Conservative party

Things have come to a pretty pass when the Labour Party is launching a campaign with a deficit clock to expose George Osborne’s shortcomings. But they are about to do today, I understand, highlighting how much extra the government is borrowing over the four days of the Tory conference compared to last year: £277 million, they say. I’ll post the link when it becomes live. Significantly, Labour is shifting from being in a position of deficit denial towards a position where they will (I suspect) sign up to Osborne’s spending plans. As Balls has found out, Osborne’s game is to dress up only-slightly-modified Labour spending plans with Tory language. But

Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation’ conference speech will have put the populist cat amongst Downing Street’s toffee-nosed pigeons. Now young Dave’s people will have to work out how to respond to this inspired piece of political cross-dressing, even if it is essentially diaphanous. One (alleged) Tory, though, is very happy with the direction in which the national debate seems to be travelling. Mr Steerpike found Phillip Blond, the ‘Red Tory’ and founder of the Respublica think-tank, cock-a-hoop after the speech: ‘Ed Miliband has thrown down a blue Labour challenge to the Conservatives. No. 10 needs a Red Tory response unless they want to see Ed’s One Nation politics win the next election.’ Despite

This conference season marks the half way point to the next election and we can see the political battle lines becoming clearer. The Tories, as their new poster campaign shows, intends to hammer Labour as the party that has learnt nothing from its mistakes. The argument of the coalition parties, which Nick Clegg previewed in Brighton, will be that the world has changed but Labour is stuck in the pre-crash era with its borrow and spend economics. Ed Miliband for his part wants to run as the man who is ‘on your side’. Today’s policy announcement taking aim at pension charges and the energy companies are designed to resonate with

Three months after it was sent, the Prime Minister has replied to a letter signed by over 100 backbench Conservative MPs calling for legislation in this parliament for an EU referendum in the next. John Baron, who co-ordinated the letter, is not releasing David Cameron’s response as the original message was private, too. But I’ve managed to get my hands on a copy from elsewhere, and here are some of the key points Cameron makes: ‘As we discussed, I do believe it would be wrong to rule out any type of referendum for the future. However, I am concerned that making a legal commitment now to hold a referendum in

In the summer of 2011 I was fortunate enough to land a one-week work experience placement with a government minister. It was Andrew Mitchell. It is no surprise, then, that I have been keeping a keen eye on the newspapers this past week as ‘Gategate’ continues to make the headlines. It only took a few conversations with the then International Development Secretary for me to realise that his compassionate approach towards aid was genuine. There were no cameras or microphones present as Mitchell told me of the desperate situation he had encountered the previous month in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa. Upon hearing that I am of Bangladeshi origin, Mitchell

A big-tent turnout on Saturday evening for the fourtieth birthday of Conor Burns, the Tory MP for Bournemouth West. Burns, fresh from his heroic rebellion against Lords reform, packed the State Rooms of the Palace of Westminster with a big crowd of rising Tory stars and some old stagers including Lord Lamont and Sir Mark Thatcher. Burns is a close friend of Baroness Thatcher; and although the great Lady was unable to join, she did some send some pearls of wisdom in her place. Burns reported that when he had told Lady Thatcher that his friend and speech-giver Thomas Docherty, who has been Burns’ voting pair since they both arrived in Westminster

Nigel Farage’s very public willingness to explore a UKIP-Tory electoral pact in exchange for a pledge from David Cameron to hold a referendum on EU membership is, I suspect, designed to achieve two things. First, it is meant to flush out Cameron. If Cameron declines the offer, Farage will be able to claim that only UKIP are the only party to vote for if you want an In/Out choice on the UK’s EU membership. It’ll undercut the Tory offer of a renegotiation referendum. Second, by floating the offer he makes it more likely that individual Tory MPs and candidates might sign up to the offer themselves, pledging to back an

Over the past two days, we’ve had polls from four different pollsters, and all of them show big leads for Labour. Yesterday, Populus gave Ed Miliband’s party a 15-point lead — the largest lead the pollster has ever shown for Labour. Today, Ipsos MORI shows Labour ahead by 11 points and TNS BMRB have them up by 12. The latest YouGov tracker gives Labour a nine-point lead, although averaging their polls over the last week makes it more like ten points. The precise margins may be different, but all of these results would — if replicated in a general election — result in a large Labour majority and hand Ed