Politics Archives

Monday

1 Oct 2007

Can the Tories learn to run before Brown runs to the country?

The psychology of this conference is like no other I’ve experienced. Having mastered walking, the Cameron Conservative Party believed it had a couple of years in which to get on top of this running business. No such luck. Gordon Brown’s very public toying with a snap election has compelled the party to unveil a larger tranche of hard policies than it had hoped to do at this stage of the electoral cycle. So Michael Gove and George Osborne had to look this morning as if they were capable of being Schools Secretary and Chancellor respectively in a matter of days. It is to their immense credit that each (in my

Fraser Nelson

Osborne explains who the uber mods are

Steve Richards has just asked Osborne what he meant by “über modernisers” in his interview with me last week. Here’s his answer. “Some people who had urged modernisation on the party, not necessarily Conservatives, pick us up the moment we talk about law and order or other crucial issues…. We’re accused of lurching to the right. I think that’s rubbish, and that’s what I was saying in the interview.” I never had Polly Toynbe down as a Tory moderniser, but there you go….

Fraser Nelson

Osborne and the non doms

I’m sitting in a George Osborne fringe event, where he’s being given the Parky treatment by Steve Richards from the Indy. He’s discussing his new tax on the non domiciles: a £25,000 annual charge. Won’t this turn them away, asks Richards. No, Osborne replies, the average non dom earns £100,000 he says, so £25k ain’t much to them. But as he’ll know, the average non dom pays £26k in tax, so this Tory idea would push their tax burden over 50%, which I doubt these highly mobile folk will suffer. His speech was excellent, though, and lifted spirits in the hall no end.

Fraser Nelson

Boris by the book

Unlike the Labour conference, there is a bookshop here in Blackpool (what does that tell you?) and I have found a gem: The Little Book of Boris. It’s one of those compendiums Iain Dale edits, a collection of the man’s greatest aphorisms. Boris’s genius is splitting people’s sides, or making a devilishly complex point, in two sentences. No one does it better and any aficionado of the BoJo patter will find this a splendid stocking filler.

Matthew Dancona

Gordon tries to rain on Dave’s parade

There are certain gentleman’s conventions that govern British politics. One is that party leaders do not trash each other while overseas. Another is that, while one of the main parties is holding its annual conference, the other more or less keeps quiet: why, after all, waste a good policy proposal when the political press pack is filing thousands of words about the other lot from a seaside resort? But, in the next election – whenever it comes – Marquess of Queensberry rules will definitely not be observed. Just as Gordon Brown did not deign to mention the Tories in his Bournemouth conference speech seven days ago, so his Government now

Matthew Dancona

The Terminator is here in spirit

Where the Conservative Party goes, the spirit of enterprise follows. Resourcefully, the local cinema in Blackpool is showing a mini-season of Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbusters to compensate for the Governator’s physical absence from this week’s conference. Which means that delegates who can’t face Dave’s big speech on Wednesday can enjoy Terminator 3 instead. One will be an all-action thriller with lots of stunts and special effects in which a battered cybernetic organism repeatedly defies death against an apparently unbeatable foe in an attempt to prevent catastrophe; and the other will be an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

Sunday

30 Sep 2007

Fraser Nelson

Bar talk

The ice-breaker at the bars in Bournemouth during the Labour conference was “when will the election be?” Here in Blackpool, the conversation starter is “is it over for Cameron?” But unlike previous Tory mutinies I’ve witnessed, it’s being asked from concern, not malice. No one wants him gone. There’s encouragement at the tougher line he’s adopted in the last few weeks, and no one can name any plausible successor. I’ve yet to meet anyone who thinks the party has even an outside chance of winning an early election, though.

James Forsyth

From Boris to Bloomberg

Boris has just brought the house down with a speech attacking Ken Livingstone and setting out the Tory agenda for London. One senses that Boris will have no problem in motivating the party activists to hit the streets for him. Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York, was witty and self-deprecating and generally far better than I expected. Yet, I’m still sceptical of the decision to invite him. Bloomberg’s recent decision to quit the Republican Party and his flirtation with an independent run for the presidency has made him persona non grata with various sections of the Republican Party and his relationship with his predecessor and the Republican frontrunner Rudy

George Osborne

George Osborne’s conference diary

George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor and Tory election co-ordinator, will be contributing to Coffee House throughout conference. Here is his first entry: The first full day of conference. Morning meeting at 8am with David and the team, setting out exactly what we’ll do today. Much as I’d like to share the details, I cannot, even with you, dear Coffee House reader. Then onto Sky’s Adam Boulton programme in the studio overlooking the conference. Snippet in case you missed it: Adam: “Are you going to introduce out of hours supermarket parking charges?” Me: “No.” Who says politicians can’t give a straight answer? Watched William Hague’s barnstorming speech on TV from my hotel room,

James Forsyth

Hezza still a conference darling after all these years

Michael Heseltine just rolled back the years with a crowd-pleasing address to conference. Heseltine extolled the values of decentralisation, celebrated the triumph of the Tory agenda and bashed Gordon Brown for his failings. Tarzan also wins the prize for being the first, and I’m open to correction on this, speaker to quote Winston Churchill; declaring that the Tories must be ready to fight Brown with their ideas in the towns. The necessity of the Tories getting off to a good start is demonstrated by the fact that the party has put their three most crowd-pleasing platform speakers—Hague, Heseltine and Boris Johnson—up on day one. Expect New York mayor Michael Bloomberg to

Matthew Dancona

Warsi illustrates the Tory dilemma

Amid all the polls, hoopla and election prognostications as the Tories gather in Blackpool, don’t miss this interview in today’s Sindy with Sayeeda Warsi, the shadow minister for social cohesion. She speaks about the incapacity of modern Government to cope with modern population mobility, a subject I also address in today’s Sunday Telegraph. Much more contentiously she detects legitimacy in the grievances of some who vote for far Right parties. Were this warning uttered by a white male, it would cause the Tory walls to come tumbling down; as a free marketeer who has always defended immigration and the viability of multi-ethnic Britain, I must confess that her position makes

Fraser Nelson

Hague on Brown

William Hague has been given the task of Brown baiting. His speech went quite well until this bit: “After ten years of failure and disappointment, he cannot be the change the country needs.” There’s something strange about hearing this Ghandi ‘be the change’ patter put into Hague’s mouth. As I suspect he knows, the public want politicians to enact change not purport to embody it. And this preference for “I am” rather than “I will” is what Cameron must reverse over this conference.

Fraser Nelson

Not the best cut

Given that David Cameron has given himself a tiny fund for tax cuts, I’m not at all convinced that cutting stamp duty should be his priority. Are first time buyers really going to think “I’ll vote Tory to save 1% off my home” when the flux of the housing market can take values up or down by this amount on a weekly basis? It simply serves to underline the paucity of the offering. I hope the proposals get better this week.

Saturday

29 Sep 2007

Hywel Williams

Sons of the Manse

Governments recycle policies, pledges and promises. Gordon Brown has decided to recycle his rhetoric as well-with some fine-sounding phrases about what he owed his father, a minister of the Church of Scotland. Tony Blair in his time talked about the ‘giving age’ to the Labour conference. The Brown version recalled a lesson learnt at his father’s knee-that it was more blessed to give than to receive: the object of the giving being-in this case-‘society’. It’s now some months since the prime minister started to share his thoughts with us about his own special status as one of the ‘sons of the manse’-a grouping typified supposedly by industrious virtue and devotion

James Forsyth

As Tories head to Blackpool, Brown has a landslide lead

Today’s polls are grim for the Tories. Labour lead by double digits in both and with a uniform national swing would have a majority well into three figures. Gordon Brown is also well ahead of David Cameron on the key personal measures. According to YouGov, Cameron has a net negative rating of 41 on being in touch with the concerns of people like you while Brown scores a plus 10 rating on this question. Populus has Brown leading 60 to 45% on the issue of caring about the problems that ordinary people face. While 50% think that Brown has answers to the key issues facing the country compared to only

The Spectator

Did the Tories rock in Blackpool?

Spectator.co.uk has full coverage of the Tory Conference. Matthew d’Ancona and Fraser Nelson are reporting the latest development from Blackpool here. George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor and Tory election coordinator, is blogging for Coffee House, to read his thoughts click here. Up and coming Tory MP Nadine Dorries is also lending her unique perspective to Coffee House. While Tamzin Lightwater is keeping us up to date on all the latest gossip from inside Team Cameron. Norman Tebbit tells Cameron to ignore his advisers and instead listen to St. Paul, in his pre-conference essay. Frank Luntz, the American pollster, reveals what his focus groups are saying here. While Fraser Nelson previews

The Spectator

The right stuff | 29 September 2007

Ostensibly, Gordon Brown’s first Labour conference speech as Prime Minister on Monday was grandly non-partisan: there was not a single mention of the Tories or of David Cameron. In practice, the Conservative party generally, and Mr Cameron specifically, were present in every line. Though presented as a lofty civic oratory by the father of the nation, this was in fact a brutally partisan speech by an expert Scottish machine politician. Everything was achieved by implication, but heavy implication. First, Mr Brown presented himself as a sort of Sarkozy from Fife, translating ‘love France or leave it’ into an extended discourse on playing by the rules, British values, the need for

Matthew Parris

In the chaos of a conference morning, the celestial strains of a violin made my soul

Last Sunday morning found me at the Highcliff Hotel in Bournemouth, the conference hotel for Labour’s 2007 gathering and — the reason I was there — the temporary home of the BBC television’s Andrew Marr Show. Along with my fellow journalist Anne McElvoy, I was Andrew’s guest reviewer of the morning newspapers. I was in to read them at seven, a huge red orb of a sun rising over the sea as I made my way along the cliff tops from my hotel on the East Cliff to the West Cliff and our studio. It was cool, breezy and beautiful, the Channel a choppy and restless autumn symphony of greys

Simon Nixon

The Tories no longer understand the City

Simon Nixon says David Cameron’s Conservatives must stop sending out such mixed signals if they want to establish serious credibility with the business community Gordon Brown has done many things to discombobulate the Tories since becoming Prime Minister three months ago. But none so effective as the creation of a new ‘business advisory council’ including many of the grandest names in British business, from Sir Terry Leahy of Tesco to buy-out baron Damon Buffini of Permira. This was a real coup — which is why he launched it on his first day. At a stroke, he quashed speculation he would lurch to the left, secured the implicit endorsement of some

Norman Tebbit

Cameron should heed St. Paul, not his advisers

With our overstretched army bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, violent crime on the streets out of control, a run on a high street bank, teachers assaulted in their classrooms, bullying by pupils over the internet, illiteracy growing, the NHS shambles in which young British doctors are left jobless while thousands of foreigners are imported to take their jobs, house prices soaring way beyond the reach of ordinary families, even the Commission for Racial Equality admitting that uncontrolled immigration and multiculturalism — those totems of New Labour — are threatening the stability of society, there should be a spring in David Cameron’s feet as he pedals north to Blackpool. Surely