Tories

What's their game-plan?

Tabman — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 08:26:31 +0000

Yesterday ConservativeHome reported the latest attack on "Project Cameron" [sic] by the leader of the Cornerstone Group, Edward Leigh. It comments:

Writing for the House Magazine, Mr Leigh lists the ways in which Mr Cameron has offended traditional Tory sensibilities:

"This is the year that Conservative spokesmen have:

- Adopted Aneurin Bevan as a role model (he who vowed to destroy us and described us as 'vermin';
- Praised left-wing Polly Toynbee's view of society;
- Snubbed the CBI;
- Pleaded understanding for marauding hoodies;
- Announced that we, not Labour, were the real defenders of an unreformed NHS, the last Soviet-style, centrally-controlled health service in any large country;
- Rejected tax cuts, despite the biggest tax hike in peacetime history;
- Criticised grammar schools;
- Turned down the volume on Euroscepticism to the inaudible."

While praising Mr Cameron's personal qualities the Chairman of the powerful Public Accounts Committee warns that the party is in danger of "taking our core vote for granted and in the process effectively disenfranchising millions of decent people who feel that none of the mainstream parties speak for them." He continues:

"Our Euroscepticism is deliberately confused with crude nationalism, when in fact we want to help the Third World by breaking down trade barriers. And why did the leader's speech at the party conference not mention immigration at all, when in the last few years we have undergone the greatest-ever wave of increasing immigration into our country?"

Part of the reason Edward Leigh is listened to is because of his leadership of the forty-strong Cornerstone group of Tory MPs.

My colleague Peter wrote recently that such dissent smack of a man considering a move to UKIP. I'm not so sure - as one of the comments to that article pointed out, Leigh still has potentially a number of years left in the house and a responsible job; why would he chuck it in at this stage?

Yesterday, Julian H commented on these pages thus, and it got me thinking:

I'm unsure as to what the Right actually want. Surely they don't want a weakened Tory party being defeated by Gordo in 2009. So do they genuinely think they can oust Dave before then and replace him with one of their own AND win in 2009? If so they are deluded. If not - what is the plan? Get to a hung parliament and then force him out for not doing better? Or do they just want to be seen as being disapproving?

Cameron has had limited success in that he has raised the Tories out of their 30-33% box to 35-38% box, so adding around 5 percentage points. Yet, to form a stable government he needs the low forties. With Labour in such disarray it is understandable that the likes of Leigh are frustrated - Cameron's "touchy-feely" pseudo-liberalism has not delivered. Meanwhile, all the core values that he and many like him feel the Conservatives stand for have been rubbished.

So, to return to Julian's point, perhaps they do want Gordon to win in 2009. Cameron and his approach will have been proved wrong, and the right can reclaim the party. Perhaps they calculate that by the following election, four terms of Labour will have the electorate crying out for a dose of good old-fashioned Thatcherism.

Hung Parliament? Lets take the Venezuelan Option

Tabman — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 13:59:36 +0000

Yesterday Mike Smithson sparked off a debate on the possibilities and outcomes surrounding a Hung Parliament. The lively discussion in the comments field explored a whole range of possibilities - who would be winners and losers, and the likely effect on the parties of each scenario discussed.

Yet - in one comment Stodge (occasionally of this Parish) noted that almost no-one had looked at what would be best for the country, rather than their narrow political interest.

Whenever the Hung Parliament question is raised, it is framed in terms of "Which way would the Lib Dems jump?" Our MPs always defer along the lines of "It is not right to second guess the outcome of the next election. Until we see the verdict delivered by the British People we wait on their decision." Matthew Parris recently gave equivocal support in the form of suggesting we campaign along the lines of "Vote for us, we'll keep one or the other of the b*ggers honest!"

Elsewhere, blogger Cicero has argued that he sees the future political faultline falling between the liberal and the authoritarian approach to Government. I think this offers us a suggestion as to how to tackle the inevitable question when it arises.

I would hope Sir Ming would pitch his answer something like this:

"I believe in Liberalism as a political creed, and the best approach to take when adressing the challenges facing this country. The liberal approach is the best answer to the problems that beset us.

Many members of the other parties do not believe in a Liberal approach - they are instinctively authoritarian and, to be honest, I feel would be happy in each other's company despite their different party allegiances.

Yet, there are also MPs (and voters) who hold broadly liberal views who, for historical, cultural and pragmatic reasons have chosen to join parties other than the Liberal Democrats.

The verdict of the people for many years now has been that they do not trust one political party to govern outright. It is only our outdated political system that allows one party to gain a majority of seats without a majority of votes. This time, that system has delivered a verdict more in keeping with the electorate's wishes, albeit by accident rather than design.

To move forward, I call on those in all political parties who share broadly liberal views to put aside narrow party differences, and join together to work for the benefit of all the country in enacting a liberal approach to government. We might call this a Venezuelan Coalition, after the colours of that country's flag.

It has worked before in times of national crises. It is my strong belief that the challenges posed to our way of life by the threats of climate change, international terrorism, and the opportunities and stresses of globalisation merit such an approach again, now.

Are we, as politicians, big enough to put party concerns aside for the good of the country? I think, and hope, we are."

Are the sharks beginning to circle "wet" Cameron?

Tabman — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:29:53 +0000

Is David Cameron in trouble? Well, some might argue that with a poll position of 38% as reported in yesterday's You Gov, we'd be lucky to have his troubles. The difficulty for the Conservative leader is that his polling position, which has been largely stable now for many months, is not enough for him to win an absolute majority.

The contrast with the Lib Dems is that we are relaxed about such a position. But in the winner-takes-all Tory mentality, it isn't good enough. Especially when you consider the Horlicks that New Labour is making for itself in almost any direction you care to mention. Why, when there are so many apparent open goals, is the Tory leader firing blanks?

In yesterday's Telegraph, the lead article was titled Cameron must now move quickly. It is a call, made sotto voce compared to many of that paper's recent diatribes, but a call none the less, for Cameron to put some right-wing flesh on the bones of his touchy-feely proposals. As it says:

But the task is not yet complete, and we need Mr Cameron to move quickly to the next stage of his political development. Even if the Government's torpor continues indefinitely, the public will still demand reasons to vote for the Tories as well as against Labour. Mr Cameron should start to reveal more of his private political passions to a public crying out for trustworthy, energetic, and above all different, political leadership.

The comments below the piece are much more forthright, this from Vandiemen being typical:

I sense a note of desperation in this piece. Having firmly sided with Cameron even the DT has tuned into the rumblings of discontent. Is it not better to have the courage to say that you've got it wrong?
And to all those who believe that Dave is playing a canny game & keeping his powder dry, please explain what incentive he will have to take on board any of the concerns of the Tory core voters once he's in power. What you see is I suspect what you get.

Elsewhere, in the Guardian today, Max Hastings argues that Britain is now a Social Democratic country. As a result of this, Cameron is looking to copy Blair's Big Tent approach and also take on board the lessons of the 2005 election:

The Cameron camp's strategy is much influenced by polling during and after the last election. This showed that Michael Howard's articulation of specific policy points, some identified by Cameron himself in his earlier incarnation as Howard's adviser, made no impact whatever. Few voters could identify any expressed Tory position. Their ballot-box decisions were influenced entirely by perceptions of the party leaders.

Cameron and his people believe this is how the next election will be. Policy commitments offer hostages to Labour and the media for no electoral advantage. Yesterday he belatedly declared that he would support the government's gay adoption measure if no compromise could be contrived, because the alternative was to throw away the fruits of his sustained charm offensive towards gays and liberals. He would plainly have preferred, however, to stay on the fence where he sat last week.

Someone ought to tell Cameron that if you sit on the fence, you get shot at from both sides and splinters in your ar5e!

But the problem for Cameron is that his own party aren't like the Labour party which, in any case, took some ten years to effect its full transformation. They are far more ruthless, as Hastings acknowledges:

His refusal to attack the government on a wide range of issues - Iraq, the NHS, most recently gay adoption - rouse restlessness, indeed hostility. His perceived wetness - not in the Thatcherite use of the word to denote a leftist Tory, but in the schoolboy sense of lacking fire in the belly - is widely canvassed.

The danger is there for Cameron. Perhaps it is best to let another activist "Tory Boy" from todays thread on Political Betting have the last word:

What some “on the right of the party” would I’m sure come straight back at you with is that as they have spent their entire lives fighting against (as they see it)liberal leaning administrations that doesn’t say, think or act in accordance with their own views, beliefs and wishes, then why on earth should they vote for one now masquerading under n a pale blue banner.

I don’t see it that starkly and continue to hope against hope that some accomodation can be reached between the two points of view before things reach that critical breaking point.

With the management seemingly still determined to force a ‘Clause 4′ moment with the ‘right’ the chances don’t however look good.

The arrogance of some devotees to the NuCam project in expecting blind adherence from the entire membership to a foreign and unwelcome agenda remains breathtaking.

Until all concerned get it into their heads that we do have minds of our own and are not going to meekly be driven to where we don’t want to go, internally at least, things will remain tense.

If Conservative ratings in the polls begin to slide and the entire project is seen to have been for nothing, God help us all.

Hug a Hejab?

Tabman — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:09:07 +0000

In today's Observer, David Cameron makes another pitch to capture the votes of the "liberal left" under the title No-one will be left behind in a Tory Britain. The Guardian and Observer are rapidly coming to occupy the same space for Cameron's Blue-Labour as the Daily Mail and Sun did/do for Tony Blair's New Labour - gaining approval is the party's badge of change in its bid to capture centrist votes.

Cameron outlines what he sees as the problem:

I want the Conservative party to stand for a broad and generous vision of British identity. In a speech in Birmingham tomorrow, I will argue that questions of social cohesion are also questions of social justice and social inclusion. Cohesion is as much about rich and poor, included and left behind as it is about English and Scot or Muslim and Christian. Inspiring as well as demanding loyalty from every citizen will require a new crusade for fairness. A society that consistently denies some of its people the chance to escape poverty, to get on in life, to fulfil their dreams and to feel that their contribution is part of a national effort: such a society will struggle to inspire loyalty, however many citizenship classes it provides.

Leaving aside the issue that I suspect much of the Conservative Party has a much narrower vision of British identity than the one Cameron seems to espouse, there is little that anyone could disagree with there. So what is Cameron proposing to do about this situation?

Fairness will be our most powerful weapon against fragmentation. In America, new immigrants feel part of something from the moment they arrive because they feel they have the opportunity to succeed. It is that belief in equal opportunity that we need in Britain today and it is why the denial of quality education to so many is such a vital part of the cohesion argument.

Again, lets leave aside the issue that the "American Dream" that Cameron alludes to is an illusion for many for exactly the same reasons as he identifies - the lack of a level playing field in terms of opportunity, Cameron does at least here put his finger on one of the biggest levers we have to ensure equality of opportunity - quality of education.

So, one might expect that he would then go on to set out how exactly he will improve education to ensure that equality of opportunity is adressed. But no, not a bit of it. Cameron's exhortations for change amount to just these:

Building cohesion is a social responsibility. Government must enforce the rules of the road - speaking English, teaching history, upholding and celebrating the symbols of nationhood - and we will be absolutely clear about what needs to be done. If the government brings forward these measures, they will have our full support.

But this is about much more than government and politics. We must each do all we can to make this a fairer and more just society - helping others, creating opportunity and ensuring that no one is excluded from it.

Which loosely translates as:

(i) a dogwhistle to Edward Leigh (Faith, Family, Flag, anyone?), and
(ii) actually its nothign to do with us, but its up to all of you.

No policies, then. Nothing to show how he plans to set about improving the quality of education in this country. Nothing about how to adjust the tax an benefits system to lift the poorest out of poverty. Just, once again, a few warm words about a problem.

I highlighted yesterday a thoughtful piece about how the Tory and Labour parties are stuffed with careerists furthering their own ambition. Cameron is trying to talk the language of liberalism. His own party are distrustful of it, and in terms of practical liberal policies, there is nothing there. Clear evidence, then, that it is mere puff to garner votes and thereby advance the career of D Cameron Esq.

There is only one way to ensure Liberal policies are implemented in Britain - and that is to elect Liberal Democrats.

Tory Coalition?

Tabman — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 10:52:24 +0000

ConservativeHome are discussing the idea of a Lib Dem coalition. My two favourite quotes from the comments:

What's the fuss? I know the Lib Dems are a bit right wing compared to us these days, but it would still be a coalition of two largely like-minded left wing parties. Worth the sacrifices to keep out those right-wing sods in the Labour Party.

and the very perceptive

"LimpDum/Tory pact would be a disaster. Anyone who has done any campaigning at all must be aware of the libdem say one thing at this end of town, and say the other thing at that end of town"

I had a LibDem MP who was as helpful and hardworking as his Tory predecessor was lazy and supercilious. My personal experience of LibDem councillors has also been generally good.

Why should this be? I have a simple answer. Most LibDems do not anticipate the chance of becoming ministers quickly or peers slowly. In other words they don't join their party for reasons of out-and-out ambition. Some of them are actually motivated by notions of public service.

The other two parties, on the other hand, are peopled from top to bottom by the very worst type of careerist. They always have been. Can't blame that one on Dave.

During my many active years in the Tory Party I couldn't begin to count the number of wannabee candidates who started by saying "I'll fight the system and stand up for ordinary people" and who then, having joined the Tory group on the Council would change their tune to "We have to work with x and y . You can't fight them. You'd understand if you were on the council"

I might add that on their way down, the selfsame people would say to me "you were right all along"

It's not that LibDems are inherently better people than Tories and Socialists, but the nature of their party attracts fewer rotten careerist apples.

This is exactly the argument that I use every time we hear of the "Imminent Lib Dem MP defection" story - if our MPs were careerist they wouldn't have joined us in the first place!

Newsnight's Hatchet Job on Tory Northern Pretentions

Tabman — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 20:51:07 +0000

Last Friday's Newsnight's first item contains a particularly amusing attack on the Conservatives. In just one brief piece it manages to combine news that a Conservative councillor called his Labour counterpart a "cripple" (nice man, obviously), a vox pop that implies Cameron is all talk and no substance, scepticism that the Tories will ever amount to much outside of the South East, and pictures of Samantha Cameron's 700 acre country seat (just one dwelling in her family's extensive property portfolio, apparently).

Enjoy!

English Devolution

Tabman — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:28:30 +0000

On the face of it, articles today in the Guardian on Cameron's "vision of social responsibility" and Scottish Devolution and Independence might not have too much in common. But scratch the surface, and the same questions arise - and in each case the same answer is suggested.

Jonathan Friedland is a little embarassed at the attention "Dave" is lavishing on the "Guardianista troika" of Polly, Simon Jenkins and himself. But Cameron has a big idea to sell in order to get himself the keys to No 10, and he needs to sell this "big idea" to a wider audience:

He explains it as the simple belief that society's problems are up to all of us to solve. In other words, social questions currently left exclusively to the state would, in Cameron's Britain, be resolved not by central government alone, but by other key players as well, from charities to big business [my italics].

Unfortunately this statement highlights the problems with his idea, already picked up on by Tim Congdon and that I will expand on below.

Cameron is onto something, however, and Liberals should take note:

The left too has a heritage it may have forgotten, a libertarian, anti-statist tradition dating back to the 19th century and earlier, with its friendly societies, mutual associations and trade unions... If Cameron could stir that earlier, sleeping sentiment on the left, and combine it with the traditional Tory, Women's Institute brand of voluntarism, he could forge himself quite a coalition.

There is a problem with this because, as Friedland notes:

Much of that spirit was smothered by the Fabians' technocratic worship of the state and by the Labour experience of 1945, which combined to make many progressives believe the only vehicle capable of carrying their ideal was central government.

And that is a big challenge for Liberals - the ingrained notion that (i) the state must provide everything (and by that, we mean the centralised bureaucratic Westminster-based state) and (ii) that if things don't work at the local level, Westminster must intervene to sort things out.

Friedland uses this latter point as the basis of his challenge to Cameron's idea - that,as he puts it, "our civil society is too weak to carry the load he wants it to, and that would spell disaster for the very people he claims to care about."

I disagree with Friedland here. Cameron's "big idea" won't work, but not for the reasons he states. The problem with Cameron's idea is that it is, in the end, a paternalistic approach to problem solving. As Tim Congdon put it in his Telegraph article last week:

I never imagined that the modern Conservative Party would again embrace old-fashioned Tory paternalism, with a frank advocacy of expanding the state's responsibilities. The election of David Cameron to the leadership therefore came as a shock to me.

Ultimately Cameron is advocating that Central Government dispense largesse to charities and other NGOs for them to deliver services. The priorities will still be controlled centrally, and the taxes raised and collected centrally. The link between those responsible for delivering those services and those paying for them will be long, distant, and mediated via Whitehall and Westminster. In other words, this talk of "social responsibility" is a smokescreen - because Westminster will still be calling the shots and all the attendent problems will remain.

So, what is the answer? For me, Simon Jenkins touches on it in his article on Scottish Independence:

Partial devolution to Scotland and Wales remains a feather in Tony Blair's cap. It recognises the ambition of two component parts of the kingdom for an autonomy that reflects their sense of identity. No visitor to Edinburgh or Cardiff can be in any doubt that they are nowadays more different "places" from England. Their experience led Blair, or at least John Prescott, to answer the West Lothian question by offering similar powers to English regions. But those regions enjoy no collective identity or loyalty, being artificial Whitehall constructs. The idea failed.

Prescott's best answer to the West Lothian question would have been to have conferred partial autonomy on England's counties and cities. They would be viable: the county of Hampshire is the same size as the autonomous state of New Hampshire, and three times the size of sovereign Luxembourg. Westminster MPs would not then be deciding how to run English schools or roads or clinics or police any more than they used to, or any more than they do Scottish ones. Westminster MPs would have as little control over one part of Britain as over any other. They would be ruling a federation, as does the German parliament or the US Congress.

Jenkin's answer gets round the problems with Cameron's proposal. Strong local polities, with a pre-existing sense of identity (or "demos") exist in the form of Counties (traditional borders please!) and Cities. Given the power to raise their own local taxation, they would be able to run local schools, hospitals, transport and the like, either on the state-owned model or by tendering to private concerns, as their local electors saw fit. And, more importantly, the link between locally funded services, and local responsibility, would be clear and democratically accountable. It should also increase the volume and quality of participation in local government both from the passive (elctoral) and active(councillor) sense too, when people realise who controls the purse strings.

I hope our policy makers take note.

Congdon: Cameron is sincere but devoid of real meaning

Tabman — Thu, 11 Jan 2007 11:17:59 +0000

Professor Tim Congdon has announced in today's Telegraph that he has had enough of David Cameron and will henceforth transfer his support to UKIP. It is a pretty withering assessment of Cameron's vacuity:

An article in The Spectator was enough for me. "Time for a completely new party" contained several hundred words of flannel ("the need for fundamental change", "the problem is our culture", etc.) and one possibly substantive proposal. This was an "exciting new policy direction", with his "proposal for a national school-leaver programme — involving schools, businesses, community organisations, charities and the Armed Forces — to prepare young people for their adult responsibilities and to create a greater sense of national cohesion".

What sense is to be made of all this? No doubt "schools, businesses etc." do many wonderful things, but it is sadly true that their hands are full. They cannot just drop what they are doing and suddenly commit themselves to one of Mr Cameron's pet initiatives. If Mr Cameron were prime minister, he could — I suppose — give orders to "the Armed Forces" to return from Afghanistan and Iraq, and to help in his new "national school-leaver programme" in order to advance "social cohesion". But I don't think that is what he meant.

Mr Cameron's supporters might tell me that the sort of phrases used in the Spectator article, and reproduced on many subsequent occasions, are part of a rebranding exercise. They might say that the politically correct and socially acceptable phrases are necessary to shift the party's "culture" towards the centre and capture more votes. I might also be reassured that the phrases have no implications for actual policy.

But I think this is unfair and dishonest. Mr Cameron should be taken at his word. When he says he is in favour of "national school-leaver programmes", "social action zones" and suchlike, and when he says that the Tories should become "the champions of social action", he really does mean what he says. Whether his words have any genuine meaning is another topic, but of his sincerity in uttering them there should be no doubt.

It seems that the Tory Party's in-house journal is still at odds with the Blue-Labour Cameroonies after all.

UKIP no longer Peerless

Tabman — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 10:47:42 +0000

It seems to be the season for defections. After Peter's story about a councillor joining the Lib Dems we get news that two Tory peers have defected to UKIP:

Two Tory peers have joined the UK Independence Party in protest at the Conservatives' lack of a "sufficiently Eurosceptic policy".
Lord Pearson of Rannoch, who switched with Lord Willoughby de Broke, said UKIP was the "only party telling the truth" about Europe.

He also said they had given up hope that the Tories would "toughen up on immigration, tax, education and so on".

The defections give UKIP its first Westminster representation.

Lord Pearson described the Conservative leadership of David Cameron as "going in the wrong direction".

Presumably the Cameroonies will wheel this out as further evidence that "the party has changed". However, given this is before Dave has even begun to put actual policies on the table, who's to say what future departures might occur?

One thing's for certain though. I'm sure Iain Dale won't be using the words "turmoil, crisis, or meltdown" in conjunction with this news!

Child Neglect Ignored by IDS Report

Tabman — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 13:34:16 +0000

Yesterday the Conservative MP Iain Duncan-Smith launched a paper arguing that homes with married couples provided the best environment for bringing up children. Unmarried couple were more likely to split up, he demonstrated, and chaotic single-parent back-grounds led to the neglect of children. But there is another scandal of parental neglect that has hitherto remained unremarked upon by Mr Duncan-Smith. I feel sure that it is because he has not been fully appraised of this hidden scandal.

Some children in Britain are in effect abandoned soon after birth into the haphazard 24-7 care of an ever-changing cast of inexperienced, non-qualified adults. They are barely seen by their parents. Eventually, after being forced to work long hours, they are sent away to institutions, sometimes at as young as five years old, where they have minimal contact with home. Their treatment scars them for life, and often they fall into bad company, collecting with like-minded individuals into groups intent on preying on the most vulnerable in society.*

It is my duty to pass this information on to Mr Duncan-Smith, for I am sure when he is fully aware, he will launch a new crusade to ensure this wilful neglect is tackled and ended.

Soon, I am sure, we will see a Conservative Campaign that calls for the end of Au-Pairs and Boarding Schools.

But then again, probably not.

* - such as the present Shadow Cabinet.