David cameron

Here I am, in a cavernous “space” in East London, for a conference on the Post-Bureaucratic Age – or  “See-Through Government,” as Guido more evocatively put it. David Cameron has kicked things off with a speech on the issue, and there’ll be talks and panels throughout the day. It’s like Glastonbury for policy wonks. So how was Cameron? Well, he’s normally at his snappiest and most persuasive when he talks about all this tech stuff – and today was no exception. All the usual lines about “handing power to the people,” and eroding “the dull, stultifying presence of state control,” made an encouraging appearance. And he outlined what this would

Two seriously worrying polls for the Conservatives today. One is a Sunday Times/YouGov poll, showing a Labour recovery reducing the Tory lead to six points  well into hung parliament territory and the lowest since December 2008. The other is a PoliticsHome poll in the News of the World, according to which: Cameron’s approval rate has been steadily falling, and Brown’s similtaneously rising – the difference between them has halved, in recent months, from 90 points to 45 points. If the election is a 39-33 split, then the Tories end up with just ten more seats than Labour and are dependent on coalition with the LibDems. A result like this, against

Earlier this week I asked what Obama’s experience could teach a Cameron government. At the same time, there has been a well-argued debate in The Times about whether the Tories should go negative or not. There is one point where the two issues converge – and that is in how a newly-elected government should deal with the country’s economic legacy. Once in power, a Tory government will be tempted to be optimistic, to point to the sunny uplands. General Colin Powell said “positive thinking is a force multiplier” and the Cameron team come across as natural adherents to this viewpoint. There is also the fact that the modern Tory agenda

I must be one of the very few people who would genuinely like to see David Cameron give another speech on chocolate oranges. There was much mockery of it but it contained a very important point: there are some things that a business can do that have negative externalities to which the appropriate response is not taxation or regulation but social disapprobation. So, it was good to see Cameron promising both to use the power of his office to call out companies that sell age inappropriate products and to make it easier for people to protest against such behaviour. There are other areas where I expect social pressure could be

The media are obsessed with a Tory crisis. And why not? It’s a good story. The Telegraph is cheerleading the circus. It gave exhaustive coverage to the absurd hen-fight in Westminster North; on Monday it reported on more ‘rumblings and grumblings’ in the shires; yesterday, their subject was David Cameron’s heavy handed response to the ‘backwoodsmen’; and today Simon Heffer collates these events into the conclusion that ‘even if  Mr Cameron doesn’t see how disenchanted the public is by its lack of lack of choice and his lack of definition, many of his MPs do. The ride is about to get rocky.’ By accident or design, the Telegraph’s analysis is

Sir Richard Branson may often personify a leering joke, but, as Steve Richards observed this morning, this election is descending into a personality contest. Branson remains a symbol of British entrepreneurial success: his endorsement is crucial and I expect to see this story splashed across the right-wing tabloids tomorrow. The Standard quotes Branson saying: “I believe the UK’s record budget deficit does pose a serious risk to our recovery. “It would be damaging if we lost the confidence of the markets through delayed action and saw interest rates have to go up steeply. “We are going to have to cut our spending and I agree with the 20 leading economists

There is real jumpiness in Tory circles at the moment about the prospects of more candidate disasters. So eyebrows were sent upwards when David Cameron failed to name check Adeela Shafi in a section of his speech this morning which mentioned many of the Muslim candidates standing for the party. The omission seemed surprising as Shafi was one of the people who spoke in the prestigious slot just before the leader’s speech at Tory conference in 2008 and is, I think, the only female Muslim candidate standing for the Tories. The assumption was that she had not been mentioned because of the recent stories about her financial problems. But the