Conservative party

Thursday

Daniel Korski

Hague’s modern Realism

In a splurge of activity, William Hague gave both an interview to the FT and another foreign policy speech at RUSI outlining the views of a Conservative government. It was time for an update on Tory thinking, not least because David Cameron’s description of his policy as “liberal conservatism” and his unwillingness to march into a “massive euro bust-up” has had little effect. That is because a struggle over how to engage with the world continues to run beneath the party leader’s message of party unity. Four main schools of diplomatic thought exist in the party: the modern Realists, the Neo-Conservatives, the anti-Europeans (not the same as the Euroskeptics, which

David Blackburn

Uptown girl

David Cameron warns the nation to “get ready” for Samantha, who will be interviewed by Sir Trevor Macdonald on Sunday. If Sarah Brown is the damsel in distress, saved by her heroic husband, Sam Cam is the trouser-wearing uber-bitch. Allegedly, she is terrifying: cowering Smythsons’ interns refer to her as Anna Wintour. She never does hyperbole. She will extol her husband’s virtues succinctly, saying he’s never let her down in 14 years of marriage. Presumably she will then talk about her career, the tragic loss of her son and her Bohemian youth. Following Ed Vaizey’s bid for de-selection, great efforts have been made to present the twentysomething Sam as a

David Blackburn

City middlemen don’t like Osborne precisely because he is competent

The City’s elopement with New Labour has ended violently. A poll of leading financiers, conducted by City AM, reveals that 73 percent think that a Tory majority would be best for the economy; a mere 10 percent support Labour. But the City has little enthusiasm for George Osborne: 23 percent believe he has the mettle to be Chancellor, 13 percent behind Ken Clarke. So where is it going wrong for Osborne? James Kirkup observes that the Tories recent collapse in the polls coincided with Osborne and Cameron obscuring their economic message. But the City’s antipathy to Osborne is long established. Disquiet reigned even when Osborne and the Tories were storming

David Blackburn

Clegg’s conditions

Nick Clegg is the rage of the papers this morning. His interview with the Spectator is trailed across the media and the Independent has an interview where Clegg once again lists the four demands that would be his initial negotiating tests for backing a minority government. They are: – Raising the income tax threshold to £10,000 through taxes on the rich. – An education spending boost for the poorest in society through the ‘pupil premiums’. – A switch to a Green economy, less dependent on financial services.  – Political reforms at Westminster, including electoral reform. What to make of that quartet? There is much that is sensible, much that is

Wednesday

Fraser Nelson

Clegg: Heir to Thatcher?

Nick Clegg has a blue rose in his mouth in tomorrow’s Spectator, serenading readers – and showing his hidden Tory side. I have to say, he puts his heart into it. Not only does the Lib Dem leader say he’ll end the structural deficit with 100 percent spending cuts (not the 20 percent tax rises, 80 percent cuts combo that the Tories advocate), but he even heaps praise in Lady Thatcher. More, he describes her as something of an inspiration: just as she took on vested interests in the 1980s, so he will take on the banks now.   Personally, I can’t quite see the equivalence – and Clegg as

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories will have waves of dirt thrown at them<br />

If you want a flavour of what is going to be thrown at the Tories between now and May 6th, read Jonathan Freedland’s column today. Freedland has a fair point about how Michael Ashcroft should pay tax in this country, in my view no one should be eligible for an honour let alone a seat in the legislature if they are not fully domiciled in this country for tax purpose, but it is all dressed up in the language of the class war. I’ve never met Richard Drax, Richard Grosvenor Plunkett-Ernle-Erle-Drax to give him this full name, but it seems rather cheap to drag up his family’s involvement in the

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Tough on dangerous dogs, blind to the causes of dangerous dogs

It’s ‘dangerous dogs’ season again – but is there more to the story? The Today programme gave this its main 8.10am slot. The BBC sought to interview some chavs to sneer at – the listener being invited to conclude that the law must be brought to bear on them. But Brendan O’Neill was quite right in this week’s magazine, where he describes how government seeks to use this scare for yet another power grab over the citizens. The aim, he says “is not only to bring dog-owners into that very big tent of People Continually Spied On By The Authorities, but to weed out the ‘devil dogs that terrorise socially

David Blackburn

The prospect of another EU treaty is a huge problem for reformer Brown

It seems there must be discussion about a potential European Monetary Fund, and an organisation to manage Europe’s economies that circumvents Maastricht, to avert future fiscal crises. So much for Lisbon, the treaty to end all treaties. Quite why no one, especially the treaty’s opponents, acknowledged the possibility of a member state’s financial collapse whilst Lisbon was being ratified during the recession is a mystery. However, all that is past. The question for the future is will there be a referendum this time round? Adrian Michaels, rightly, point out that the Tories’ eurowars are likely to be renewed at the most inopportune time for Cameron. But Cameron will offer a

Peter Hoskin

Vaizey drops Cameron in it (again)

Michael Wolff’s portrait of David Cameron in the latest issue of Vanity Fair is well worth reading, even it it’s a weird kind of a beast. Wolff concludes – at the start of the piece, as it happens – that he’s “impressed” by the Tory leader. But then spends the best part of 2,000 words spraying out quotes and observations which will harden the attitudes of Cameron’s detractors, on both the left and the right. Cameron is a “toff”; Boris doubts his “intellectual bona fides”; the Tories have “anti-riffraff” policy on marriage, and so on. Wolff even quotes one Fraser Nelson, saying that he doesn’t “believe for a minute [Cameron]

Peter Hoskin

A warning that applies to the Tories as much as it does to Labour

As James Kirkup says over at the Telegraph, it’s worth paying attention to the credit rating agency Fitch when it says that the UK deficit will need to be cut quicker than is currently planned – to 3.3 percent of GDP by 2015, rather than 4.4 percent.  Throw in similar warnings from the Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors yesterday, and you’ve got a bunch of testimonies which are broadly supportive of the Tory narrative.  You can expect CCHQ to give them plenty of airtime over the next few days.    But, lest it need repeating, the pleas from the CBI and others could well be directed

Alex Massie Alex Massie

British Tea Parties?

Rod Dreher had a good post riffing on David Brooks column last week which is in turn well worth reading. Brooks argues, astutely in my view, that the Tea Party movement is in many ways the flipside of the 1960s New Left: Members of both movements believe in what you might call mass innocence. Both movements are built on the assumption that the people are pure and virtuous and that evil is introduced into society by corrupt elites and rotten authority structures. “Man is born free, but he is everywhere in chains,” is how Rousseau put it. Indeed. And since many American political trends end up crossing the Atlantic it’s

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Bringing Clegg to the table

My gut feeling is that Cameron will win with a majority. But I had a gut feeling that Carey Mulligan would get Best Actress at the Oscars. When Scotland play rugby, I have a gut feeling that they will win. My gut, alas, has a pretty poor track record. But if I look at the polls, it suggests that Cameron will not win outright, and that Nick Clegg will be needed to form a majority. Today’s daily Sun/YouGov tracker has the Tories with a five-point lead – which suggests that Cameron is 26 seats short of a majority, and that Nick Clegg has just 22 MPs to bring to the

Peter Hoskin

A well-timed change of heart from Lord Paul?

Previously, there were rumblings that Lord Paul was considering quitting the Lords to keep his non-dom status. Today, he has confirmed that he will end his non-dom status and remain in the Lords. If you were being cynical, you might think that there’s been a change of heart so that Labour can ramp up their attacks on the Tories over Lord Ashcroft. But surely Brown & Co. would want to keep their focus on the “serious business” of government, wouldn’t they?

Peter Hoskin

Charlie Whelan’s role in Labour’s election campaign

If you want a sense of how much work Charlie Whelan and Unite are doing on behalf of Gordon Brown, then I’d recommend you read Rachel Sylvester’s column in the Times this morning.  There are the millions of pounds in funding, via the taxpayer, of course.  There’s Unite’s “virtual phone bank,” canvassing votes for Labour.  And then there’s Whelan himself – now almost as involved as ever with the Downing Street operation, and “working closely” with Douglas Alexander on Labour’s election campaign.  This is, I remind you, the Charlie Whelan who was copied into the Smeargate emails, and whose other indiscretions are better described by Martin Bright and Nick Cohen,

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Labour and Tories level in marginals poll (but look to the swing)<br />

I know, I know – there are only so many polls a reader can take.  So I’ll spare you the details from tonight’s YouGov poll, or the Opinium poll in the Daily Express.  But this Populus poll in the Times is worth highlighting, if only because it seems to be attracting the most buzz.  It has Labour and the Tories both on 38 percent across 100 marginal seats.  Neck and neck – or so it seems. But as Anthony Wells points out over at UK Polling Report, what really matters is which marginals this poll covers, and what the swing is.  In this case, the marginals are those numbered 51

David Blackburn

Yet more good money after bad

So, the government is tying the taxpayer to £11bn of new IT contracts before the election, making the Tories’ planned immediate IT cuts very expensive. Is this latest example of a scorched earth policy? Or Labour ‘getting on with the job’? With the polls narrowing, I can’t see Labour setting a fiscal booby-trap that they could well have to de-fuse. But there’s the rub. Brown scorches the turf beneath his feet as he governs: he cannot stop spending money. An £11bn bender is irresponsible in this climate, plus Labour has a baleful record on IT contracts. It has bungled a staggering £26bn on flawed IT systems, many of which were

Peter Hoskin

Guess what Miliband and Mandelson are going on about…

Fourteen years on from “education, education, education,” Labour seems to have hit upon three new priorities for government: “Ashcroft, Ashcroft, Ashcroft”.  Sure, we all knew that they would push this story as hard and as fast as it could go.  But it still says a lot about how they will go about their election campaign, when two senior ministers are still going heavy on the Tory Lord this morning.   In interview with the Guardian, Peter Mandelson says that Ashcroft has got Cameron “by the balls”.  And, in the Telegraph, David Miliband claims that William Hague “can’t be an effective Foreign Secretary,” after his role in the affair.  Some of

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Have the Lib Dems just saved Labour from a post-election Brown leadership?

To be honest, the leg-flashing that the Lib Dems are doing in front of the Tories and Labour just doesn’t really grab my attention.  Their overtures and innuendo may, or may not, turn out to be significant in a few weeks time – but we need a general election before we can judge either way.  In the meantime, they’d be best off keeping their positioning to themselves, and getting on with an election campaign for which they actually have some fairly attractive policies. This story, though, is worth noting down.  Apparently, in the event of a hung Parliament, Nick Clegg just couldn’t bring himself to work with Gordon Brown.  Labour,

Saturday

Peter Hoskin

Cameron gets his message spot-on

Just a quick post to encourage CoffeeHousers to read David Cameron’s speech to his party’s Welsh conference today. It’s not just the clearest, and most sensible, exposition of the Tories’ economic message that I’ve come across so far – it’s also the finest overall speech that I can remember Cameron giving for some time.  Plenty of hard-hitting passages, both attacking Labour’s record and – crucially – setting out a positive alternative. What really makes it so impressive is the simplicity of its central message: that you can achieve better government, and better services, for less money.  The Tories have been feeling their way around this theme for a while now

Friday

James Forsyth

Why the Tories’ internal polling matters

Iain Martin and Tim Montgomerie are both reporting that the Conservatives have hired YouGov to do polling for them. This might seem like the ultimate Westminster insider story but it will actually have ramifications for the election campaign as a whole. I understand that the Tory deal with YouGov will mean that they will get polling within the day on their morning announcements and the like. They will also have numbers on which moments in the leaders’ debates resonated with the voters about two hours after these debates finish, enabling them to have whole ad campaigns ready to go for the next morning. The nature of the party’s polling has