Conservative party

Tuesday

Alex Massie

The GOP Declines to Rump Status

From our UK edition

The good news for the Republican party is that it can't get much worse; the bad news is that it's pretty bad already. As Rod Dreher points out, a new Washington Post poll finds that just one in five Americans are prepared to identify themselves as Republicans. That's some achievement in a two-party system. With apologies to Evelyn Waugh, you see, we may class political parties into four grades: Leading Party, First-Rate Party, Good Party and Party. Frankly, Party is pretty bad. Now this may be a rogue poll and the GOP may still do well in next month's gubernatorial elections in Virginia and New Jersey. Equally, the conservative base may still, pace Nate Silver, be more motivated than the disaffected, moderate centre, to turn-out at next year's mid-terms.

Peter Hoskin

Inscrutable polls

From our UK edition

And so the strangeness continues: the latest Ipsos MORI poll has the Tories leaping a hefty 7 points to 43 percent, while Labour climb 2 to 26 percent, and the Lib Dems fall 6 points to 19 percent.  It's most likely a correction from their last poll – which had the Lib Dems above Labour for the first time since the 1980s – but the Tories' 17-point lead is still at odds with some of the other polls we've seen recently.  I'm sure CCHQ will be pleased, but, as I said yesterday, it's worth waiting a few weeks until the polls settle before drawing judgement. UPDATE: Guardian/ICM also gives the Tories a 17-point lead.

Peter Hoskin

Women only shortlists

From our UK edition

Now this is going to stir up some trouble.  Addressing today's Speaker's conference, David Cameron has said that the Tories still don't have enough women candidates, and, as a result, he may impose women-only shortlists on those constituencies which are yet to pick a candidate for the next election.  Putting aside the many persuasive arguments against "positive discrimination", you imagine this will just fuel more questions about the amount of central control that the Tory leader wields.  Cameron & Co. clearly believe that those questions are a price worth paying for the modernisation of their party, but I have my doubts.  I'm sure CoffeeHousers do too, so your thoughts please...

Peter Hoskin

When will they learn?

From our UK edition

Why argue your case when you can smear your opponent's name? According to this morning's Telegraph, that's the approach that a group of MPs are taking over the Sir Thomas Legg letters. The plan they're apparently considering is to use parliamentary questions to find out details such as Legg's pay, his team's expenses and how much they've spent on media advice. One Tory MP tells the paper that there are "legitimate questions" about these things.  Hm. It's not only a pernicious strategy, it's also stupid.  Even if MPs manage to uncover some sort of hypocrisy on Legg's part, do they really think it will divert public anger away from them?  And do they not see that they could end up with egg on their faces if Legg comes out squeaky clean?

Monday

Peter Hoskin

Those strange post-conference polls

From our UK edition

So what's the deal with the opinion polls we've been seeing in the newspapers recently?  There was some hubbub in Tory circles yesterday over the fact that two weekend polls – YouGov for the Sunday Times and ComRes for the Indy on Sunday – had Labour either gaining ground on the Tories or a maintaining boosted level of support around the 30 percent mark.  What had happened to the 19 percent lead that the Tories enjoyed in the immediate aftermath of their conference?  Had the Labour conference really been more successful than the Tory one, despite all appearances?  I've heard these, and similar questions, doing the rounds over the past couple of days. I rather suspect that there's some volatility involved in all this.

Sunday

Alex Massie

How Serious are the Tories about Localism?

From our UK edition

This chart, pinched from Burning Our Money, shows how much work needs to be done if the Conservatives' talk of handing power back to local communities is actually likely to amount to anything. As you can see, local government raises more of its own money in almost every other leading country. Only Ireland, Greece and, to my surprise, the Netherlands are more dependent upon central government.(Meanwhile, over on the good side of the chart are our friends in Australia and, especially, New Zealand.) Real Localism - and all the good things that are supposed to flow from it - demands a measure of fiscal responsibility. Without that accountability the rest is largely window-dressing. Pretty window-dressing but window-dressing nonetheless.

Fraser Nelson

Current Tory health plans are backward-looking and reactionary

From our UK edition

I have long been depressed about Tory health policy, or lack thereof. The News of the World today does a head-to-head about whether Andy Burnham or Andrew Lansley would be better to run the NHS – and I give my verdict.  The answer, I say, is neither of them. The patient should become the consumer, as is the case in the healthcare system of every developed country. But this would require taking on the NHS establishment, which no party is committed to doing. Or, rather, Alan Milburn was committed to – and had actually started to enact. But that reform agenda came under attack from the Brownites and Andrew Lansley. The Tory health policy, as it stands, defies understanding.

Saturday

James Forsyth

The end of a convenient fiction

From our UK edition

No one really thought that Vaclav Klaus would hold out against the Lisbon treaty until the British general election, but it was a convenient fiction for the Conservative party. It enabled both the leadeship and Eurosceptics to pretend that the current policy remained operative and that any questions about what would happen if the Lisbon treaty was ratified by the time of the next election were hypotheticals. So, as David notes, to hear Klaus conceding that he can't hold out until the election is a blow. The question now is what happens next. Domestically, I doubt that the party will have a big row about Europe—it is too disciplined, too eager for power for that. In European terms, the question is always put as does Cameron have the stomach for a battle with Brussels.

David Blackburn

Vaclav Klaus caves into the “train carrying Lisbon”

From our UK edition

Czech President Vaclav Klaus has developed cult status among Eurosceptics in Britain - a latter day Mons Angel. But it would have been nothing short of miraculous if Klaus had been able to derail the Lisbon Treaty. The Telegraph reports that Klaus can delay signing the treaty no longer. He said:  "The train carrying the treaty is going so fast and it's so far that it can't be stopped or returned, no matter how much some of us would want that. I cannot and will not wait for British elections, unless they hold them in the next few days or weeks." The Czech Courts will rule on compatibility on the 27th October, soon after which the treaty will become law.

Peter Hoskin

Brown the Reformer: er, good luck with that

From our UK edition

Brace yourselves. According to the Guardian, Brown is about to sell himself as a Great Reformer: "Brown, the cabinet sources say, decided in the past few weeks to adopt a tougher pro-public sector reform stance, in order that his defence of the state in the face of recent attacks on big government by David Cameron does not become confused with complacency about the current performance of the public sector." Despite the sensibleness of the reform argument, I can't imagine that Brown will make much headway with this. For starters, he has that "Roadblock to Reform" label, and Labour's patchy record on public service reform, hovering over him like the proverbial albatross.

Friday

James Forsyth

Cameron would intensify No. 10’s spin operation

From our UK edition

One already hears grumblings from members of the Shadow Cabinet about how much power has been concentrated in Norman Shaw South, the suite of offices where Cameron and Osborne and their teams sit in Parliament. But judging by a report in The Times today the leadership is thinking about centralising power even more when in office. Jill Sherman writes that: 'Cabinet ministers have traditionally had two special advisers with another 25 in Downing Street. But Mr Maude is said to be thinking of giving ministers one each, supplemented by a separate pool of advisers, who would be based at No 10. Only advisers from the central pool would be authorised to speak to the media, “spinning” policy proposals and giving David Cameron control over the message going out to voters.

David Blackburn

The Tories’ Laffer-style radicalism

From our UK edition

In contrast to David Brooks’ optimism about Conservative economic policy, is Oliver Marc Harwich, former Chief Economist at Policy Exchange, who described George Osborne’s plans as “timid and unimaginative”. In a speech to the Centre for Independent studies, Dr Harwich remarked: “To be fair to the Tories, at their last party conference in Manchester George Osborne finally spelt out that a future Conservative government will be cutting public spending. But even the £23 billion over the next five years that Osborne announced amounts to little more than a rounding error in Britain’s public finances. Even in the face of the greatest economic crisis that Britain has experienced in decades, Tory policy remains timid and unimaginative.

James Forsyth

The Cameron project is more intellectually interesting than we appreciate

From our UK edition

David Brooks is the most influential American newspaper columnist and his column today is a paean of praise for George Osborne. He praises Osborne for offering not just pain but a “different economic vision — different from Labour and different from the Thatcherism that was designed to meet the problems of the 1980s.” He goes on to argue that Cameron and Osborne’s responsibility agenda is something that the Republicans should copy. This isn’t the first time that Brooks, who Tim Montgomerie identified as a guru for Cameron back in 2007, has applauded the Tories.

Thursday

Peter Hoskin

What can the Tories learn from Boris’s fare dilemma?

From our UK edition

Oh dear.  Boris has just had to announce a bunch of inflation-busting fare increases for public transport in London.  From January, the congestion charge will be up by 25 percent, Oyster card fares will have 20p added to them, 7-day bus passes will cost just under £3 more – and so on, and so on.  To be fair, we shouldn't be too surprised at these kinds of hikes.  This is a recession, after all, and City Hall are currently struggling to deal with the black hole in the transport budget left over from the Livingstone days.  Boris himself sets out a persuasive defence of the measures in today's Evening Standard. You wonder what on-looking Cameroons are making of it all.

Wednesday

Janice Warman

Hammond emphasises the Tories’ temporary commitment to 50p tax

From our UK edition

Sit Philip Hammond in front of our very own Fraser Nelson, and you know that one topic's bound to come up: the Tories' commitment to the 50p tax rate.  And so it was at this morning's DLA Piper and Spectator Business Breakfast Debate at the Merchant Taylors¹ Hall in Threadneedle Street. Fraser chided the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, claiming that this Tory policy would leave the restaurants in Zurich "doing very well," as our entreprenurial class potentially leaves these shores behind.  "If the rich are going to suffer, are they going to stay?" Hammond's response? That he didn't think the tax would make people move abroad, and that the Tories would ensure it's only a temporary measure. So that's that, then.

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

A goatherd by necessity

From our UK edition

In his recent interview with Fraser, David Cameron said that he's keen on bringing in outside talent to the government – the so-called "Goat" strategy, which has been a feature of Brown's premiership.  In her ever-excellent column, Rachel Sylvester makes the point that this may be as much from necessity as by design: "According to Anthony Wells, of UKPollingReport, at least a third of the House of Commons are likely to be novices after the next general election — the highest proportion since 1945. A perceived house of whores, whose members would sell their souls for a bathplug, will soon be replaced by a virgin Parliament, untouched by the John Lewis list. The implications are huge.

David Blackburn

Legg Commission: full Shadow Cabinet details

From our UK edition

The damage to the Shadow Cabinet caused by Sir Thomas Legg has been published. All in all it’s not too bad for the Tories. Ken Clarke tops the list with £4,733 on gardening and cleaning expenses. In terms of comparing figures between the parties, an arresting and emotive issue to the public, the Tories are once again ahead, a point that reinforced by the fact that far from all of Labour's and the Lib Dem's frontliners have declared their exposure. However, there might be problems for the Tories in the future. David Cameron and George Osborne both need to produce more information about their mortgage claims. Overall though, the Shadow Cabinet has escaped embarrassment and the public’s ire. Whether Cameron will convince his backbenchers to follow suit remains to be seen.

Monday

Peter Hoskin

The costs that come before savings

From our UK edition

It's a simple fact of politics that many measures which would save money in the medium-to-long term incur costs in the short term.  Normally, this point is brought up in relation to public service reform - e.g. Gove's Swedish Schools agenda.  But today's FT highlights a similar effect in relation to public sector redundancies. The important fact is that "civil servants aged under 50 can receive up to three years’ pay if made compulsorily redundant, and those who joined before 1987 more than six years’ pay".  This means that there are actually massive upfront cash costs to cutting jobs across the public sector, whatever the potential savings further down the line. To their credit, the government are currently trying to cap these redundancy payments.

Fraser Nelson

The politics of growth

From our UK edition

One strange side-effect of the car crash that was the Liberal Democrat conference is that no one dares say the word “cuts” anymore. Since Nick Clegg promised “savage cuts” – alarming his base in the process – we’re back to the normal euphemism of “efficiencies”. This, like so much in life, will have Gordon Brown hopping mad. He didn’t want to say “cuts” in the first place, and the whole farrago will prove (in his head) that he should stop taking advice from people outside his coterie.   The next stage in the debate is to focus on growth. As James revealed in his political column for the current edition of the magazine, the Tory plan to do this is an aggressive cut in corporation tax.

Sunday

David Blackburn

Davis for Home Secretary?

From our UK edition

The Express’ William Hickey column reports that David Davis, not Chris Grayling, will serve as Home Secretary should the Tories win the election. Here’s what Hickey heard: ‘I’m now told there have been mounting whispers among MPs that Grayling could lose out to David Davis for the Home Secretary’s job should the Tories win the general election. Only this week Davis, who stood down from the shadow post last year in order to champion civil liberties at a by-election, signalled he was ready to return to frontbench politics if offered a “proper job”.