David cameron

Wednesday

Peter Hoskin

How the Tories are decontaminating their associations with Big Business

Over the past couple of years, Big Business (as in, “being in hock with…”) has been deployed almost as an insult against the Tories.  But they’ve now used their campaign on national insurance to turn their business associations into an advantage.  Exhibit A: the above picture (via PoliticsHome) of Cameron’s visit to the Warbutons HQ in Bolton, where the company owner has come out in support of Tory proposals.  It sends the message that Big Business doesn’t just mean the financial services, and a lot of people, in a lot of regions, rely heavily upon it for their livelihoods.  And too right, too.  Expect plenty more like this from the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Straight out of the Brown textbook

What was probably Brown’s last PMQs performance as Prime Minister was classic Brown. He answered questions that hadn’t been asked, dodged ones that had, rattled off list after list of tractor production figures and mentioned Lord Ashcroft at every opportunity. But, as he has in recent months, he had some one liners to get off including the jab that Cameron ‘was the future once’, an echo of Cameron’s put down of Blair.   But that line couldn’t disguise the fact that Cameron got the better of Brown. Cameron’s speed on his feet just makes him better in this setting. His response to the heckle that the business leader he was

Peter Hoskin

PMQs live blog | 7 April 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage of PMQs. 1200: We’re about to start.  Brown is flanked by Harriet Harman and Jim Murphy.  Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling and Alan Johnson are also on the front bench.  The heavy hitters are out in force… 1201: And here we go, for what could be Brown’s last ever PMQs as Prime Minister.  He starts, as usual, with condolences for fallen soldiers. 1202: The first question is as plantlike as they come: will Brown take £6 billion “out of the economy”?  Brown spins the usual dividing line about investing in frontline services, adding that the Tories would risk a “double dip” recession.  Hm. 1204: Massive cheer

Daniel Korski

Goodbye world, see you in a few weeks (for a proper EU dust-up)

With plenty of domestic issues to debate, the election campaign promises to see little intrusion from the outside world – barring Russia invading a small neighbouring country, a terrorist attack or another financial meltdown. Nor will Britain say much to the world in the next couple of weeks; ministers will be be represented at international meetings, for example in NATO, by senior officials, and Britain’s diplomats have been told to keep quiet. As soon as the election is over, however, there will be plenty of action. The Cabinet Office is busy planning a quick update of the National Security Strategy, and then will come a slightly longer Security and Defence

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Inauthenticity, meet skewer

We’re not even one day into the election campaign proper, and already the internet is fulfilling its role as the Exposer-in-Chief of spin, deceits and slip-ups aplenty.  I direct you towards Guido’s post on Brown’s – ahem – impromptu support at St Pancras station earlier.  Or Left Foot Forward’s account of the omissions from Cameron’s list of The Great Ignored.  Or Sam Coates’s tweets about the #stagemanagedelection.  And there’s plenty more where they came from. In a campaign where inauthenticity is going to get skewered at every turn, politicians clearly need to go about things differently.  But there are all too many signs that they’re stuck in the old, familiar

Daniel Korski

The Tunnel Ridge Fault election

At times the chasm between Britain’s political parties is as great as the San Andreas Fault. Sometimes the difference is more like a small rift, a matter of tone not policy. In this year’s election, the difference between the parties is somewhere in between, like the lesser-known Tunnel Ridge Fault in Eastern California. In part, the appearance of only minor differences may explain why the polls are showing such different things; some predict that Labour will hang on to power, others that the Tories will be able to win. But campaigning will bring out the differences between the parties – and the party leaders – into full view to an

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Behind enemy lines

Well, well Gordon Brown has started his election campaign in a constituency that is notionally a Tory seat. Rochester and Strood is being fought for the first time at this election but the invaluable UK Polling Report tells us that the Tories would have just won this seat in 2005. I suspect that Brown has headed to Kent on the first day of the campaign in an attempt to show that Labour haven’t written off the south east despite coming fifth there in the European elections and that Labour is still a national party. David Cameron is off to Birmingham and Yorkshire and the shadow Cabinbet are fanning out across

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron launches the ‘modern Conservative alternative’

Reaganesque was the word that sprang to mind watching Cameron’s launch event. Standing on the terrace of County Hall with Parliament behind him, providing the snappers with some great images, Cameron spoke about the ‘modern Conservative alternative’ to five more years of Gordon Brown. The implicit message was youth and vigour. This was one of those occasions where the visuals matter more than what was actually said. The no-notes speech contained a string of attacks on Labour’s waste and the prospect of five more years of Brown. But Cameron was careful to sandwich this with some optimism. At the start he said that a vote for the Tories was a

Martin Bright

The Inter-Generational Election

Geoffrey Wheatcroft has kicked off the election campaign with possibly the most depressing article I have ever read about British politics. Jetting off to the States for an academic engagement, the old curmudgeon says he feels no regret at missing an election in which he has lost interest.  This say more about the author of the piece than the election, which promises to be the most fascinating in my adult life. But then I am nearly twenty years younger than Mr Wheatcroft. His central argument is that the Labour and Conservative messages are uninspiring. The Labour government will admit that the situation is dire, but claim it would be worse

Peter Hoskin

Now’s the time

If there’s anything we don’t already know about today, then I’m struggling to find it.  The election will be declared for 6th May.  Brown will make a pitch which bears close resemblance to his interview in the Mirror today: “We have come so far. Do we want to throw this all away?”  Cameron will say that the Tories are fighting this election for the “Great Ignored”.  Clegg will claim that the Lib Dems represent “real fairness and real change”.  A hundred news helicopters will buzz around Westminster.  A thousand blog-posts (including this one) will have headlines to the effect of “And so it begins…”.  And we’ll all read the Guardian’s

Monday

Daniel Korski

Have a gay time

Chris Grayling’s erstwhile view that Britain’s inn-keepers can interpret anti-discrimination legislation as they see fit belongs where he originally found it: in the biggot bin. There is no place for anti-gay views in British politics, or the Conservative Party. This is not just a question of electioneering — ie currying favour with a symbolically important segment of the electorate – but is a matter of decency. Homosexuals have as much place in modern Britain as everyone else. A worrying part of the airing of Grayling’s (now-disavowed) comments is that it has given Labour an excuse to tarnish the Conservatives with an anti-homosexual brush. Grayling’s words had barely hit the airwaves when the

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The true cost of Brown’s debt binge

When Alistair Daring admitted last week that there would indeed be job losses arising from the proposed National Insurance hike, it would have struck Gordon Brown and Ed Balls like root canal surgery. This blows wide open the main part of Brown’s election deceit: asking the public to look at the advantages of the borrowing, and not contemplate the flip side to the debt coin. Not to ask where the repayments will come from, or the impact of those repayments on the jobs of the future. No wonder Darling is today being made to claim the opposite. The grim truth is that every job “protected” now, due to debt, will

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Brown helps Cameron to define his Big Idea

Gordon Brown has walked straight into George Osborne’s trap. After bleating that the national insurance tax cut is unaffordable, he has decided to make this a massive election dividing line – claiming that this teeny (1 percent of state spending) tax cut somehow poses a mortal danger to an economic recovery.  Please, God, let him keep on this message through the campaign. “The Tories are proposing to cut your taxes and make you better off – stop this lunacy, and vote Labour”. But Alastair Darling has taken it further, with a significant piece of language on the radio this morning. The Tory tax cut, he says, is “taking money out

Sunday

David Blackburn

Tory wars are history

In lighter moments, Gordon Brown is alleged to imagine that he is John Major and David Cameron is Neil Kinnock. Now, I think the Tories will win outright, but would Cameron resign if Brown’s daydreams became reality? ‘No,’ Cameron tells the Mail on Sunday. Despite the bravado, Cameron must fear a challenge hot on the heels of failure – emasculated backbenchers have threatened as much in private recently. By reputation, Tories romance in intrigue and excel at regicide; yet few credible usurpers exist. William Hague’s low campaign profile denotes spent ambition as much as it does proximity to Lord Ashcroft.  Liam Fox is admirable but has never commanded sufficient support

Saturday

David Blackburn

A battle with the EU may be closer than you think

Euroscepticism is David Cameron and Gene Hunt’s sole shared attribute. But, bequeathed a poisoned chalice at home, the EU is not a future Tory government’s immediate priority. Set-piece battles over rebates, defence procurement and the CAP can be avoided for a time, but skirmishes will be a regular occurrence. And some of these will be bloodbaths. The first test comes in June, when EU finance ministers will consider hedge fund and private-equity firm regulation. There is no more contentious a topic. Recent European regulatory initiatives have impeded British financial services to the extent that even Brown and Miliband have taken note. It may be tempting to perceive a grand conspiracy against Britain, but

Peter Hoskin

Labour didn’t think this one through…<br />

There’s me thinking that Labour wouldn’t go negative with their latest poster, created via an online competition among their supporters.  I mean, surely they wouldn’t want to undermine their whizzy, positive, digital energy by picking a design which didn’t present an equally positive Labour vision.  But, oh, how they did.  Here’s the winning design: Now, there are two immediate problems with this poster.  The first being that I’d always thought the character Cameron is meant to be playing – DCI Gene Hunt – is actually quite popular with the public, despite his rough and less-then-edifying edges.  Indeed, he even topped a recent poll as “Britain’s favourite TV hero”.  If you’re

Friday

James Forsyth

The Tories still want to repeal the hunting ban

It might be Good Friday, but with the election only a little more than a month away politics is continuing pretty much as normal. This morning, we’ve already had more business leaders coming out in support of the Tory position on National Insurance, a combative Bob Crow demanding that John Humphrys apologise for using the word rigged in connection with the RMT strike ballot and later on David and Samantha Cameron are making a joint appearance at a social action project in Hackney. One thing that surprised me in the papers this morning was a quote in the Indy from the head of the League of Cruel Sports suggesting that

Peter Hoskin

A bad news day for Labour, as the Tories get positive

Oh dear.  Today’s frontpages form the most eclectic set of damaging headlines for Labour for quite some time.  On the front of the Mail and the Times: allegations that the government – specifically, Ed Balls – “interfered” with a report on the Baby P tragedy.  On the Independent: a claim that Brown “misled” the public over waiving VAT on a charity single for Haiti.  And on the Telegraph: news that more business leaders have backed the Tories’ national insurance policy.  Even the Guardian wades in with the headline: “Labour and business fall out”. Of these, the first story is potentially the biggest scandal.  But it’s the latter two which more

Thursday

David Blackburn

Revolt fermenting in Surrey East

Michael Crick reports that the Sunday Mirror will splash the news that 100 members of the Surrey East Tory association have signed a petition to urge David Cameron to de-select Sam Gyimah. The original selection process was controversial – members complained that the shortlist excluded straight white men. That dissent has never subsided. On Tuesday, Crick reported that dissent was turning to revolt. Private Eye’s allegations about Gyimah’s failing business interests, which were apparently suppressed during hustings, were the tipping point.   In reality, the infamous A-list has struck again. Having reinvigorated their campaign, the Tories could do without the party’s re-branding being called into question, regardless of whether the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Tories’ campaign is sharpening up

As declaration day (the rather pompus name that news organisations have come up with for the moment when Gordon Brown actually calls the election) draws nearer, the Tory campaign is sharpening up. This morning’s operation on National Insurance was impressive, enabling the party to get a second set of headlines out of its plan to stop Labour’s National Insurance rise. The letter from 23 business leaders supporting the Tory position worked on several levels. First, it got the Tories’ tax cut back on the top of the news agenda along with its clear message: seven out of ten workers will be better off under the Conservatives. Second, it strengthened the