Uk politics

Saturday

David Blackburn

A shaming episode

The Culture Secretary would be advised to keep his fingers to himself. Following Wednesday’s Twitter gaffe, he let fly on Twitter once again. His target was David Cameron’s demolition of the state. All Bradshaw hit was Cameron’s dead son Ivan. He tweeted: ‘the camerons got good nhs care thanks to Labour’s investment and reform. Is this the ‘big government’ the derides.’ (sic) Bradshaw then issued a clarification, not an apology, on Twitter: ‘it wasn’t meant to be offensive. Point is they will the ends but not the means. Need positive government to deliver these things.’ (sic) Twitter is an internet gimmick, not the floor of the House of Commons, and as

Friday

Daniel Korski

What would the Tories take back from Europe?

Assuming that the Lisbon Treaty is ratified, that the Conservative Party wins the next election and that Angela Merkel and Nicola Sarkozy want Britain to remain in the European Union, what “sovereignty package” will EU leaders come up with for Prime Minister Cameron, so that the Tory leadership can placate its eurosceptic base? The deal cannot be cosmetic, but make it too tough and other EU leaders will not want to compromise. Tactically, David Cameron and William Hague will need to strike a balance between telling the public that even if Lisbon is ratified by the Poles and Czechs, a future Conservative government may still open the debate, call a

David Blackburn

The Tories’ post-conference bounce

Breaking news on Politics Home: the Tories have a 17 point lead in the polls following their party conference and Cameron’s speech. The Conservatives stand at 44%, Labour at 27% and the Liberal Democrats at 17%. That would suggest a job well done by Cameron and Tories in Manchester, and that Cameron’s speech resonated with the public, because this is a sharp bounce from polls at the beginning of the week, which had the Tories placed between 37% and 40%. Obviously, these bounces don’t last: consider that Labour is dropping back after its 5-point conference climb last week. But this bodes well for the Tories’ momentum as the election draws

David Blackburn

One last chance on Lisbon?

The Independent reports that the Czech Republic’s Euroscpetic President, Vaclav Klaus, is seeking to opt-out of the Lisbon Treaty’s Charter of Fundamental Rights. His argument is that Charter, which would come into force as soon as the Lisbon treaty was ratified, will lessen national sovereignty over social policy. During negotiations at the time of the treaty’s inception, the UK and Poland obtained a “protocol” measure to ensure that the Charter didn’t create new rights – effectively the last gasp opt-out the Czech seek now. Klaus describes his request as a “footnote”; it’s anything but. EU diplomats make it clear that negotiations would have to open. A spokesman said: “I repeat:

David Blackburn

That Wellington became Prime Minister is irrelevant to the Dannatt case

General Dannatt denies that he’s been in cahoots with the Tories. He gave a lecture last night and said: “[David Cameron] put it to me that he was concerned that his defence team – at a time when defence was really important, and Afghanistan was really critical – lacked expert understanding. “And would I be prepared to advise his team, and, if the Conservatives win the election, would I be prepared to take a peerage and maybe join his ministerial team… it was a recent decision and indicates that there was no long-term plot.” Only a bolus of ministers, who believed they could smear a General who was renowned for

David Blackburn

Should Cameron have told us how he will do it?

The left’s criticism of Cameron’s speech is that it contained no new policies and that begs the question: how will Cameron set the people free? Steve Richards has an essential article on the subject in today’s Independent. Here are the key paragraphs: ‘Against quite a few paragraphs in Cameron’s speech I wrote a single word: “How?” I used to do the same with Blair’s early speeches only to discover in 1997 that he had no answers to the question in several key policy areas. Most fundamentally it is still not at all clear how Cameron plans to reduce what he calls Labour’s debt crisis. He framed the argument as a progressive one:

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Gove’s ‘free schools’ will be able to profit

In all the excitement, I forgot to flag up to Coffee Housers a fact that we dropped in the leader column of today’s magazine. Michael Gove’s new Swedish schools will, it seems, be allowed to make a profit. I said in the editorial that: “Crucially, it now looks likely that the new schools will be able to run for profit — as Anders Hultin, the architect of the Swedish system, argued in this magazine last week. This may come in the form of a ‘management fee’. But if this happens, then Britain’s obsession with the quality of schools could blossom into an education industry.” Hultin’s article was picked up by The Daily Telegraph.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Modernisation for a purpose

Just before David Cameron came on stage they played a video looking back at his four years in charge of the party. It concentrated on the modernising moments — the huskie hugging, the efforts to get more women into Parliament and the rest. When Cameron did these things, some critics mocked them, claimed that they showed he was all style and no substance. But today we saw what those moments have made possible. Cameron devoted his pre-election conference speech to a classic conservative message, that the big state is the problem. Crucially, this message is getting a hearing. It is not being dismissed as those ideological Tories banging on again.

David Blackburn

The people will make it happen

Cameron’s speech might have lacked flair, but it was a brilliant rhetorical exercise. He cast himself into the distant future and reflected on his premiership. He saw a society that had paid its way back from the brink of collapse by rationing excess and embracing austerity. He saw a society that was flourishing, where the poorest attended the best schools, where people were empowered to work hard and were rewarded for doing so. Returning to the sombre present he said: “It will be a steep climb. But the view from the summit will be worth it.” But this rhetorical tour de force was inspired by a substantial philosophical argument. Cameron’s

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s revolutionary speech

This was one of the best speeches I have heard David Cameron give. It may not have been a masterpiece of oratory, he may have read from notes, left too make lulls lulls inspiring only a few standing ovations.  But it was packed with mission, seriousness, vision, principles – and, most of all, a real agenda.   Just as last year’s conference speech laid out a Conservative defence of the free market, this year’s laid out a vision of the conservative society. That is to say: one which hands back power to communities, which trusts people and places huge emphasis on social mobility.   First, he positioned the Conservatives squarely

Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Dave will slay the Goliath-esque government

Clever in its lack of cleverness. Cameron’s performance today was shrewd and unexciting, a speech of nursery-school simplicity. Large bland ideas, plain language. No detail. This was certainly no masterpiece. It didn’t have to be. Cameron’s in a holding pattern. Keep circling and he’ll land safely. Before he arrived, William Hague frustrated the eager delegates with two corporate videos of more than ordinary dullness. The BBC, flouting its own policy of censoring political broadcasts, aired both of them on BBC Parliament (albeit with the sound turned down.) First, a surpise. No less a figure than Bono, the UN’s top Guilt Ambassador, spoke to the Tories about debt relief. His message

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part II

George Osborne has embraced the 50p tax as a central tenet of the “We’re all in this together” theme. CoffeeHousers will be aware of my deep scepticism about this. It is justified on presentational grounds: if you squeeze the rich, and their pips squeak, it will create ‘permission’(to use that Blairite phrase) to do the horrible things like deny pay rises to nurses and social workers. Ergo, presentation and economics are fused together on this issue, he says. Without popular support for the cuts agenda, it cant happen and the deficit won’t be tackled. So the 50p tax should be judged not on its own merits, but on the grounds

Peter Hoskin

A pledge which Cameron looks set to break

In its preview of Cameron’s speech, the Sun highlights the Tory leader saying that “…in a Conservative Britain, if you put in the effort to bring in a wage, you will be better off.”  The implicit reference, here, is to Labour’s combined tax and benefit system, which frequently acts to disincentivise extra work.  All too often, effort isn’t met by reward – so what’s the point? As the Centre for Social Justice’s recent Dynamic Britain report showed, this effect impinges, above all, on the least well-off in society – and with tragic consequences.  It’s all to do with effective marginal tax rates, which measure what proportion of a small rise

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part I

While were all waiting for the Cameron speech, I thought I’d post some of the out-takes of my interview with him last week (full text here). Many thanks for your suggestions for questions, which were disconcertingly good. When I was a trainee reporter, I went to a coroner’s court and noticed that the jury asked better questions than the lawyer. It’s often like that with CoffeeHouse comments: you guys had all the obvious and oblique angles covered. But I suspect that our little wiki-exercise forewarned Cameron a bit because he seemed to have ready answers. Every journalist leaves an interview thinking what was the top line in that? and if

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

The radical plans the Tories are keeping under wraps

So what is George Osborne really up to? If Coffee Housers are feeling depressed at the paucity of ambition in his speech (his ‘cuts’ package  would shave just 1% off government spending) then take heart. In the magazine today, James Forsyth lists the far-more-radical changes that are being discussed by the Cameroons – but kept under wraps. The full piece is here, and the main points are…   1)   Corporation tax cuts. No mention was made of a growth agenda in the speech, but there are plans to cut Britain’s company tax rates quite aggressively with Ireland’s 12.5% as a lodestar. Osborne wants Britain to have the lowest corporation tax

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Who has the time to watch a weekday conference speech?

The activists here are already queuing up for David Cameron’s speech. But very few people outside of this conference centre are going to watch the whole speech: how many people have an hour free at 2.15pm on a weekday?   If we want conferences speeches to be watched by more than conference delegates, then they need to be on in the evenings or on the weekend. Just imagine how many more people would watch Cameron, or would have watched Brown last week, if the speech started at 8pm. US conventions take place mostly in prime time, with the networks being strong-armed into covering them for at least an hour a

Peter Hoskin

Here lies the General Well-being agenda

Remember David Cameron’s General Well-being agenda? You may not. It was pretty nebulous stuff, which he deployed during the decontamination overdrive early in his leadership. We haven’t heard much about it since – probably as Cameron & Co. realised it could fuel the worst Notting Hill caricatures of them, at a time when the economy was going south and thousands of people are losing their jobs. Which is why it was striking to see “General Well-being” exumed for this Manchester conference. Yes, the press centre cafe is called the GWB cafe (picture below). Kinda tells you all you need to know about that particular Cameroonian non-starter. P.S. For any CoffeeHousers

Peter Hoskin

Contrasting Cameron and Osborne

Judging by the Independent’s preview, as well as the quotes that ConHome have managed to get their hands on, Cameron is going to do Hope ‘n’ Change in his speech today.  Yes, he talks about a “steep climb ahead,” but he adds that “the view from the summit will be worth it.” This sounds like the growth and recovery element which many thought was lacking from the Osborne speech.  As it happens, there was actually a growth section in a near-to-final draft of the Shadow Chancellor’s address, but it was taken out over concerns about timing. I suspect the double act – Osborne selling pain, with Cameron selling hope –

David Blackburn

Osborne is the key to Cameron’s success

Initially, I thought George Osborne’s conference speech was unremarkable. Osborne, the second coming of Stafford Cripps, painted the grimmest picture since The Scream. He was relentless, remorseless. in fact, the argument that the Tories ‘relish cuts’ and are out of touch almost seemed plausible, as Osborne, the heir to an Anglo-Irish baronetcy with a flair for interior design, told the nation that “we’re all in this together”.  But in the wider tactical context of securing a Conservative victory, it was a brilliant speech. Writing in the Independent, Matthew Norman concludes: ‘Adorable he will never be, and as an orator he makes the Speaking Clock sound like Cicero, but undeniably he

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Defensive moves

So, General Dannatt is to be a Tory Peer. This worries me greatly. On balance, General Dannatt did a good job as Army chief. Not a great job, but a good one. His interventions boosted the morale of frontline troops and his concern for the care of soldiers, especially the wounded, was important. Conversely, many defense analysts thought he was too cautious on military reform, blocking the Army’s transformation into an effective counter-insurgency force and opposing stop gap procurement in case it compromised future acquisition projects. But the real concerns over General Dannatt’s ennoblement are different. General Dannatt should have given his sucecssor a clear run at the job. He should