Conservative party

Ed Miliband's ‘One Nation’ conference speech will have put the populist cat amongst Downing Street’s toffee-nosed pigeons. Now young Dave's people will have to work out how to respond to this inspired piece of political cross-dressing, even if it is essentially diaphanous. One (alleged) Tory, though, is very happy with the direction in which the national debate seems to be travelling. Mr Steerpike found Phillip Blond, the 'Red Tory' and founder of the Respublica think-tank, cock-a-hoop after the speech: 'Ed Miliband has thrown down a blue Labour challenge to the Conservatives. No. 10 needs a Red Tory response unless they want to see Ed's One Nation politics win the next election.

This conference season marks the half way point to the next election and we can see the political battle lines becoming clearer. The Tories, as their new poster campaign shows, intends to hammer Labour as the party that has learnt nothing from its mistakes. The argument of the coalition parties, which Nick Clegg previewed in Brighton, will be that the world has changed but Labour is stuck in the pre-crash era with its borrow and spend economics. Ed Miliband for his part wants to run as the man who is ‘on your side’. Today’s policy announcement taking aim at pension charges and the energy companies are designed to resonate with those voters who feel that the economy is not working for them.

Three months after it was sent, the Prime Minister has replied to a letter signed by over 100 backbench Conservative MPs calling for legislation in this parliament for an EU referendum in the next. John Baron, who co-ordinated the letter, is not releasing David Cameron's response as the original message was private, too. But I've managed to get my hands on a copy from elsewhere, and here are some of the key points Cameron makes: 'As we discussed, I do believe it would be wrong to rule out any type of referendum for the future. However, I am concerned that making a legal commitment now to hold a referendum in the next Parliament without setting the exact referendum question would not be a workable, nor a sustainable, position.

In the summer of 2011 I was fortunate enough to land a one-week work experience placement with a government minister. It was Andrew Mitchell. It is no surprise, then, that I have been keeping a keen eye on the newspapers this past week as ‘Gategate’ continues to make the headlines. It only took a few conversations with the then International Development Secretary for me to realise that his compassionate approach towards aid was genuine. There were no cameras or microphones present as Mitchell told me of the desperate situation he had encountered the previous month in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa.

A big-tent turnout on Saturday evening for the fourtieth birthday of Conor Burns, the Tory MP for Bournemouth West. Burns, fresh from his heroic rebellion against Lords reform, packed the State Rooms of the Palace of Westminster with a big crowd of rising Tory stars and some old stagers including Lord Lamont and Sir Mark Thatcher. Burns is a close friend of Baroness Thatcher; and although the great Lady was unable to join, she did some send some pearls of wisdom in her place. Burns reported that when he had told Lady Thatcher that his friend and speech-giver Thomas Docherty, who has been Burns' voting pair since they both arrived in Westminster in 2010, sat on the opposition benches she replied: ‘Good, it means you can trust him.’ Sound words, as ever.

Nigel Farage’s very public willingness to explore a UKIP-Tory electoral pact in exchange for a pledge from David Cameron to hold a referendum on EU membership is, I suspect, designed to achieve two things. First, it is meant to flush out Cameron. If Cameron declines the offer, Farage will be able to claim that only UKIP are the only party to vote for if you want an In/Out choice on the UK’s EU membership. It’ll undercut the Tory offer of a renegotiation referendum. Second, by floating the offer he makes it more likely that individual Tory MPs and candidates might sign up to the offer themselves, pledging to back an In Out referendum in exchange for no UKIP challenge.

Over the past two days, we've had polls from four different pollsters, and all of them show big leads for Labour. Yesterday, Populus gave Ed Miliband's party a 15-point lead — the largest lead the pollster has ever shown for Labour. Today, Ipsos MORI shows Labour ahead by 11 points and TNS BMRB have them up by 12. The latest YouGov tracker gives Labour a nine-point lead, although averaging their polls over the last week makes it more like ten points. The precise margins may be different, but all of these results would — if replicated in a general election — result in a large Labour majority and hand Ed Miliband the keys to 10 Downing Street. But while voters say they would vote for Miliband's party, they still don't seem enthusiastic about making him Prime Minister.

Kevin Pietersen might be lurking in India while England start their test series in the country, but as of today, the batsman and part-time off-spinner knows the only starring role he'll be playing will be in a commentary box. He was left out of the squad by head coach Andy Flower and the England and Wales Cricket Board after sending friends on the South African team allegedly derogatory text messages about his then captain, Andrew Strauss. The South African team have refused to disclose what those messages said, but their spirit is not dissimilar to some of the insults that members of David Cameron's squad have been broadcasting over the airwaves recently.

I’m at a YouGov conference in Cambridge where we’re just had a speech from Andrew Lansley, the new Leader of the House. He was speaking about the coalition, and gave a brief history of its inception. 'None of us had, in truth, understood the nature of what a coalition government might be...I’m not even sure the Lib Dems had thought about what a coalition would look like. In normal circumstances, with that election result, there would not have been a coalition. We’d have formed a minority government, put forward a programme, challenged the House to support it or not and after a decent interview - probably a few months - we would have had a general election and would have almost certainly won a majority...

Boris Johnson is on the look-out for a ring-leader in parliament for his push against the expansion of Heathrow, I understand. His people have been calling around sympathetic backbench MPs trying to persuade one of them to head up the campaign in the Commons. On first glance, Zac Goldsmith might have been an obvious choice, given his talks with the Mayor of London about a by-election in his seat if the government does U-turn on a third runway. But Boris wants someone who is less of an individual within the party who can co-ordinate backbenchers in a revolt. Presumably he also needs an MP who can spearhead not just the aviation campaign in the Commons, but also aid Boris' return to parliament from within if Goldsmith does leave in a blaze of fury.

Grant Shapps, the new Tory chairman, has been addressing the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers this evening. Shapps appears to have gone down fairly well. MPs are glad to have a Chairman who is in the Commons after two and a bit years with a peer doing the job, though Andrew Feldman remains a co-chair. Shapps told MPs that he was keen for CCHQ to offer them every assistance it can. He announced that he would be placing a CCHQ staffer in the whip’s office several days a week so they could handle MPs’ requests. I also expect that there will not be the usual by-election edict for the Corby contest.

Alok Sharma has been appointed Tory vice chairman and charged with improving the party's standing among ethnic minority voters. He certainly has a big task ahead of him. According to the Ethnic Minority British Election Study, the Conservatives received just 16 per cent of the ethnic minority vote in 2010, to Labour's 68 per cent. The Tory vote share among Black voters was actually in the single figures: Lord Ashcroft has suggested that this weakness prevented the Tories from picking up the extra seats they needed for a majority, noting that: 'The average non-white population of the constituencies the Tories gained from Labour in 2010 was 6 per cent.