Conservative party

Monday

Peter Hoskin

The Tories develop their <em>de facto</em> Glass-Steagall Act

The most striking aspect about George Osborne’s speech today is how it concentrates on retail banks – the banks you and I do business with – rather than the big investment banks.  He’s expected to announce that retail banks should stop paying “excessive cash bonuses” to their senior staff, but should instead reward them with shares in the company and use the cash they would have dished out to increase the amount of credit in the economy.  This won’t apply to investment banks. The separation rather recalls the American Glass-Steaghall Act, which split commercial banks from their riskier investment counterparts.  The thinking behind it was that the investment banks could

Sunday

David Blackburn

The EU prepares for a Conservative government

The wheels seem to have come off Tony Blair’s EU presidency campaign and no doubt there is much genuflection and soul-searching in Connaught Square. The Director of the Centre for European Reform, Charles Grant, gives an intriguing explanation at Comment is Free: ‘Yet it may be the Conservatives who spike Blair’s chances of getting the job. William Hague, the shadow foreign secretary, has told the other EU governments that the Conservatives would see support for a Blair presidency as a “hostile act”. A week ago, Blair was the clear favourite, with the likely support of Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, plus several of the smaller countries. But on my travels

Peter Hoskin

The Tories now have a monopoly on the language of optimism

So how big a blow was the news that we’re still in recession to Gordon Brown?  Well, compare and contrast his latest podcast on the Downing Street website with David Cameron’s article in the Sunday Times.  Brown’s effort is necessarily defensive.  Gone is the “we’re leading the world” bombast of a few weeks ago, to be replaced with a crude “pledge” to get the economy growing again by 2010: “My pledge to you is to make reform of the financial sector a reality, and to see Britain’s economy return to growth by the turn of the year.” While Cameron’s effort is considerably more agressive, and concentrates on outlining a “pro-growth,

Peter Hoskin

Still no room for complacency about the BNP

It’s an odd one is today’s ICM poll in the News of the World.  Most of it makes for sobering reading for the political class: it finds that two-thirds of voters think the mainstream parties have no “credible policies” on immigration, and that one-third agree with a core BNP policy on removing state benefits from ethnic minorities.  The Tories will be disappointed to see that only 20 percent of respondents think that their plan to cap immigrant numbers will work. But there are also some findings which support Alex’s thesis that we shouldn’t be unduly troubled by the levels of support for the BNP.  For instance – and despite all

Saturday

David Blackburn

The Tories’ support for the war in Afghanistan owes nothing to neo-conservatism

In his column in the Mail, Peter Oborne writes that Cameron’s stance on Afghanistan represents the same mistake made by IDS in his unstinting support for the Iraq war. Oborne fears that neo-conservatism has gripped the Tory leadership. ‘The ‘Neocons’, despite being discredited by the Iraq war, have furtively regained their position at the heart of the Tory party. Almost without exception, Cameron’s senior team are passionate Atlanticists who seem committed to the policy of ‘reinforcement of failure’ in Afghanistan. Both the Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague and the Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox are ‘Neocons’. As are Cameron’s two most trusted Shadow Cabinet colleagues, Michael Gove and George Osborne.’

Friday

James Forsyth

If anti-Semitism is the problem, then the Tories shouldn’t sit with the EPP either

No one has done more to make the Tories’ new European allies an issue than Jonathan Freedland. He has written about the subject with real passion and, so sources in the Jewish community tell me, played a crucial role in persuading the president of the Board of Deputies to write to David Cameron expressing concern about them.    This week, his column on the subject contained this point: ‘Just this month Oszkar Molnar, an MP from Hungary’s main opposition party – on course to form the country’s next government – told a TV interviewer that “global capital – Jewish capital, if you like – wants to devour the entire world,

Thursday

David Blackburn

Tightening immigration should constitute part of compassionate Conservatism

The mainstream parties’ collective silence on immigration has, undoubtedly, contributed to the BNP’s growing popularity. Nicholas Soames and Frank Field have penned such an argument in today’s Telegraph. David Cameron’s modernisation of the Conservative Party came at the expense of even mentioning immigration. Yesterday’s mind-boggling population projection should curtail the era of uncontrolled immigration: Britain cannot sustain such human and social pressure in the age of austerity. The Tory leadership might view this reality with trepidation. They should not. Limiting immigration would alleviate poverty; it equates exactly with the Tories’ broad one nation philosophy. Labour has ceded its traditional support to the BNP, which indicates that the government’s appalling record

Peter Hoskin

The case for cutting middle class benefits

Great work by my former colleagues at the think tank Reform today. In their latest report, they’ve figured out that the cost of “middle class benefits” to the Exchequer is some £31 billion. In other words, £31 billion worth of maternity pay, child benefits, fuel allowance and other transfers are dished out to middle income earners each year – that’s around a quarter of all spending on benefits. Writing in the Times, Andrew Haldenby says that these middle class benefits should be an obvious candidate for cuts. It’s hard to disagree. If we’re all in this together, then it seems slightly perverse that money is being given out to people

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The GOP Declines to Rump Status

The good news for the Republican party is that it can’t get much worse; the bad news is that it’s pretty bad already. As Rod Dreher points out, a new Washington Post poll finds that just one in five Americans are prepared to identify themselves as Republicans. That’s some achievement in a two-party system. With apologies to Evelyn Waugh, you see, we may class political parties into four grades: Leading Party, First-Rate Party, Good Party and Party. Frankly, Party is pretty bad. Now this may be a rogue poll and the GOP may still do well in next month’s gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. Equally, the conservative base

Peter Hoskin

Inscrutable polls

And so the strangeness continues: the latest Ipsos MORI poll has the Tories leaping a hefty 7 points to 43 percent, while Labour climb 2 to 26 percent, and the Lib Dems fall 6 points to 19 percent.  It’s most likely a correction from their last poll – which had the Lib Dems above Labour for the first time since the 1980s – but the Tories’ 17-point lead is still at odds with some of the other polls we’ve seen recently.  I’m sure CCHQ will be pleased, but, as I said yesterday, it’s worth waiting a few weeks until the polls settle before drawing judgement. UPDATE: Guardian/ICM also gives the

Peter Hoskin

Women only shortlists

Now this is going to stir up some trouble.  Addressing today’s Speaker’s conference, David Cameron has said that the Tories still don’t have enough women candidates, and, as a result, he may impose women-only shortlists on those constituencies which are yet to pick a candidate for the next election.  Putting aside the many persuasive arguments against “positive discrimination”, you imagine this will just fuel more questions about the amount of central control that the Tory leader wields.  Cameron & Co. clearly believe that those questions are a price worth paying for the modernisation of their party, but I have my doubts.  I’m sure CoffeeHousers do too, so your thoughts please…

Peter Hoskin

When will they learn?

Why argue your case when you can smear your opponent’s name? According to this morning’s Telegraph, that’s the approach that a group of MPs are taking over the Sir Thomas Legg letters. The plan they’re apparently considering is to use parliamentary questions to find out details such as Legg’s pay, his team’s expenses and how much they’ve spent on media advice. One Tory MP tells the paper that there are “legitimate questions” about these things.  Hm. It’s not only a pernicious strategy, it’s also stupid.  Even if MPs manage to uncover some sort of hypocrisy on Legg’s part, do they really think it will divert public anger away from them? 

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Those strange post-conference polls

So what’s the deal with the opinion polls we’ve been seeing in the newspapers recently?  There was some hubbub in Tory circles yesterday over the fact that two weekend polls – YouGov for the Sunday Times and ComRes for the Indy on Sunday – had Labour either gaining ground on the Tories or a maintaining boosted level of support around the 30 percent mark.  What had happened to the 19 percent lead that the Tories enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of their conference?  Had the Labour conference really been more successful than the Tory one, despite all appearances?  I’ve heard these, and similar questions, doing the rounds over the past

Sunday

Alex Massie

How Serious are the Tories about Localism?

This chart, pinched from Burning Our Money, shows how much work needs to be done if the Conservatives’ talk of handing power back to local communities is actually likely to amount to anything. As you can see, local government raises more of its own money in almost every other leading country. Only Ireland, Greece and, to my surprise, the Netherlands are more dependent upon central government.(Meanwhile, over on the good side of the chart are our friends in Australia and, especially, New Zealand.) Real Localism – and all the good things that are supposed to flow from it – demands a measure of fiscal responsibility. Without that accountability the rest

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Current Tory health plans are backward-looking and reactionary

I have long been depressed about Tory health policy, or lack thereof. The News of the World today does a head-to-head about whether Andy Burnham or Andrew Lansley would be better to run the NHS – and I give my verdict.  The answer, I say, is neither of them. The patient should become the consumer, as is the case in the healthcare system of every developed country. But this would require taking on the NHS establishment, which no party is committed to doing. Or, rather, Alan Milburn was committed to – and had actually started to enact. But that reform agenda came under attack from the Brownites and Andrew Lansley.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The end of a convenient fiction

No one really thought that Vaclav Klaus would hold out against the Lisbon treaty until the British general election, but it was a convenient fiction for the Conservative party. It enabled both the leadeship and Eurosceptics to pretend that the current policy remained operative and that any questions about what would happen if the Lisbon treaty was ratified by the time of the next election were hypotheticals. So, as David notes, to hear Klaus conceding that he can’t hold out until the election is a blow. The question now is what happens next. Domestically, I doubt that the party will have a big row about Europe—it is too disciplined, too

David Blackburn

Vaclav Klaus caves into the “train carrying Lisbon”

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has developed cult status among Eurosceptics in Britain – a latter day Mons Angel. But it would have been nothing short of miraculous if Klaus had been able to derail the Lisbon Treaty. The Telegraph reports that Klaus can delay signing the treaty no longer. He said:  “The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it’s so far that it can’t be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that. I cannot and will not wait for British elections, unless they hold them in the next few days or weeks.” The Czech Courts will rule on compatibility on the 27th October, soon after which the treaty

Peter Hoskin

Brown the Reformer: er, good luck with that

Brace yourselves. According to the Guardian, Brown is about to sell himself as a Great Reformer: “Brown, the cabinet sources say, decided in the past few weeks to adopt a tougher pro-public sector reform stance, in order that his defence of the state in the face of recent attacks on big government by David Cameron does not become confused with complacency about the current performance of the public sector.” Despite the sensibleness of the reform argument, I can’t imagine that Brown will make much headway with this. For starters, he has that “Roadblock to Reform” label, and Labour’s patchy record on public service reform, hovering over him like the proverbial

Friday

James Forsyth

Cameron would intensify No. 10’s spin operation

One already hears grumblings from members of the Shadow Cabinet about how much power has been concentrated in Norman Shaw South, the suite of offices where Cameron and Osborne and their teams sit in Parliament. But judging by a report in The Times today the leadership is thinking about centralising power even more when in office. Jill Sherman writes that: ‘Cabinet ministers have traditionally had two special advisers with another 25 in Downing Street. But Mr Maude is said to be thinking of giving ministers one each, supplemented by a separate pool of advisers, who would be based at No 10. Only advisers from the central pool would be authorised

David Blackburn

The Tories’ Laffer-style radicalism

In contrast to David Brooks’ optimism about Conservative economic policy, is Oliver Marc Harwich, former Chief Economist at Policy Exchange, who described George Osborne’s plans as “timid and unimaginative”. In a speech to the Centre for Independent studies, Dr Harwich remarked: “To be fair to the Tories, at their last party conference in Manchester George Osborne finally spelt out that a future Conservative government will be cutting public spending. But even the £23 billion over the next five years that Osborne announced amounts to little more than a rounding error in Britain’s public finances. Even in the face of the greatest economic crisis that Britain has experienced in decades, Tory