thing.

Higher education reforms – I’m not just talking about student fees but allowing Private enterprise to come in and construct new Universities to take on the public sector, it is a brilliant idea.

The Social Security reforms being pursued by IDS are fantastic and we need to stay in place to ensure that the benefits system is radically changed forever.

The reduction in the bloated size of the state – again it’s not as far as some of us would like to take it but again, it’s about changing the attitudes of people and being able to make further savings down the road.

The agenda of this Government is about social responsibility; it’s your life, it’s your money, what do you want to do with it? Moving Government to a local level and ensuring that the population can see who is spending what and why will probably not make the Government a lot of friends in the short term but allowing people to take control of the services they use will in the long term change the nations relationship with the state, make people less dependant on Whitehall, less expectant on Government to solve their problems and give people an independence and optimism that has been singularly lacking for as far back as I can remember.

Ahmed Khan

Let’s stop beating around the bush. The conservative vote decreased as a direct result of their candidate being a Muslim. Please refer to my comment on the ‘An important test for the Lib Dems’ post of yesterday.

The Pakistani Muslim voters won it for Labour, The Muslim tory candidate decimated the tory vote.

Vulture

@ Danko
Thanx for your thoughtful post - and I agree with your admiration of the Coaliton policies you mention.

But - and its a big one - all these admirable things will be null and void of control of our finances is handed to the EU, which the Coalition is hell-bent on doing. Britain will have simply ceased to exist as an independent state - absorbed as a powerless province of a new and undemocratic Euro-empire.

The Coalition is also colluding in the former Govt's policy of swamping the country with unlimited immigration, and is dong nothing to scrap the Laws under which we are forced to allow such outrages as hosting terrorist suspects at our expense indefinitely and giving murderers and rapists the vote. That old fool Ken
Clarke is closing prisons down rather than building new ones as was promised.

To allow Labour to outflank you as the party of law and order shows how very far from Conservatuve the Coalition is.

This slide to disaster will not be stopped so long as Dave's clique remains in charge.
Frankly, I would rather have the open socialists back than Dave's variety.

Mark Cannon

Ahmed Khan: The Tory candidate also stood in the general election so the fall in the Tory vote cannot be explained by the fact that he is a Muslim.

Scary Biscuits

Danko, I agree with you on both the positives and negatives about the Coalition. However, you duck the logical conclusion of your analysis. Cameron should not lead the Conservatives into the next election. He failed to win the unloseable election. He will continue to lose by-elections with his unpopular TRG policies. The party as a whole will continue to haemorage members. Cameron needs to go and soon. A minority Conservative administration could achieve much of what you like but without the left-wing nuttiness like closing prisons or subsidising windmills at the cost of doubling everybody's fuel bill by the time of the next election.

AAE

I hope the Tory Right remind the noble Baroness that they fought and won elections to sit in Parliament. Despite being given every advantage from Cameron, she didn't manage this and so sits in Parliament only by patronage and tokenism.

Geoffrey HARRISON

"Let’s stop beating around the bush. The conservative vote decreased as a direct result of their candidate being a Muslim."

I see. Would that be the same Muslim standing as a Conservative at the General Election? Ah yes, it would so that's just nonsense.

dg

"Parties are transformed by capturing the leadership."
- Daniel Finkelstein, February 19, 2010

Simon Stephenson

"And therefore I would say to those who are critical, unless you were here, unless you were out delivering, and unless you were knocking on doors, you really don't have a right to complain about us not being vigorous enough"

Baroness Warsi

A typical modern non-sequitur brayed by a typical modern politician. Of course it's not necessary to be personally actively involved before it becomes valid to criticise something. This is what human progress through the use of intellect is all about. The criticism is not of the people, but of the action. Is the baroness not able to see this?

dg

Nobody mentioned the fact that the BNP fought the campaign on an anti-Muslim ticket. Their campaign didn't gain them extra vote, though it might have encouraged Conservatives to not turn out to vote for a Muslim candidate.

Taylor

When Yvette Cooper resurfaced on the Today program, I was reminded of how serious my intention was to leave the country rather than face another Labour government.

denis cooper

Remind me - who is this woman, what has she done, and how did she become a baroness?

AuldCurmudgeon

In the dog days of the Brownian tyranny I was in the audience of a BBC Question Time where the Baroness was a member of the panel. Before the program is recorded properly the panel get a warm-up question. When Dimbleby duly invited her to speak, she'd fallen asleep.

Not the nastiest rotweiller in the dog pack, methinks.

Remittance Man

But the coalition polled more votes than Labour!

As it did at the general Election. The only difference is back then the coalition scored 11,760 more votes than Labour. This time around their lead was 860.

10,810 voters have decided they don't like what their parties are doing in coalition.

Remittance Man

Dennis,

Top take your questions in order:

1. She is a non-middle class, white woman who makes the Tories look multi-culti.

2. She is a non-middle class, white woman who makes the Tories look multi-culti.

3. She is a non-middle class, white woman who makes the Tories look multi-culti.

Hope this helps.

Ahmed Khan

@ Geoffrey Harrison & Mark Cannon

Yes it might have been the same Muslim Candidate as per the General Election, but since then, anti Muslim feeling, especially within the Tory right has increased.

Racism at the polls is nothing new among Tory voter and if you recall the late 80’s when Maggie Thatcher tried to fast-track a black candidate (now known as Lord Taylor) who because of his skin colour managed to turn a Tory majority of 12,000 into a victory for the Lib Dems!

Danko

Vulture, I entirely agree with your EU stance. I am a member and supporter of the Freedom Association and firmly believe we need to leave the EU as soon as is possible. I do not agree with your statement of having Labour back in place of a Cameron administration, the situation we have is nowhere near perfect and leaves a lot to be desired, however if we can institute the policies we are putting in place now and ensure that they become the norm then we can change the political consciencness of the nation for good. When we have achieved that, we can move to cecede, doing so beforehand risks undoing the reforms we are putting through and no matter how important the EU issue is, and it is, we cannot afford to hold our entire agenda hostage to it, we HAVE to ensure that we finish what we have started on the shift of national view of Government and its roles in our lives.

The Law and Order issue is difficult, I can see what Clarke is trying to do and why, and to a degree I agree with him, however, he is overtly using the LDs for cover and I don’t think that society is ready to accept his ideas in full. The danger is that the Right looks extreme trying to maintain a system that is seen to work, whilst Labour desimate the party both on the split and on the issue of the Government being out of touch. That is the real danger and is one I think Balls will seek to expose.

Scary Biscuits; Cameron’s problem has been and remains relying on those he knows and likes. Case in point Steve Hilton. Now, I am not saying the election debacle was en-tirely Hilton’s fault, it wasn’t. At the end of the day a leader has to lead, what we saw be-tween January and May last year was an election run by committee and the committee was split. On one side there was Steve Hilton with some interesting ideas about a Big Society and other such macro-policy visions, on the other side we had Coulson who understands how the public think and what they want. Up until Osborne had to step back to become a more full time Shaddow Chancellor we had a direction that worked, mixed with elements of Hilton’s big picture roadmap. After Osborne stepped back, we found ourselves in the mire. It is entirely true that Cameron should have seen this, but I think it is the classic thing of not being able to see the wood for the trees. It’s not an excuse for him but I don’t believe it warrants his getting a knife in the back. Besides, the public wouldn’t thank us for it and some sections of the party would never forgive those who were seen to have had a hand in it.

Please don’t read this as my not understanding your viewpoints, I do, however I think that we need to let this run its course, take what we can from the experiences and have a backup plan for when DC goes, which he will in due course. The worst thing we can do right now is return to 1991 – 1997.

Simon Stephenson

Ahmed Khan : 1.19pm

"Yes it might have been the same Muslim Candidate as per the General Election, but since then, anti Muslim feeling, especially within the Tory right has increased."

I'd be enormously interested to read the scientific basis for this assertion - unless, of course, it's just an assertion based on your own prejudice.

"Racism at the polls is nothing new among Tory voter and if you recall the late 80’s when Maggie Thatcher tried to fast-track a black candidate (now known as Lord Taylor) who because of his skin colour managed to turn a Tory majority of 12,000 into a victory for the Lib Dems!"

Really? So was it Chris Patten's skin colour that was the cause of him losing Bath to the LibDems at the same General Election?

TrevorsDen

The coalition got 45% and labour got 42% in Oldham. Hardly an attack on the current governments policies. Hardly an endorsement of Labour.

TrevorsDen

Can somebody explain how the coalition are pursuing policies of EU domination? this is just hysterical.

Commentator

I should never underestimate your capacity to spout utter garbage on behalf of the Coalition, Trev, but the harsh fact is that, even if you artificially stitch together the Tory and LibDem vote, Labour won....heavily. Next you will be telling us that the Germans were defeated at Dunkirk.

yank

Danko,

I appreciate your support of educational reforms and welfare reforms, and acknowledge that Dave and the wets are supporting them, but you'll then have to acknowledge that those are majority positions... and arise from all points of the intellectual compass.

Blairism believed just this. Not all of his coalition, mind you. But a good chunk of them. This was all argued long ago, and settled. It was argued here even longer ago. Remember, welfare reform was legislated here 15 years ago, and the charter school push began along that same time. It's all a done deal here.

The execution there may be lagging behind, for whatever reasons, just as we here may be lagging behind in certain areas, due to cultural, social and economic variances. But the intellectual push is the same, as might be expected. That's what conservatives gauge by... those big block movements.

The coalition is only doing, in these cases of welfare and education reform, the same things that a broad swath of your and our body politic has previously accepted.

Those battles are won. I know it doesn't seem like it, and I agree that the execution is critical, and you all are still in the execution phase. But Dave and the wets are at core delivering nothing, they're following. We conservatives won those battles long ago, and it's time for us to take on the next battles, which Dave and the wets are blocking, as they foolishly buy into other portions of the Left's agenda, and not just these portions of it.

Much as some don't want to recognize it, the conservative temperament is revolutionary and rebellious, as these past reform battles demonstrate. It won't accept statis, and Dave is static. He's down with the establishment Left, and that's not acceptable.

And I think this is why you'll find many conservatives unmoved by dire warnings of the wets' coming downfall and Lab's takeover. They're not getting what they need from Dave, and they don't foresee their previous gains being lost if they abandon him, because the Left has to carry through, or themselves be split. Those reforms are on glide path, and the fiscal state of affairs cements that surety.

But these other issues remain brewing. There must be a conservative critical mass to address them, and I don't see one there. It will have to be established, even if temporary political carnage results.

J Wright

It was criminally stupid for the coalition toron two candidates in this seat, at this time. If it really is a serious coalition, they needed one candidate , standing as The Coalition Candidate Well known to all voters, obviously anti socialist neither strong tory nor identifiable as LiDem.Step forward the fragrant goddess Joanna Lumley,- vanquisher
of the despicable Woolas.
I(n the near bankrupt state of my country it is my patriotic duty to put aside all frivolity and offer to represent all the people of this proud hard working town, A town which in its hayday represented the finest Victorian .Entrepreneurialism Stuff the usual petty politics ,all true English must unite for the next few years to repair the damage inflicted on our economy by that Traitor from Kirkcaldy,Who doesnot even turn up to the HoCs for his MPs pay.
Its Hard luck on poor Elwyn, a good chap in other times, but politics is a dirty game,and he can have it back in
a few years time.!Its a pity this was not published when Woolas was appealing but for reasons unknown the lot who run this site decided to censor it.

Verity

Danko - "The first, I don’t see anywhere else to go; UKIP are going nowhere..."

Quite. As long as disaffected Tories such as yourself don't vote for them. Why are the Tories so timid? Why would they rather stay in a party that is rotten to the core than vote for a patriotic party that needs their votes to gain wider acceptance of its policies?

Dimoto

Auld Curmudgeon: to be fair, Dimblebore could put anyone to sleep.

Lady Warsi has been silly, but this is trivia. She is quite popular with the hoi polloi who make up the bulk of the British electorate, and has the (much esteemed) "common touch".

Much more interesting is the clear difference on here between the "thinking right" and the Neo-UKIP ranters (who imagine they speak for a large Conservative constituency).

Vulture has even openly admitted that he would rather see Son of Brown in power than Cameron.

Nobody who has lived in this country for the past 10 years, and claims to be on the right, would wish such an unspeakable fate on the country - so, is Vulture another happy expat ?

If Red & Co find such comfort in this (ho hum) predictable result, they must really be desperate.

Danko

"Much as some don't want to recognize it, the conservative temperament is revolutionary and rebellious, as these past reform battles demonstrate. It won't accept statis, and Dave is static. He's down with the establishment Left, and that's not acceptable."

Yank - I would agree with your statement above to a point. I think that there is a great mass in the UK that still don't get what it was Blair, Adonis and now Gove were and are still trying achieve with education. The great pity is that certain people won't because they simply believe that the Government has a divine right to Govern everything. This is the attitude we must change if we are to have any chance at all in the future.

I myself hold the ideals put forward in your declaration of independence and I do have to wonder at those on the left who state they hold them dear but then go about trying to subvert them at every turn.

I think what you say about the required mass of support over here not yet reaching the critical tipping point is true, but I don't believe it can be achieved by getting rid of Cameron in the manner suggested by some above. We, as a movement need to tune people into our way of thinking on many issues - education, health, welfare, economy - if we start political regicide all over again they will put it down to us being the same old nasty Tories and simply tune out. I am not saying, and indeed I know, that we can go on in the current manner forever, at some point the party has to be willing to take a leap in order to take the nation with us, however that is not now.

David Ossitt

strapworld

"Before people get hysterical do not overlook the fact that Labour had put up a donkey it would have won."

Absolutely; they did and it won.

David Ossitt

Ahmed Khan

"Let’s stop beating around the bush. The conservative vote decreased as a direct result of their candidate being a Muslim"

Sad but correct.

David Ossitt

Christopher Bowring
11:01am.

I agree with every word.

Simon Stephenson

Dimoto : 6.11pm

"Much more interesting is the clear difference on here between the "thinking right" and the Neo-UKIP ranters (who imagine they speak for a large Conservative constituency)."

Yes, the difference is not so much in the basic ideology of how society should be organised, but in how much of this can actually be put in place now, and how much requires a more gradual and educative approach.

I do believe however, that even among the gradualist right, there is a lot of skepticism about whether or not the Cameroons actually possess a "Conservative" ideology. How much of their expressed non-Conservative sentiment is temporary flannel, put in place essentially to manage the present, and how much of it is genuinely what they see as the way forward?

Our society has developed into one where mainstream thinking is that "the government" is responsible for addressing every bad thing that happens, or has the potential to happen. Conservatism, historically, would hold that this imposes such limitation on human development as to create a society of weak and useless individuals - but is this the view of Mr Cameron and his supporters?

Remittance Man

TrevorsDen,

That argument might work if one ignores a couple of things.

Firstly that nobody stood on a "coalition" ticket.

Secondly the "coalition" vote at the GE was 58%.

Face it, for whatever reason, many people who voted for the LibDems or the Tories seven months ago didn't last Thursday. For whatever reason, and try as hard as you like to paint it pink, that is a big fail in my book.