Politics Archives

Saturday

10 Oct 2009

Dan Hannan

We can trust Cameron on Europe

Eurosceptics are not ‘swivel-eyed’ or psychotic, says Daniel Hannan, and it’s only Labour propagandists who think the party is divided on this issue As the Conservative conference got underway, newspapers led with reports of a right-wing insurgency against David Cameron. For four successive days the story continued: there was, we kept being told, an almighty barney about whether the Conservatives would hold a referendum if the Lisbon Treaty were already in force. I was nonplussed and, to be honest, slightly miffed. If there really was a Eurosceptic rebellion, why hadn’t anyone told me? More to the point, what exactly was I supposed to be rebelling against? The Irish referendum didn’t

James Forsyth

What George Osborne didn’t tell you about the Tories’ radical economic agenda

James Forsyth reviews the week in politics It was as if the banks were taunting the Conservatives when they arrived into Manchester Piccadilly on Sunday: the cash machines at the station had run out of money. The queues were snaking around the escalators, and Tory activists could do little. This, of course, is excellent preparation for government in the age of austerity. What to do when money is in such short supply? It’s a question that the Conservatives are developing a convincing answer to — but very little of their thinking was revealed in Manchester this week. This was the iceberg conference: only a small part of Tory policy was

Friday

9 Oct 2009

The Spectator

The week that was | 9 October 2009

Here are some of the posts made at Spectator.co.uk over the past week Fraser Nelson praises Cameron’s revolutionary speech, and believes that the Tories’ welfare plan doesn’t go far enough. James Forsyth argues that the Tories cannot be matched, and says that the Europe won’t go away fot the Tories. Peter Hoskin witnesses a job well done by George Osborne, and sees Andrew Lansley keeping the spending taps on. David Blackburn thinks that Cameron must tackle the expenses scandal head on, and finds the Culture Secretary declaring war on the BBC. Lloyd Evans says Dave has his Goliath in his sights. Daniel Korski is perturbed by General Sir Richard Dannatt.

Daniel Korski

What would the Tories take back from Europe?

Assuming that the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, that the Conservative Party wins the next election and that Angela Merkel and Nicola Sarkozy want Britain to remain in the European Union, what “sovereignty package” will EU leaders come up with for Prime Minister Cameron, so that the Tory leadership can placate its eurosceptic base? The deal cannot be cosmetic, but make it too tough and other EU leaders will not want to compromise. Tactically, David Cameron and William Hague will need to strike a balance between telling the public that even if Lisbon is ratified by the Poles and Czechs, a future Conservative government may still open the debate, call a

David Blackburn

The Tories’ post-conference bounce

Breaking news on Politics Home: the Tories have a 17 point lead in the polls following their party conference and Cameron’s speech. The Conservatives stand at 44%, Labour at 27% and the Liberal Democrats at 17%. That would suggest a job well done by Cameron and Tories in Manchester, and that Cameron’s speech resonated with the public, because this is a sharp bounce from polls at the beginning of the week, which had the Tories placed between 37% and 40%. Obviously, these bounces don’t last: consider that Labour is dropping back after its 5-point conference climb last week. But this bodes well for the Tories’ momentum as the election draws

David Blackburn

That Wellington became Prime Minister is irrelevant to the Dannatt case

General Dannatt denies that he’s been in cahoots with the Tories. He gave a lecture last night and said: “[David Cameron] put it to me that he was concerned that his defence team – at a time when defence was really important, and Afghanistan was really critical – lacked expert understanding. “And would I be prepared to advise his team, and, if the Conservatives win the election, would I be prepared to take a peerage and maybe join his ministerial team… it was a recent decision and indicates that there was no long-term plot.” Only a bolus of ministers, who believed they could smear a General who was renowned for

David Blackburn

Should Cameron have told us how he will do it?

The left’s criticism of Cameron’s speech is that it contained no new policies and that begs the question: how will Cameron set the people free? Steve Richards has an essential article on the subject in today’s Independent. Here are the key paragraphs: ‘Against quite a few paragraphs in Cameron’s speech I wrote a single word: “How?” I used to do the same with Blair’s early speeches only to discover in 1997 that he had no answers to the question in several key policy areas. Most fundamentally it is still not at all clear how Cameron plans to reduce what he calls Labour’s debt crisis. He framed the argument as a progressive one:

Martin Bright

Michal Kaminski: Cameron’s Ultra-Right Europhile

The Jewish Chronicle this week landed an exclusive interview with Michal Kaminski, the Tory Party’s controversial new Polish friend in the European parliament. He answered some pretty tough questions on his past pronouncements and offered a rebuttal of claims that he is an antisemite. I wasn’t entirely convinced by some of his answers but I suggest any Tories who still haven’t made up their minds about this curious alliance read the whole interview before they decide definitively on the matter. They may be baffled to read that in his eagerness to appease the Eurosceptics David Cameron has cosied up to a man who argued strongly for the Lisbon Treaty within

Martin Bright

Conservative Party Conference Impressions

I have to say that I found this year’s Conservative Party conference a little lacklustre. I realise this was sort of the whole point — the “no triumphalism” ordinance and the champagne ban were part of a conscious effort to keep the conference low key, But I do wonder whether the Tory high command overdid it. I came away from Manchester with the distinct impression that we were about to get a Tory government by default. To be fair I left before David Cameron’s set-piece speech, but the real temperature of a party conference is always taken away from the conference platform: at the fringes, in the bars and in

Thursday

8 Oct 2009

Fraser Nelson

Gove’s ‘free schools’ will be able to profit

In all the excitement, I forgot to flag up to Coffee Housers a fact that we dropped in the leader column of today’s magazine. Michael Gove’s new Swedish schools will, it seems, be allowed to make a profit. I said in the editorial that: “Crucially, it now looks likely that the new schools will be able to run for profit — as Anders Hultin, the architect of the Swedish system, argued in this magazine last week. This may come in the form of a ‘management fee’. But if this happens, then Britain’s obsession with the quality of schools could blossom into an education industry.” Hultin’s article was picked up by The Daily Telegraph.

James Forsyth

Modernisation for a purpose

Just before David Cameron came on stage they played a video looking back at his four years in charge of the party. It concentrated on the modernising moments — the huskie hugging, the efforts to get more women into Parliament and the rest. When Cameron did these things, some critics mocked them, claimed that they showed he was all style and no substance. But today we saw what those moments have made possible. Cameron devoted his pre-election conference speech to a classic conservative message, that the big state is the problem. Crucially, this message is getting a hearing. It is not being dismissed as those ideological Tories banging on again.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s revolutionary speech

This was one of the best speeches I have heard David Cameron give. It may not have been a masterpiece of oratory, he may have read from notes, left too make lulls lulls inspiring only a few standing ovations. But it was packed with mission, seriousness, vision, principles – and, most of all, a real agenda. Just as last year’s conference speech laid out a Conservative defence of the free market, this year’s laid out a vision of the conservative society. That is to say: one which hands back power to communities, which trusts people and places huge emphasis on social mobility. First, he positioned the Conservatives squarely

Lloyd Evans

Dave will slay the Goliath-esque government

Clever in its lack of cleverness. Cameron’s performance today was shrewd and unexciting, a speech of nursery-school simplicity. Large bland ideas, plain language. No detail. This was certainly no masterpiece. It didn’t have to be. Cameron’s in a holding pattern. Keep circling and he’ll land safely. Before he arrived, William Hague frustrated the eager delegates with two corporate videos of more than ordinary dullness. The BBC, flouting its own policy of censoring political broadcasts, aired both of them on BBC Parliament (albeit with the sound turned down.) First, a surpise. No less a figure than Bono, the UN’s top Guilt Ambassador, spoke to the Tories about debt relief. His message

Alex Massie

David Cameron Prepares for Government

At first I thought it a little unfortunate that David Cameron’s peroration today unconsciously – I assume – echoed the Royal Bank of Scotland’s slogan “Make it happen”. But actually, the rise and fall of RBS is something of a template for the rise and fall of governments. Years of promise and fat and profit encourage excessive self-confidence and over-expansion that ends with a devastating, humiliating crash. That has been Labour’s experience and it will eventually be the Tories’ story too, assuming that Cameron and his pals form the next government. This was a bleak, sombre speech. Perhaps even excessively so. Listening to it you could have been forgiven for

David Blackburn

Live blog – Cameron’s speech

13:50 JF: I am in the conference hall which is already filling up. Word is that various candidates will be sitting behind Cameron. 14:02 JF: The backdrop for the speech is blue sky and fluffy clouds. Message: optimism. 14:04 DB: To emphasise an optimistic future, the Tories are playing ELO’s Hello Mr Blue Sky. What a pity New Labour monopolised Things can only get better – a mantra that has never been more true. 14:12 JF: We have the text of the speech now and it looks like Cameron will set out his vision for Britain post recovery. One thing the speech does is make clear that Fox will be

Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part II

George Osborne has embraced the 50p tax as a central tenet of the “We’re all in this together” theme. CoffeeHousers will be aware of my deep scepticism about this. It is justified on presentational grounds: if you squeeze the rich, and their pips squeak, it will create ‘permission’(to use that Blairite phrase) to do the horrible things like deny pay rises to nurses and social workers. Ergo, presentation and economics are fused together on this issue, he says. Without popular support for the cuts agenda, it cant happen and the deficit won’t be tackled. So the 50p tax should be judged not on its own merits, but on the grounds

Peter Hoskin

A pledge which Cameron looks set to break

In its preview of Cameron’s speech, the Sun highlights the Tory leader saying that “…in a Conservative Britain, if you put in the effort to bring in a wage, you will be better off.” The implicit reference, here, is to Labour’s combined tax and benefit system, which frequently acts to disincentivise extra work. All too often, effort isn’t met by reward – so what’s the point? As the Centre for Social Justice’s recent Dynamic Britain report showed, this effect impinges, above all, on the least well-off in society – and with tragic consequences. It’s all to do with effective marginal tax rates, which measure what proportion of a small rise

Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part I

While were all waiting for the Cameron speech, I thought I’d post some of the out-takes of my interview with him last week (full text here). Many thanks for your suggestions for questions, which were disconcertingly good. When I was a trainee reporter, I went to a coroner’s court and noticed that the jury asked better questions than the lawyer. It’s often like that with CoffeeHouse comments: you guys had all the obvious and oblique angles covered. But I suspect that our little wiki-exercise forewarned Cameron a bit because he seemed to have ready answers. Every journalist leaves an interview thinking what was the top line in that? and if

Fraser Nelson

The radical plans the Tories are keeping under wraps

So what is George Osborne really up to? If Coffee Housers are feeling depressed at the paucity of ambition in his speech (his ‘cuts’ package would shave just 1% off government spending) then take heart. In the magazine today, James Forsyth lists the far-more-radical changes that are being discussed by the Cameroons – but kept under wraps. The full piece is here, and the main points are… 1) Corporation tax cuts. No mention was made of a growth agenda in the speech, but there are plans to cut Britain’s company tax rates quite aggressively with Ireland’s 12.5% as a lodestar. Osborne wants Britain to have the lowest corporation tax

James Forsyth

Who has the time to watch a weekday conference speech?

The activists here are already queuing up for David Cameron’s speech. But very few people outside of this conference centre are going to watch the whole speech: how many people have an hour free at 2.15pm on a weekday? If we want conferences speeches to be watched by more than conference delegates, then they need to be on in the evenings or on the weekend. Just imagine how many more people would watch Cameron, or would have watched Brown last week, if the speech started at 8pm. US conventions take place mostly in prime time, with the networks being strong-armed into covering them for at least an hour a