Uk politics

As the Tories prepare to head to the seaside, Tim Montgomerie has published a ten point plan to get the Tory campaign back on track. The plan is already causing much discussion in Tory circles. His main points are that the Tories need to sharpen their economic message, use William Hague more, sort out the structure of the campaign, warn of the dangers of a hung parliament and ram home to voters just how badly Labour has failed.   What is getting the most attention, though, is Tim’s suggestion that the Tories should talk about immigration. I tend to agree with Tim on this point. It was a strategic mistake

At the beginning of this week the key figures in the Tory election campaign gathered together in Notting Hill to try and work out what was going wrong with the Tory campaign, why the Tory lead has halved since December. Our cover this week attempts to answer this question. My take is that the problem is largely caused by the structure of the campaign. Successful campaigns tend to have a chief strategist and a campaign manager. The strategist’s job is to work out what the election is about and the campaign manager’s role is to implement that vision and take charge of day to day tactics. The Tory problem is

The obsession of British politicians – and political journalists – with American politics is often mocked. But there’s a clarity to American political messages that is often missing in this country. So it is good to see George Osborne borrowing a line from the Reagan playbook, and pointing out that people are now worse off than they were at the last election. The Tories desperately need to shift the focus of the campaign back onto Labour’s failures and this is a start to that process. Osborne is delivering the Mais lecture tonight, one of the prestige dates in the British economic calendar. He’s the first shadow Chancellor to deliver it,

What is it about the Blairite passion for abstract nouns? I ask, not out of facetiousness, but because I want to know what they mean by loose terms such as ‘empowerment’. David Miliband joins James Purnell among the progressive left’s thinkers who are reimagining the relationship between state and citizen, and he gave a concept heavy, substance light speech to Demos this afternoon. I’ve read it a couple of times and can’t get my head round it. Peering through the glass darkly, the central concept is attractive: Miliband wants to give more power to the people. Some valid policies season his argument. For instance, the 1 week cancer pledge would