Conservative party

Tuesday

Fraser Nelson

Number crunching cuts

The debate about cuts so far lacks any numbers, so I thought CoffeeHouses might like some. Contrary to what he claims Darling is planning cuts – but he just didn’t print the spending totals in his Pre-Budget Report (lack of space, one presumes). The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which produces its Green Budget tomorrow, has worked out what will be left for departments after debt interest, dole et. It amounts to a 10 percent cut. Here’s the table. Yet the Tories plan for DFID to be 0.7 percent of GDP by 2013 – ie, rising by 63 percent – and health will not be cut. Cameron has indicated that he

Fraser Nelson

Osborne’s speech contained not a whiff of radicalism

I’m afraid I did not detect a “new economic model” in George Osborne’s speech. He has said he will “eliminate “a large part” of the deficit (ie, the amount that debt goes up by) over the next parliament. In questions, he kept repeating this phrase: “a large part” – and which is woolier than Labour’s plan to halve it. When asked about this he said that he would do more than half it – but gave no indication by how much. It could be a lot, or a negligible amount. We still don’t know. Osborne said he will stick to what was, in my view, the root error of the

David Blackburn

The Tories must be bold and exploit every tiny opening toward victory

Voltaire praised the English for their boldness: “how I like the people who say what they think”. The slow and steady contraction of the polls continues, and Rachel Sylvester is convinced that the Tories must embrace risk and revoke ‘health-and-safety politics’. She writes: ‘Increasingly, his pronouncements seem designed to grab a headline rather than challenge the status quo — it’s bash-a-burglar, prison ships and PC-gone-mad, instead of hug-a-hoody, husky sleighs and general wellbeing. He drips out minor policy announcements on broadband and planning laws, while failing to confront a more important issue and force his biggest donor, Lord Ashcroft, to say whether he pays tax in this country.’ The sudden

Peter Hoskin

The Tories are muddying their clear, blue water

Front page of the Independent: “Vote of no confidence in Tory economic policies”.  As headlines go, it’s one of the worst the Tories have had for a while – even if, as Anthony Wells and Mike Smithson point out, it’s kinda misleading.  Truth is, the Indy’s ComRes poll finds that 82 percent of people want “Mr Cameron to be clearer about what he would do on the economy”.  And 24 percent think the Tories would have ended the recession sooner, against 69 percent who don’t.  They’re hardly positive findings for CCHQ, but, by themselves, they don’t quite add up that that two-line scarehead. The main concern for CCHQ is how

Monday

James Forsyth

Mandelson is spinning to his heart’s content

Peter Mandelson was doing his full Alan Rickman impression at Labour’s press conference this morning. His aim was to imply that every time Labour put the Tories under pressure they wobble. As so often since his return to British politics, Mandelson delivered lines that were so memorable that they were bound to make it into copy. He said that the Tories “would strangle the recovery at birth”, that David Cameron was “bobbing around like a cork in water”, and that George Osborne was the Tories’ “weakest link”. As I type, Mandleson’s sound bites are being replayed yet again on News 24. Now, these lines aren’t going to cut through to

David Blackburn

Clarification or u-turn?

Smarting from the savaging he received in Mo, Peter Mandelson characterised David Cameron’s “no swingeing cuts” comment as a u-turn, and compared Cameron and Osborne to Laurel and Hardy. This is a bit rich considering the government’s obvious confusion over the timing and extent of cuts, and that the immortal line “That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into” should be the Tories’ campaign slogan. Cameron’s comments are a clarification, not a u-turn. As Jim Pickard notes, Tory policy has to respond to last week’s withered growth figures. Whilst still recognising that cuts have to be made now to avert a fiscal crisis, a distinction that the government fails to

Fraser Nelson

The single best reason to vote Tory

There can be fewer more powerful untapped resources in Britain than the desire of parents to place their children in a good school. Every Sunday, pews of school-sponsoring churches are filled with atheist mothers and their kids. You read stories of parents giving up their kids to live with their aunt and uncle just to get a better school.   The single best reason to vote Tory is that they will set up a new system to harness this power, and allow anyone to set up a state school (by themselves or, more likely, in collaboration with the many companies offering to run new schools).  The Times today says that

Friday

David Blackburn

Further trouble in Northern Ireland

Michael Crick reports that Owen Paterson is seeking an urgent conference with Sir Reg Empey (the UUP leader) after revelations that the UUP held secret talks about a possible electoral pact with the DUP. If the story stands up, the UUP/Tory pro-Union and anti-sectarian alliance is dead. Crick writes: ‘Some in Belfast think that the Conservative-UUP pact is now effectively dead, and that Conservative leader David Cameron will be forced to announce its demise within the next few days.’ It may be that the UUP and DUP merely discussed breaking the deadlock at Stormont. But this story and the Hatfield House talks emphasise how the sectarian DUP undermines the coherence

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Gove agenda goes Hollywood

News reaches me of a surprising meeting in the lobby of Portcullis House today, Goldie Hawn — of Private Benjamin fame — swept in to Westminster wearing big shades and more fur than a member of the Household Division. She was in the Commons to meet with Michael Gove’s chief of staff, Dominic Cummings. Gove’s office won’t be drawn about what was on the agenda. But Hawn has an educational foundation specialising in how neuroscience and social and emotional learning techniques can be used to transform teaching techniques so we can presume that this was the main focus of discussions. However, the real publicity coup for the Tories would be

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The Tories’ Northern Ireland policy has nothing to do with electoral advantage

If Tory policy in Northern Ireland was based around electoral advantage, as their critics have been insinuating these last few days, then they never would have attempted to get a new political force off the ground there. Rather, they would have waited for the election result and then, if necessary, made a deal with a unionist party that could offer them enough support. As the vote on 42 days showed, the DUP is not averse to deal-making. Indeed, until recently it appeared that the Tory approach would cost them if there was a hung parliament as it made the DUP far less inclined to support the Tories, their electoral rivals.

David Blackburn

Is Boris’ resignation a problem?

Boris Johnson has resigned as Chairman of the Metropolitan Police Authority, apparently because he could not devote enough time to the job. The deputy mayor for policing, Kit Malthouse, replaces him. This is a marginally embarrassing turn of events for Boris and the Tories. It’s a puerile point but Boris still has the time to write his extremely readable and by all accounts admirably remunerated column in the Telegraph. Equally, the Tories cited Boris Johnson as their first elected police commissioner – a famous face for one of their flagship policies. I don’t see either problem as being serious, certainly not beyond the present. Kit Malthouse is very able and

David Blackburn

Stimulating social mobility will take decades

Another pallid dawn brings more statistics proving that Britain is riven by inequality – ‘from the cradle to the grave’, concludes the Hills report. Unless the offspring of professionals pursue a peculiar urge to be writers or enter Holy Orders, they will bequeath ever greater advantages to their children. For those in converse circumstances, Larkin’s line about inherited misery comes to mind, albeit in a slightly different context. 50 years of unparalleled prosperity, and social mobility has stagnated. Before the wailing and navel gazing begins, it must be asserted that the continued aspirations of the privileged and the fulfilment of their opportunities are not to blame. The root cause of

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Of course the Conservatives are Unionists, but why keep it a secret?

Over at Three Line Whip, Ben Brogan takes me to task for criticising the Owen Paterson’s attendance at the Marquess of Salisbury’s shindig. ‘But it seems a stretch to lambast Mr Cameron for doing his job as a unionist politician, which should be to find political ways to ensure Sinn Fein doesn’t end up the winner as the result of the failure of Unionism in Northern Ireland to get its electoral act together.’ The Conservatives are a Unionist party so there is no objection to their attending, especially as the Unionist cause is so disorganised. My objection was to its secrecy. Iris Robinson will tell you that there is no

James Forsyth

Growth but of the weakest possible sort

So Britain did grow in the fourth quarter of last year but only by 0.1 percent. Many on the Labour side had hoped that the moment that the country started growing again, Brown would be able to go on the offensive; arguing that his handling of the economy had steered Britain through the crisis. But the fact that the growth number is considerably lower than expected, most predictions were for growth of 0.3 to 0.4 percent, has rather stymied that plan. There are now only one more set of GDP figures before the election, presuming that it is held in May. So, it is now almost certain that Brown will

David Blackburn

The demographics of power-sharing

The union of irreconcilables was unlikely to last: power-sharing in Northern Ireland is on the verge of collapse. Where once Blair and Ahern would descend on Stormont as a couple of charismatics, today Gordon Brown and Brian Cowan face an enormous and unenviable task. They deserve support: both governments have been courageous in their approach to Northern Ireland, and the Tories were right to offer unconditional support. In which case, why did the umbrella of unionists, including the Tories’ Northern Ireland spokesman Owen Paterson, convene at the Marquis of Salisbury’s house in secret? A mixture of the furtive and the preposterous, one expected reports of Richard Hannay emerging from behind

Monday

David Blackburn

Redwood is right – prison sentencing may need reform out of fiscal necessity

John Redwood is one of the most original thinkers on the right; and tasked with finding solutions to cut expenditure, he has concluded that too many petty thieves and fraudsters are imprisoned. Redwood argues: ‘The first is all those people who commit crimes by taking money or property that does not belong to them, ranging from the common thief to the fraudster. Surely it would be much better to prove to them that crime does not pay. They should be made to pay the costs of the police and judicial system in handling and prosecuting their case. They should make full restitution to any third party affected by their actions,

David Blackburn

What Tory split?

He never deviates and he never hesitates; if he stopped repeating himself Brown could be the star of Just a Minute. He was at it again today: “We must reduce our deficits steadily according to a plan, but we must do nothing this year that will put our recovery at risk.” The cuts-investment dividing line has been nuanced into a question of timing. Brown cited Ken Clarke among the “major world leaders” who lend his policies authority. Brown has overreached himself. Clarke did not dissent from the party line; he stated the obvious truth that if cuts are too deep or ill-applied then recovery may be impeded: “It is no

David Blackburn

Out of recession and into debt

The deficit is in the Tories’ crosshairs this morning. George Osborne pens an article in the Times, castigating Brown’s obsession with continuity: ‘We need a new British economic model that learns from the mistakes of the past. First, that new economic model requires government to live within its means. We entered the recession, after years of growth, with one of the highest deficits in the developed world and we leave the recession with our credit rating under threat. That will have potentially disastrous consequences for international confidence. If Britain starts to pay the sort of risk premiums that Greece is paying, the interest bill on a £150,000 mortgage would go

David Blackburn

When it comes to localism, absolute clarity of aim is essential

How deep is David Cameron’s commitment top empowering local government? His response to the New Local Government Network’s latest report will be an indication. The report argues that elected mayors should raise or cut business rates and council tax, and spend the proceeds on local services. Mayoral coffers will hardly match the riches of the Spanish Main, the Times reports: ‘The authors have calculated that a 4p levy on business rates could raise £30 million for Birmingham, £10 million for Newcastle, £26 million for Leeds and £11 million for Milton Keynes.’ But even with a little more disposable cash, mayors could improve local infrastructure and oversee appointments to local primary

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

An election victory is only the start of the battle for Cameron

The News of the World has done its poll of marginal seats today (story here, Anthony Wells here) – a hugely expensive operation, but worthwhile because British elections are decided in marginal seats. National polling, while interesting, can be a misleading indicator of outcome. The result is that the Tories have a safe lead of 13 points (take a bow, Lord Ashcroft), but would still end up with just a 38-seat majority due to Westminster’s unfair voting system. As I say in my column, this is nowhere near a ‘safe’ majority, because it means the government can be defeated by 20 rebels. Anyone who thinks that the Tories are more