Conservative party

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

A framework for shelving tax cuts

From our UK edition

So, the News of the World claims that the Tories are planning to shelve some of their tax-cutting proposals - including the inheritance tax cut and tax breaks for married couples - to help combat the fiscal crisis.  Guido suspects that the news came direct from the Blackberry of Andy Coulson, but the Tories have told Tim Montgomerie to "treat the story with a ton of salt". Either way, I do - like Tim - have some sympathy for the idea that commitments will have to be sidelined to overcome Brown's debt mountain.  The longer those terrible deficits remain, the more future generations will be burdened by the Dear Leader's fiscal sabotage, and the more likely that potential investors will turn away from the UK.

Friday

Andrew Webster

Whom do you trust more?

From our UK edition

So, a ComRes poll for the Daily Politics has Cameron leading Brown on the issue of which party leader would be more honest about spending cuts. It echoes a poll that we conducted a few days ago; the results of which we figured we’d share with CoffeeHousers, before our work experience at the Speccie comes to an end. Basically, we hit the streets of London (avoiding Westminster and all the party hacks), and asked around 350 people: “Who do you trust more, Gordon Brown or David Cameron?” Sure, it may not be as scientific as a YouGov or ComRes poll, but the results are still striking. Cameron polled a comfortable 62.5 percent, while Brown only managed a lacklustre 37.5 percent. A massive victory for Dave, then? Well, yes – in one respect.

Peter Hoskin

Lansley takes one step forward and two steps back on spending

From our UK edition

Although Andrew Lansley's "10 percent" gaffe may have worked out alright in the end, I can't help but think he's pushing his luck with his latest comments: Andrew Lansley has called on the Government to come clean about their spending plans after it was revealed that the NHS has been asked to plan for efficiency savings of £15-20 billion against its 2010-11 budget. The Department of Health has refused to confirm whether these savings will be available for reinvestment in the NHS - if they are not, it will equate to a real terms annual cut to the NHS budget of 2.3 per cent. Andrew, the Shadow Health Secretary, said, “NHS staff and patients have an urgent need to know whether Labour will match the Conservative commitment to real terms increases in NHS spending after 2011.

Peter Hoskin

No change on the Coulson front

From our UK edition

After the news that there won't be a new police investigation last night, the second thing the Tories feared most hasn't happened either: neither the Guardian nor any other outlet has anything to further implicate Andy Coulson in the phone-hacking scandal this morning.  Indeed, the Guardian's main story concerns how a private investigator working for the NotW collected phone messages from Sir Alex Ferguson and Alan Shearer, among others.  That deepens the media controversy, but hardly fuels the political controversy which was trying to burst into flames yesterday. I should stress - as I did in a comment yesterday - that I think phone-hacking is a disgraceful practice.

Thursday

James Forsyth

The old gray lady on Cameron

From our UK edition

Christopher Caldwell’s New York Times Magazine profile of David Cameron has finally been published; Caldwell first interviewed Cameron for it last year. I expect the Tories will see it as an important non-electoral milestone for them, a sign that the American establishment expects Cameron to be the next Prime Minister. The piece is, as you would expect with a Caldwell article, well written and, as it is written for an audience that knows little about Cameron, offers a good overview of the project. Caldwell proposes that there are two types of modernizers. “There are really two strands of modernizers in the Tory party. There are the green-friendly, diversity-oriented, welfare-state-defending ones — the ones who simply want to move the party to the left.

James Forsyth

Media wars

From our UK edition

David Cameron finds himself caught up in a war between two media tribes following the revelations  about the phone hacking at the News of the World during Andy Coulson’s editorship. On the one side, there’s The Guardian—whose scoop it was—and the BBC; for the BBC this episode is a chance to both make an ideological point against tabloid journalism and the Murdoch press as well as gain some revenge for the fun that The Sun and The Times had with the BBC’s expenses. On the other is News International with other newspapers that have used similar methods looking nervously on from the sidelines. I suspect that Andy Coulson’s position is safe for three reasons.

Peter Hoskin

Labour prime their anti-Coulson strategy

From our UK edition

Some useful insights from PR Week's David Singleton, who reveals that Labour are planning a concerted effort to paint Andy Coulson as a "sleazeball" ahead of - and perhaps during - the next election campaign.  Here's a snippet: "One senior Labour source in regular contact with Gordon Brown's inner circle told PRWeek: ‘Cameron wants to present himself as the man who's going to clean up politics. That's going to be difficult if the public think his right-hand man is a complete sleazeball.'   Another Labour insider said that senior party figures had been thrashing out a strategy to target Coulson since the news emerged yesterday. The source said the aim was have Coulson ‘wounded, but still there'.

Peter Hoskin

A headache for Cameron and Coulson

From our UK edition

So David Cameron has said that Andy Coulson's job isn't endangered by the News of the World wire-tapping allegations in this morning's Guardian, and you can see where the Tory leader is coming from.  After all, there are very few - if any - new revelations about Coulson in the Guardian piece.  We already knew that the Tory communications chief resigned the editorship of the NotW after a phone-hacking scandal involving the royal editor Clive Goodman.  And we already knew that he claimed no knowledge of the hacking but, as editor, he took responsibility for it.  No evidence has yet emerged that Coulson was more implicated than he's letting on.

Wednesday

James Forsyth

The Tories must be prepared to launch a reverse march through the institutions

From our UK edition

Sir Hugh Orde, the new president of ACPO, has predictably come out against elected police chiefs. Andrew Sparrow  has the key extract from his speech: “If people seriously think some form of elected individual is better placed to oversee policing than the current structure, then I am very interested in the detail of how that is going to work – and happy to have that debate. Every professional bone in my body tells me it is a bad idea that could drive a coach and horses through the current model of accountability and add nothing but confusion.

Tuesday

Daniel Korski

Defence review: your say

From our UK edition

So, a Defence Review has been set in motion even though the Government has for a long time said they would hold off from ordering such a study. But with the operational pressure growing, the financial situation dire, and clamour from the likes of George Robertson and Paddy Ashdown for a security rethink, the Government has been left with little choice. Kick-starting the review process also has the advantage of robbing Liam Fox, should he become Defence Secretary, of a "Bank of England moment" - i.e. a quick, early governmental decision that delivers some new momentum for Team Cameron. And Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth needed to do something to stem the growing scepticism with which his appointment has been met.

Peter Hoskin

Nick Clegg: out of love with the Tories?

From our UK edition

The thing that jumps out from Nick Clegg's speech on families today is how aggressively - if, ultimately, unconvincingly - it sets about attacking the Tories.  Yes, he also criticises Labour - but the attack on the Tories comes first and is more bitter in tone.  Here's a snippet: "David Cameron’s social policy is focused almost obsessively on marriage, cajoling people to conform to a single view of what a happy couple should look like. The Conservatives want marriage incentives in the tax system. And they may adopt Iain Duncan Smith’s proposals to put in place more legal roadblocks to divorce. This is both bizarre and patronising.

Peter Hoskin

To freeze or not to freeze?

From our UK edition

The question of whether or not to freeze public sector pay has had a fair bit of airtime over the past few days.  In his interview at the weekend, Alistair Darling seemed to take a hard-line on the issue - and most outlets wrote it up as him not ruling out a freeze.  But, via today's Times, "sources close to [Darling]" say that he won't re-open wage deals to introduce a freeze.  While, for his part, David Cameron is also claiming that a Tory government wouldn't order a freeze of public sector pay.  The politics of the situation is plain: neither side wants to seem especially tough on public sector pay ahead of the "nice cuts vs nasty cuts" battle which lies ahead.

Monday

Fraser Nelson

Why the Tories’ Californian strategy should be taken seriously

From our UK edition

A few months ago, I wrote a story about the “California Tories” and the extent to which Silicon Valley has affected the thinking of the people who will be running our country this time next year. I was teased about it later: what a pile of junk it all is, said a few right-thinking friends; why devote so many words to such a fluffy idea? My response: because the Tories take it so seriously, and because there might just be something in it. In my piece, I dropped in the fact that the Tories were thinking about swapping the NHS supercomputer idea for the free-to-use Google Health – and Sam Coates from the Times has much more on this today.

Dale Bassett

Fresh thinking can free government from quango control

From our UK edition

In a speech to Reform this afternoon, David Cameron argued that the growth of the so-called quango state represents “a serious accountability problem with our political system”. Quangos – the non-Whitehall but taxpayer-funded bodies responsible for much day-to-day government – are unaccountable, expensive and do not deliver what they promise. Last year, their funding increased at a faster rate than the rest of government, and they now cost at least £35 billion a year to run. Of course the state of the public finances makes it imperative that the expense of quangos is tackled. But this is about more than just money. It is about how we should be governed.

Sunday

Peter Hoskin

Osborne’s crazy admission

From our UK edition

Tim Montgomerie flags up this passage from Andrew Rawsley's column today: "Mr Osborne raised some eyebrows at a recent private meeting in the City when he was heard to remark that '40% of my time is spent on economics' - meaning that most of his hours are spent on campaigns and tactics. Mr Osborne seemed to think that 40% was an impressively large amount of his time to find to spend on economics; some of his audience thought it was a worryingly low proportion for the man who expects to be chancellor in less than a year's time." Of course, it's no secret that Osborne has other responsibilities within his party.

Friday

Peter Hoskin

The candidates for cuts

From our UK edition

Over at the Beeb website, Mark Easton flags up a new Ipsos MORI poll on public spending; you can view the whole thing here.  There are plenty of eye-catching results in there.  For instance, most people strongly agree that many public services are a waste of money and can be cut, while 40 percent of the public think that the Conservatives would be most effective party at getting good vaule for money from public services (compared to 25 percent for Labour).  In particular, I think these two charts deserve attention: Going off what the Tories are currently saying, they'd ring-fence both overseas aid and health spending.

Thursday

James Forsyth

Things the Tories shouldn’t do

From our UK edition

It strikes me as being in both bad taste and politically foolish for Alan Duncan to suggest that Gordon Brown is “vandalising” the despatch box when he uses a thick pen to take notes during PMQs. It is bad taste because the reason Brown uses a thick, black felt-tip because he is blind in one eye and has poor sight in the other. Whatever one’s opinion of Brown, his eye problem is not something that should be mocked. It is politically foolish because one of the themes that Labour is trying to get into the national conversation is that the Tories are a bunch of posh bullies. This kind of behaviour from Duncan plays into Labour’s hands. It is unnecessary and unpleasant.

Peter Hoskin

Advertising cuts

From our UK edition

If you're stuck for something to do during this sweltering afternoon, then it's well worth flicking through David Cameron's speech to the Local Government Association earlier.  Aside from a few mentions of handing "much more power" to local governments (which could be taken as merely transferring power from one bureaucracy to another), it's a good example of how much more confident and clear the Tory message on spending cuts has become.  The passage which stands out - although it may not actually be the snappiest - is where Cameron draws a comparison with the private sector: "Imagine if some of our biggest business brands followed the logic of our government.