Politics

Vernon Bogdanor says that David Cameron is the only Conservative who can read the nation’s mood and respond to it In the 1960s Harold Wilson sought to make Labour the natural party of government. Tony Blair seems to have succeeded in doing so. The Conservatives have now been in opposition for eight years, their longest period out of government since the days of Asquith and Lloyd George before 1914. Never before, during the period of mass suffrage, have they lost three consecutive general elections. Moreover, at no stage since 1997 have they appeared credible as a potential party of government. That is bad, not only for the Conservatives but also

Despite well-meaning efforts by Francis Maude, Theresa May and Alan Duncan to cast a pall over the occasion, Blackpool 2005 turned out to be the most life-enhancing Tory party conference in recent years. With 6,000 members present, it provided a pleasing reminder that vigour and enthusiasm survive among the grass-roots. Meanwhile, a series of outstanding speeches from the platform demonstrates the remarkable depth of talent within the parliamentary party. The first revelation was awesome: David Cameron. Every so often in British politics a star is born, and this happened last week. There has always been much to like about Cameron. But there was every reason to suppose that the same

If you are not part of the ‘selectorate’, you feel annoyed at the suggestion that Gordon Brown can become prime minister by acclamation and without a general election. It is not so much that another candidate might be better — though I rather like the look of Alan Johnson, the Trade and Industry Secretary — it is just that a party’s choice of leader is a very different thing from running the country. The country should decide on the latter. Of party leaders since the war chosen while in government only Harold Macmillan could be accounted any sort of success. The others were Anthony Eden, Alec Douglas-Home, Jim Callaghan and

If you want to discombobulate a Eurocrat, try calling him a Thatcherite. Gert-Jan Koopman, the European Commission’s otherwise articulate director of industrial policy and economic reform, threw up his hands in silent horror when I lobbed the epithet at him, though I meant it as a compliment. The game in Brussels these days — so I learnt from half a dozen conversations within a stone’s throw of the ultimate in glass houses, the Commission’s re-clad Berlaymont headquarters — is to advance a smaller-government, less-red-tape, jobs-and-growth agenda. But in the face of resurgent protectionism in France and elsewhere and the uncertain outcome of the German election, it is a game which

His party hoped that Kenneth Clarke as Chancellor would deliver the elusive ‘feelgood factor’ that would somehow win them the election. When would it come through? ‘2 May 1997,’ he told them. He was right. The election was held and lost on 1 May, his successor got off to a flying start, and the factor stayed with him. It has seen him and his party through two more elections, while his opponents tried in vain to argue that all the good work had been done for him. Only now has his factotum, Ed Balls, been sent out to tell us that the man in the floppy hat and the scuffed

At the worst moment in Labour party fortunes, some point in the mid-1980s, a Labour politician is said to have emerged from yet another resounding election defeat unrepentant, declaring: there must be no compromise with the electorate. There was something admirable about this remark. The politician who uttered the phrase had doubtless entered politics to espouse the causes he or she passionately believed in — socialism in one country, nuclear disarmament, ownership of the means of production, etc. The fact that the complacent and inert masses of the British people refused to entertain these Marxist insights was no reason to think again. This state of mind was not conducive to

The long line of young women outside Marks & Spencer, arms folded modestly across their chests as they wait for their brassieres to arrive, is a standing rebuke to the European Single Market. Even Peter Mandelson, now installed as commissioner in charge of trade, is talking of a glitch. It is, in fact, the by-product of some clumsy diplomatic bluff and counter-bluff with Hu He, the Cantonese manufacturer and underclothier to the world. Hu’s European competitors have lobbied their governments, they have contrived to stitch things up in Brussels, and shiploads of containers from the Pearl River are now choking the port of Rotterdam while his customers shiver in Kensington

What was amazing about John Ware’s ‘A Question of Leadership’ on Panorama last Sunday was that it has taken nearly four years since 11 September for such a programme to be made. It simply and successfully did the basic journalistic job of asking difficult questions. The chief object of the questions was Sir Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain. Sir Iqbal was juxtaposed with moderate Muslims who unequivocally repudiate the doctrines of Islamist extremism and various apologists for them. What did he think of a group of people affiliated to the MCB who say that those who mark Christmas ‘will find a permanent abode in hellfire’? ‘It’s

There are certain political moves which have now become regular, almost ceremonial features of our national life. One is the IRA’s announcement that the conflict is over. This is repeated once a year or so, flagged by the BBC and No. 10 as ‘historic’, and used as a reason for further concessions to Sinn Fein. Another summer visitor, though only every four years, is a bid for the leadership of the Conservative party by Kenneth Clarke. The form goes like this. Friendly journalists write that Mr Clarke is ‘a fully paid-up member of the human race’ and polls are published showing that many voters have heard of him and some