conservative party Archives

Tuesday

9 Oct 2012

Conservative conference: David Cameron moves Tories to the common, not the centre, ground

It’s David Cameron’s birthday today, but when James Naughtie suggested on the Today programme that Boris Johnson be sent to a remote country as ambassador, the Prime Minister sounded as though Christmas had come early, too. You could almost hear Cameron’s mind whirring as he considered which country might deserve the Mayor of London. As well as answering questions on the man who last night continued his pitch to become the next Tory leader, Cameron was asked where he was taking his party currently. The policies announced this conference are being seen as a sign of the Conservatives moving to the right, but Cameron described it like this: ‘The Conservative

Monday

8 Oct 2012

Rod Liddle

The Tories Vs Scotland

Interesting comments from Ruth Davidson, the chairthing of the Scottish Conservative Party, about her fellow countrymen. Only twelve per cent of Scots, she says, contribute more to the exchequer than they take out in the form of benefits. “The rest lie around on filthy sofas in subsidised homes, watching daytime television while farting, mainlining heroin and stuffing their sad grey faces with pies full of regurgitated sheep gizzards and Windolene.” Actually, I paraphrase a bit there. She didn’t say all that stuff. She just said almost nine out of ten Scots take more in benefits than they generate in wealth. This is, she says, shocking, and the Scots have too

Fraser Nelson

Conservative Conference: Boris delight

You could tell this was the Boris Johnson show because people were smiling when they queued, smiling as they listened and smiling as they left. The mood in the conference hall had been completely transformed: it was as if this were comedy night, and we were waiting for the Prince of Political Standup. He was introduced via a Bond-style video, and made an extraordinary entrance which I tried to record on my iPhone. The quality is not Emmy-winning, but it may give some sense of the mood:- Boris thanked everyone for the Olympics, hailed London as the world’s greatest city and then walked his very fine line of support for

James Forsyth

Conservative conference: Iain Duncan Smith rips into Labour’s welfare legacy

Iain Duncan Smith has just delivered the most political speech of what has been a highly partisan conference. He tore into Labour’s record on welfare, accusing them of having fostered welfare dependency and increased inequality. He said that they had created two nations: one who worked and one who was trapped on welfare. Having done that, he then denounced Labour for having opposed all of his changes to the welfare system, attacking them in moral terms for this. Labour ‘don’t know anything about work do they’ he told the audience to cheers. The flip side of this attack on Labour was an attempt to claim the mantle of ‘social reform’

Steerpike

Steerpike at the Tories: Access denied

Officially the Tories are denying that UKIP is a threat to them. A private discussion with the party chairman about obstacles to a majority in 2015 held last night contained no mention of Farage’s merry men. Yet it seems that Central Office might actually be a little more paranoid than they are letting on. The fringe hosted a panel debate this morning simply tilted ‘Does UKIP pose a threat?’ The Parliament Street think tank had invited a prominent UKIP member to challenge senior Tories on the matter. The only problem was that said UKIPper was told, just hours before the event, that their pass had been withdrawn and access to

Fraser Nelson

Conservative conference: Tories find themselves on a different wavelength to voters

BBC Radio Five is broadcast on 909 kHz, but whatever wavelength the Conservative Party is using was not being received by the 200 average voters assembled by Victoria Derbyshire’s meet-the-public programme now held in every party conference. It’s normally the closest that ordinary voters get to the party conferences, inviting frontbenchers to take questions from locals. The results are quite often explosive. Grant Shapps, the new Tory chairman, was the first guest and was inevitably asked about why he ran his business operating under a made-up name. He gave various explanations but the man in the audience wasn’t buying it. ‘My name’s Barry Tomes. That’s my real name, by the

James Forsyth

Conservative conference: George Osborne tells Tories he is not for turning

listen to ‘George Osborne conference speech, 8 Oct 12’ on Audioboo George Osborne began his conference speech by pointing out that two years into government, Ted Heath had flinched on the economy and lost while Margaret Thatcher had kept on and won. Osborne’s message was, I’m determined to be Thatcher not Heath. The Chancellor’s allies clearly knew this was an important speech for him. Several times, Michael Gove — probably, Osborne’s closest friend in Cabinet — started to clap before the applause line had finished been delivered. One strategic objective of the speech was to try and win back the ‘one nation’ mantra that ‘we’re all in this together’

Steerpike

Steerpike at the Tories’: Grant Shapps’ ‘how to guide’ on gate-crashing

If warm white wine and dodgy canapés are your thing, then party conferences will be your heaven and I urge you to gate-crash them before the parties become extinct. Gate-crashing is an innate skill. Mr Steerpike crashed a members-only do for constituency bigwigs at the Tories’ tempestuous conference in Birmingham, and found himself in good company: Tory party chairman Grant Shapps revealed that he is an expert gate-crasher. Back in the nineties, ‘a strong young Conservative, who was never going to be a real security threat’ swiped John Major’s schedule and invitation list for an entire party conference in the loos. While a flustered member of the prime minister’s security detail scoured

Isabel Hardman

Conservative conference: Patrick McLoughlin wrestles the One Nation mantle from Miliband

Patrick McLoughlin was the obvious choice to confront Ed Miliband as the Labour leader tries to steal the ‘One Nation’ mantle from the Conservative party. The former miner opened his speech by remarking that the last time he had addressed conference was 28 years ago. He then invited delegates to watch a video of this speech, delivered when the Transport Secretary was a young man, telling Margaret Thatcher that he was proud to be a ‘Tory scab’ who crossed picket lines. He then underlined that in the class war that Miliband tried to ignite last week, McLoughlin was the winner: ‘I am the son of a miner. I am the

James Forsyth

George Osborne: ‘New taxes on rich people’ to accompany welfare cuts

Ahead of his conference speech this morning, George Osborne was on the Today Programme. Much of the interview revolved around whether or not the Chancellor would have to abandon his aim of having the national debt falling as a percentage of GDOP by 2015/16. Osborne batted away these questions, stressing that he was waiting for the numbers from the Office of Budget Responsibility. Osborne also said that there would be ‘new taxes on rich people’ to accompany the £10 billion of welfare cuts that he wants to see. Osborne stressed that efforts to make the rich pay more were not simply to ‘appease Liberal Democrats’. One of the dilemmas for

Isabel Hardman

Conservative conference: George Osborne to pursue £10 billion welfare cuts

George Osborne is due to speak to the Conservative party conference just before lunch today. What he tells the Symphony Hall at the International Convention Centre may well put his Liberal Democrat coalition partners off their food, as his speech will make clear the Chancellor’s determination to cut a further £10 billion from the welfare budget. The Lib Dems appear to have adapted their position somewhat over the summer. In July, I reported senior sources saying that the £10 billion cut was ‘just not going to happen’. A little later, the party started making the connection between this new package of cuts and the wealth tax which Nick Clegg flew

Sunday

7 Oct 2012

Fraser Nelson

Conservative conference: Boris refuses to say if Cameron’s doing a better job than he would

Speaking to John Pieenar on Five Live, Boris Johnson said he wished to deal with the leadership speculation, shoot it down with “six inch guns”. He did so by repeatedly refusing to say that David Cameron is doing a better job than he would have done. He was behind Cameron “from the very beginning,” he said – perhaps so, but not the question he was asked. And the fun began:- listen to ‘Boris on leadership on Five Live, 7 Oct 12’ on Audioboo In fact, he said, there is an upside that everyone was talking about his destabilising David Cameron. It is “entirely natural” that “there should be a narrative”

James Forsyth

Conservative conference: Iain Duncan Smith admits ‘We will have to take more money out of welfare’

The Tory party loves its former leaders and the queue for Conservative Home’s fringe event with Iain Duncan Smith went round the block. IDS began by explaining why he had chosen to stay in the Welfare job rather than move to Justice in the reshuffle. Though he stressed that there had been no Prime Ministerial demand that he did move but merely what he described as, a ‘genuinely good discussion’ about it. IDS, who is known not to be a big fan of giving free TV licenses and the like to wealthy pensioners, said that any changes to pensioner benefits were ‘off the table’ because of David Cameron’s election pledge.

Sebastian Payne

Conservative conference: fighting and winning on the marginal front in 2015

Conservatives need to become more effective at winning marginal seats if they have any hope of gaining a majority at the next general election. But what exactly does the party need to do if they wish to improve on their 2010 performance? This was the question posed at a ConservativeHome fringe event this evening, where several MPs who took marginals in 2010 spoke of their experiences and recommendations for 2015. The successful marginal MPs — Jesse Norman, Nicola Blackwood, Robert Halfon, Richard Harrington and Martin Vickers — have written a pamphlet Lessons from the Marginals that will be published online shortly. Halfon, who took Harlow with a 4,925 majority after

Isabel Hardman

Conservative conference: Nick Boles says Labour’s immigration policy contributed to housing failure

Nick Boles started his first fringe as a minister this evening by saying that after years of trying to make controversial points at party conference events, he wasn’t going to say anything interesting. The new planning minister’s attempt at being boring wasn’t thoroughly successful: Boles’ version of being dull and unreportable is still more fascinating than some politicians will ever manage. He opened his speech to the IPPR event by praising the good intentions of the Labour government in building more homes. But there was one fatal flaw in that plan, he said: ‘The last government had many good intentions in this area. They made life a lot more difficult

Isabel Hardman

Conservative conference: William Hague doesn’t want a minimalist Europe

When it came to the passage in his speech on Europe, William Hague was clearly building up to a crescendo. He thundered out the lines ‘which will require the fresh consent of the British people’, and then paused for what he expected to be a rapturous round of applause from a Tory audience thrilled to have received more red meat on Europe. The applause certainly came, but it wasn’t exactly full of enthusiasm; more a perfunctory round of clapping. The first thing holding back the cheers was that everyone in the hall had already heard this line. The promise had been that there would be more details at autumn conference

Isabel Hardman

Conservative conference: Shapps pushes ‘shy’ Tories to shout out about their achievements

Grant Shapps used his speech this afternoon to the Conservative party conference to encourage Tories to not be shy. It’s not a charge you could level at the Conservative party co-chair himself, especially after he devoted the first section of his speech to talking about himself and his own election battles. He also revealed to the conference ‘exactly’ what David Cameron had told him on reshuffle day: ‘The day of the reshuffle I went to see the Prime Minister in Downing Street, and today I can reveal precisely what he said. “Grant, you’ve got one task as chairman, get out there and kick-start our campaign, rally the troops, take the

Martin Bright

What else could go wrong for the Tories?

Beyond being implicated in the Jimmy Savile scandal it’s hard to imagine how last week could have been worse for the Tories. The build up to their conference in Birmingham has been marked by about as catastrophic an example of incompetence as it is possible to imagine at the Department for Transport. The cancellation of the West Coast rail franchise competition is plain embarrassing and has led to the usual response of this government: blame someone else. Three civil servants have been suspended while Justine Greening, who was Secretary of State at the time of the fiasco, remains in the Cabinet. You had to feel for her successor, Patrick McLoughlin,

Saturday

6 Oct 2012

Alex Massie

Abortion: Jeremy Hunt may be stupid, that doesn’t mean he’s wrong –

Jeremy Hunt: what a card! A row about abortion is just what the Conservative and Unionist party needs to kick-off its conference week! The MP for South West Surrey is certainly entitled to say he favours outlawing abortion outwith the first trimester; the Secretary of State for Health would have been wiser to have kept quiet. The problem is Hunt’s political judgement, not his moral compass. Nevertheless, some of the reaction to Hunt’s comments has bordered on the hysterical. Talk of a Tory “War on Women” is as ugly as it is absurd and another example of how the witless American brand of partisanship has leaked into our political discourse.

Fraser Nelson

Michael Gove: why I’ll never run for leader

Today’s Guardian magazine runs a Michael Gove profile, colouring him blue on the cover as if to alert readers to the threat he poses. “Smoother than Cameron,” it warns. “Funnier than Boris. More right-wing than both. Are you looking at the next leader of the Tory Party?” There is nothing unusual about leadership speculation following a prominent Tory frontbencher, but there is something unusual about the way Gove has ruled it out in almost any way imaginable. He has combined General Sherman and Estelle Morris, saying he wouldn’t and couldn’t do the job. It is now being said that Gove is protesting too much, but he has been clear about this