Conservative party

 A truly magnificent piece by Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times yetsterday. An extremely nuanced argument, which ends with the following paragraph: "One of Mrs Thatcher’s most famous phrases was: “There is no alternative.” As yet, no major political figure in Britain or the western world has really articulated a coherent alternative to the free-market principles inherited from Thatcherism. Until that happens, the Thatcher era will not be definitively over." The rest of the piece, however, is an important deconstruction of the Thatcherite case for moral superiority.  "Perhaps most damagingly, Thatcherism has lost the moral high ground. The Iron Lady once proclaimed, slightly sinisterly: “Economics is the method. The object is to change the soul.

The revelations over the weekend about Damian McBride's pitiful smear campaign have probably delivered the fatal blow to Labour's chances of winning the next election. The only possible excuse for writing such filth would be that it served the interests of the battle against the Tories. It has had the opposite effect. Most decent people would think twice about voting for a government that permitted such a culture to exist in Downing Street. The poison expressed in McBride's infantile stratagem has fed back into the bloodstream of the party  he was supposed to be serving (let's not pretend for a moment that he was acting as a civil servant in this.

It's Easter Sunday and I have better things to do than think about sleazy emails. I'm unlikely to be able to post again about this again today, but I have much to say on the subject and Iain Dale in the Mail on Sunday has already quoted my previous comments about the thuggish company the Prime Minister sometimes chooses to keep. This is very serious for the Prime Minister, especially now Charlie Whelan's name has been associated with the emails. The Tories have asked Gordon Brown to apologise and he probably should. I have always marvelled at the latitude Brown gave to his lieutenants. This has allowed him to distance himself, if necessary, from their activities.

The official line from Number 10 is that Damian McBride's emails were "juvenile and inappropriate" and that all staff will be reminded of the "appropriate" use of resources. Presumably they will also be reminded of how to be grown up. It has been an open secret for some time that there has been mission creep from McBride's supposed backroom role. The formerly neutral Treasury civil servant was moved last October from his job as Gordon Brown's frontline spinner because some, including cabinet ministers, believed he had become a liability. But McBride is an obsessive texter and emailer and it seems he couldn't resist letting his fingers do the walking.

An interesting post, as always, from Jim Manzi: I’ve written often about the need for renewing the conservative- libertarian fusion, why I think this is a natural alliance, and the terms on which I think it should be forged. The actions of an assertive liberal (in the contemporary American sense) government are starting to illustrate this to the most interesting of those writers often termed crunchy cons, who often think of themselves in direct opposition to a hyper-individualized, commercial political culture on the Right. That is, as among the least natural candidates for fusionism imaginable. The nature of this alliance is simple: crunchy cons want government to be limited to allow space for idiosyncratic local communities.

The Conservative Party's reliance on Michael Ashcroft has always mystified me. How a once great political party has allowed itself to become quite so dependent on one man, I will never know? The conventional wisdom is that his money rescued the Tories from the abyss. It is certainly true that Ashcroft's pamphlet, Smell the Coffee, was a cogent analysis of the reasons behind the Tories' defeat in the 2005 election. But his continued position at the heart of the Conservative Party machine can only really be explained by a nagging feeling of insecurity within an organisation that has grown used to defeat. Now the Electoral Commission has finally decided that donations made by Bearwood Corporate Services to the Conservative Party deserve serious scrutiny.

One of the most kenspeckled British political anecdotes of the last half century recounts the occasion when it was said of Herbert Morrison that he was "his own worst enemy", his great rival Ernie Bevin was quick to interject: "Not while I'm alive, he ain't!". So when, courtesy of Art Goldhammer, I read that Pierre Lellouche, a conservative member of the UMP from Paris, had condemned the French right in these terms: "La droite française, malgré la magie sarkozyenne à l'UMP, serait-elle redevenue, Sarkozy parti à l'Elysée, la plus bête et la plus lâche du monde", se demande le député de Paris. my immediate thought was, no, that ain't possible.

Ordinaily Derek Conway wouldn't interest this blog. But the Tory MP, who has had the party whip withdrawn after defrauding the taxpayer by paying his sons to "work" as his parliamentary researchers has performed a great service nonetheless. Though, Mr Conway was reprimanded by the Standards Committee after "no record" was found of Freddie Conway doing any work for him as a researcher. The student was paid more than £40,000 for his three-year employment period. we should be exceedingly grateful to Mr Conway for his contribution to the Lexicon of Political Euphemism. According to the MP, using his parliamentary allowance as a family allowance to pay for his child's boozing at Newcastle University was an unfortunate case of administrative shortcomings. Priceless.

Great stuff from William Hague in the Commons as he imagines the terror of Tony Blair, President of Europe. American Anglophiles will also like it, since Hague's ability at the Dispatch Box trumps anything the United States Congress can offer. [Thanks to the ever-redoubtable Mr Eugenides. As th eGreek says, David Miliband's genuine and unforced laughter is worth half a raised eye-brow too.

While Gordon Brown visits Camp David for the first time as Prime Minister (on which more later), David Cameron takes stock. The Tories have been surprised by the goodwill that seems to have accompanied Brown as he begins his time in office. The Brown honeymoon has been all sweetness and joy, prompting thoughts that Broon may go to the country early. A nine-point Tory lead in the polls has been reversed; now it is Cameron who looks shallow and opportunistic. There's time enough, of course, to change this picture, but... Fraser Nelson asks: Try to finish the sentence “I really want the Conservatives to win the next election because…” I certainly can’t – and to me, this encapsulates Cameron’s problem.