Conservative party

Nick Boles: Where the Tories were wrong on modernisation

Few people have been more important to Tory modernisation than Nick Boles. He co-founded Policy Exchange, the think tank that has developed most of its policy ideas, and has been a tireless—and tieless—advocate of it. But one of the things that has always marked Boles out is his willingness to think and reflect. In an interview with The Spectator this week, Boles — who was promoted to the government in the last reshuffle — assesses what he and his fellow modernisers got right and wrong. He concedes that the modernisers lacked ‘a strong, economic message’ and that they became too carried away with ‘media zeitgeist’ issues like ‘chocolate oranges in

A clear message for the second half of this Parliament

Yesterday in the House, both parties welcomed the re-election of Barack Obama. An incumbent leader has been returned to the White House. Incumbency is of course a massive factor in US politics – an incumbent has been unseated only a handful of times in history. The reason for this is clear. For all the bumps and knocks you get along the way as a government, getting your message out is much easier when you’re already standing on the podium. For the four years of his first term, Obama’s grassroots and digital campaigns never ceased. It’s an important lesson for UK politics. This week, as we enter the second half of

The View from the Cocoon of Denial and Epistemic Closure – Spectator Blogs

William F Buckley has, alas, gone the way of all flesh but his National Review lives on and arguably remains the flagship journal of contemporary American conservatism. It certainly considers itself such. As the Republican inquest into last night’s election disaster begins, National Review offers a useful – and perhaps telling – glimpse into the contemporary conservative soul (American edition). Here’s what its contributors have been writing today: Mary Matalin: What happened? A political narcissistic sociopath leveraged fear and ignorance with a campaign marked by mendacity and malice rather than a mandate for resurgence and reform. Instead of using his high office to articulate a vision for our future, Obama

James Forsyth

Kris Hopkins slams Douglas Carswell and the rebels’ tactics at tense meeting of the 1922

It was a stormy meeting of the 1922 Committee tonight. The cause of controversy was last week’s defeat of the government on the EU Budget and whether or not the rebels — led by Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless — had cooperated with Labour. Kris Hopkins, of the loyalist 301 group, read out Carswell’s letter to colleagues saying that he had had no direct contact with the rebels. He then said that seeing as the Mail on Sunday reported this weekend that Carswell had, everyone present should write to the paper and complain about its inaccurate report. The irony was, I’m told, rather effective. But this was not the end

Nadine Dorries suspended from Tory party

Tory sources have confirmed that Nadine Dorries has had the whip withdrawn until she returns to Westminster to explain to the chief whip why she has gone on ‘I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here!’ Her constituency association was shocked by the revelation, which appeared in this morning’s papers, and a number of Conservative MPs have been suggesting she should resign as an MP. Dorries’ justification is that the programme reaches a far wider audience than Parliament usually does, but this is the latest in a long string of what teachers might call ‘challenging behaviour’ from the Tory MP. David Cameron and colleagues will not be well-disposed to her

The hardcore Tory rebels and their new friends

There is now a hardcore of rebels in the Conservative party who have defied the government on three key votes. The 37 MPs below have rebelled on the EU referendum vote, the House of Lords Reform Bill, and the EU budget. The question for the whips and the Prime Minister now is do they write these MPs off their Christmas card lists as forever-rebels, or do they launch a charm offensive that could melt even the steely heart of Peter Bone? I blogged yesterday about some of the problems that the Conservative leadership is creating for itself in terms of party loyalty, and while Bill Cash is hardly going to

Isabel Hardman

Ministers ward off Tory revolt on crime compensation

The government has just managed to ward off another possible revolt in the House of Commons from Tory MPs. It failed earlier this autumn to get a revision of the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme through a delegated legislation committee when four Conservative MPs present refused to support it. The revised scheme will see half of all those seriously injured following a violent crime receiving no compensation at all and nearly 90 per cent of victims receiving less money. So John Redwood, Angie Bray, Jonathan Evans and Bob Blackman threatened to rebel, leading to Justice Minister Helen Grant withdrawing the legislation from the committee. Grant brought the legislation before committee again

The View from 22 — the fight for press freedom and an EU problem for Cameron

What effect would any form of statutory regulation have on the press in this country? In this week’s cover feature, Nick Cohen writes that if the Leveson Inquiry recommends strong measures to curtail the press, they will not be practical thanks to the constant evolution of the media industry. On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Nick explains the problems of defining who exactly is the press and who are journalists: ‘You can’t say what a newspaper is and you can’t say who a journalist is. When I started in journalism, people used to say it was a trade, not a profession…that was true in theory but false in practice — you

Don’t blame the whips for the EU budget revolt: the problem is higher up

What is striking about this evening’s revolt on the EU budget is that it was organised at lightning speed by the rebel camp. Mark Reckless and Mark Pritchard only tabled their amendment on Monday morning, whereas the rebellion of the 81 over the backbench motion for an EU referendum took weeks of careful planning. This time round, in just three days, the shadow whipping operation managed to stir up 53 MPs prepared to troop through the ‘yes’ lobby in favour of the call for a real-terms cut. The whips themselves are already saying that they know the blame will land on Sir George Young’s head when they believe it wasn’t

James Forsyth

Government suffers humiliating defeat on EU budget

The government has just suffered an embarrassing defeat on the EU budget. The rebel amendment, which called for a cut rather than the real terms freeze David Cameron is proposing, passed by 307 votes to 294. There are, I think, three significant consequences of tonight’s vote. First, it has been yet another reminder that David Cameron can barely control his party when it comes to Europe. We’re waiting for the precise number of Tory rebels tonight but it seems like about 50 MPs defied the whips. This means that if Labour is prepared to join with the Tory rebels, it can overturn the coalition’s majority. This is the second lasting

Isabel Hardman

Government expects to lose EU budget vote

While the rebel whips are still rounding up Tory MPs to vote against the government on the EU budget motion, which starts in the Commons shortly, a senior government source tells me that they now expect to lose the vote. David Cameron’s line at Prime Minister’s Questions that ‘at best we would like it cut, at worst frozen, and I’m quite prepared to use the veto if we don’t get a deal that’s good for Britain’ may not have taken the sting out of the rebellion itself, but it might be easier for the government to now argue that losing a vote on an amendment which calls for a cut is

James Forsyth

Change at Number 10

Gabby Bertin is one of David Cameron’s long-marchers; she has been with him since he won the leadership in 2005. Bertin has acted as his political spokeswoman for the last seven years, pushing the Cameron message and dealing calmly with the inevitable crises and mishaps. Few people know what Cameron thinks as well as Bertin does and are as prepared as her to tell him when he is going wrong. Cameron, for his part, values Bertin’s ability to, in his words, ‘see round corners.’ But in a fortnight’s time, she goes off on six months maternity leave. I understand that Susie Squire, currently running the press operation at CCHQ, will

EU budget: MPs warned revolt ‘could undermine coalition’

It was inevitable that the new team of whips was going to be rather unsettled by tomorrow’s vote on the EU budget: it’s the first challenge the team has had to face. But what is surprising is quite how serious their palpitations are. I understand from a number of Conservative MPs that one of the key threats isn’t you-won’t-get-a-promotion-in-this-government, or we’ll-reveal-the-truth-about-your-mistress, but that a big rebellion tomorrow will threaten the very stability of the coalition government. When I was first told this, I found it slightly incredible: this is a non-binding vote where the popular amendment calls for the Prime Minister to go further than he has promised in negotiations,

Isabel Hardman

Tory whips in a flap over EU budget rebellion deploy Rees-Mogg

At this morning’s Cabinet meeting, ministers discussed tomorrow’s debate on the EU budget, which is shaping up to be a big row. MPs I have spoken to who have either signed or are considering putting their names to the amendment calling for a real-terms cut in the budget have found their whips to be in quite a flap about the issue. Even though it might be convenient for the Prime Minister to use a vote in parliament calling for a cut as a weapon at the budget summit itself, the party leadership is clearly sufficiently nervous to have pushed for a rival amendment from Jacob Rees-Mogg and Peter Bone. The

Will David Cameron grant Northern Ireland control of corporation tax? – Spectator Blogs

Monday morning in dreich late October. What more appropriate moment to ponder the questions of corporation tax and Northern Ireland? The question of whether the Northern Ireland Assembly should control the rate of corporation tax payable in the two-thirds of Ulster for which it is responsible won’t go away, you know. Nor, despite the fact that the London press has paid little attention to it, is this some local matter of no importance to the rest of the United Kingdom either. On the contrary, David Cameron’s decision on this seemingly-arcane or merely local matter is more important than it seems and, in fact, one of the more significant questions demanding

Liam Fox: all weaker Eurozone members should leave the single currency simultaneously

Since leaving the Cabinet, Liam Fox has acted as a cross between a scout and an out-rider for various of his former Conservative Cabinet colleagues. In a speech in Oslo tomorrow, he’ll argue that the only way to deal with the Euro crisis is for all of those countries who cannot realistically cope with the demands of the single currency to leave in one go. Otherwise, he argues the markets will simply pick the weaker countries off one by one. Fox is certainly right that if Greece left, or was forced out, of the single currency, Spain and Italy would then find themselves under intense—and, probably intolerable—market pressure. But I

Nick Cohen

The Great Reckoning

In my Observer column today, I talk about the scourging of Britain’s failed elite. To give readers an idea of how many institutions are in the dock, I quote an extract from Piers Morgan’s diaries from the summer of 2004. Because I have more space, I can give you the full ghastly detail here – what lucky people you are. Morgan’s managers had just fired him from the editorship of the Mirror for running pictures of British soldiers pissing on Iraqi detainees, which a fool could have told him were crude fakes. There is a risk that when the pictures are seen in the Middle East they will endanger men and

Ken Clarke’s 2015 campaign slogan

It was not a huge surprise when Ken Clarke rowed back this afternoon on his comments to the Telegraph about tax breaks for married couples. The minister without portfolio was hardly going to get through the first interview he has given since the reshuffle without saying something he would later have to ‘clarify’. But he made another interesting observation to the newspaper about the Tories’ 2015 strategy. He said: ‘If we are back to strong growth by the next election, we probably won’t need to campaign. If at the next election, the economy is in strong normal growth, George Osborne will be given the Companion of Honour or something and

The Carswellian revolution

While Conrad Black re-entered polite society at Lulu’s in Mayfair last night, the Hospital Club in Soho saw the advent of a new political force. A tie-less Douglas Carswell, the rebellious Tory MP for Clacton, took to the stage to launch his new book The End of Politics and the birth of iDemocracy, a work described by Dominic Lawson in last week’s Sunday Times as ‘as a revolutionary text… right up there with the Communist Manifesto’. Carswell thanked his wife Clementine for allowing him to lurk in the shed for weeks on end while writing his revolutionary tome, and then confessed that he had spent much of the time ‘Skyping