Conservative party

Will executive pay pop up in Theresa May’s manifesto? An objective of her snap election is to secure a larger majority on the basis of a smaller burden of manifesto promises than she inherited from David Cameron. But in her only leadership campaign speech last July, her reference to ‘an irrational, unhealthy and growing gap between what those companies pay their workers and what they pay their bosses’ was one of the phrases that caught the most attention. Back then, she was in favour of imposing annual binding shareholder votes on boardroom remuneration, as well as spotlighting the ratio between chief executives’ and average workers’ pay, and even forcing companies

Twenty years ago this week Tony Blair came to power with a thumping majority, claiming Labour to be ‘the political arm of none other than the British people as a whole’. As a phrase it sounds mildly deranged but it wasn’t totally cut off from reality. New Labour had claimed support among a cross-section of the public, including over 60 per cent of DE voters and a clear majority of those in the C2D category. Today, the Conservatives have a 17-point lead among working-class voters, despite there being a squeeze on health and education spending, and the party offering not much in the way of optimism or charisma. What went right, then? Of

The recent Welsh poll showing a ten-point Conservative lead in voting intentions for the forthcoming general election (and also, though much less reported, the first ever Conservative lead in devolved voting intentions in Wales), came as a shock to many. The next Welsh poll, out next week, will tell us whether this first one was just an outlier or the more solid harbinger of an historic realignment in Welsh politics. But why should it be such a surprise that the governing party of the UK, with around a twenty-point opinion poll lead across Britain, should have a lead half that size in one particular part of Britain? The astonishment is

When my old friend – a lifelong Labour supporter – told me he was voting Tory at the election, I posted a message on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RevRichardColes/status/858296208477040640 That was that, I thought. But then the replies started piling in. One of the first responses came from someone who thought my friend would regret his decision if he ever needed the NHS. ‘He’s an NHS consultant’, I replied. Even that didn’t stop the disbelief: many of those responding struggled to believe that someone working for the NHS could possibly vote Conservative. Was my friend real, they demanded to know. Admittedly not everyone thought I was making it up. Others seemed convinced that

At midnight, we won’t have any MPs. The dissolution of Parliament means that no-one who has sat on the green benches of the Commons for the past two years has any official status above their fellow candidates in the General Election. Some will return victorious for another five years (or until another advantageously early election). Some have decided that it’s time to go. Others will find that their local electorates have decided it is time for them to go.  Elections are exciting for the political world. They activate a gene in politicians that the rest of us fortunately do not possess, which makes them enjoy six weeks of trying to

Theresa May – Conservatives will not raise VAT Touring both the BBC and ITV studios today, Theresa May tried her best to avoid giving specific answers about the Conservatives tax policies after the election. However, during an interview with Robert Peston, the Prime Minister appeared to disown David Cameron’s ‘triple lock’ and make a commitment that a Conservative government would not raise the level of VAT above 20% over the next Parliament: Peston: Given what you say your record as a party is on taxes, do you need to repeat David Cameron’s triple lock – no rise in VAT, no rise in National Insurance, no rise in income tax –

It is no coincidence that Theresa May chose to hit the campaign trail in Wolverhampton and Dudley last weekend; both are areas where Ukip did especially well in 2015. What is emerging is that the West Midlands – particularly the Labour-held Midlands marginals – will be the key battleground in this coming election. From the creation of the Mercian kingdom by Alfred the Great, to the Battle of Bosworth and Germany’s bombing of Coventry in 1940 – not to mention the 2015 election which led to Brexit – the Midlands has provided the backdrop against which the future of our country has been shaped. The election on 8 June will be no

Considering that their party is expected to win by a landslide, the Tory spin doctors sound unusually panicked. They are keen to point out that the polls aren’t always right, and the pollsters are still trying to correct what they got wrong at the last general election. They insist that national voting tells you little about what will happen in the key marginal seats. These are normally the pleas of a party that is failing, and trying to persuade voters that it is still in the race. But Labour isn’t doing a good job of spinning its own prospects — so the Tories are doing it for them. This is

When launching the Scottish National Party’s election campaign, Nicola Sturgeon said the word ‘Tory’ 20 times in 20 minutes. For much of her political lifetime, it has been used by the SNP as the dirtiest word in Scottish politics. Nationalists have long liked to portray the Conservatives as the successors to Edward Longshanks: an occupying army with little affinity for the people they were trying to govern. But things are changing fast in Scotland. Amid the other political dramas of the past few months, the revival of Tory support north of the border has gone relatively unnoticed. They had only one MP after the last election, but a poll this

Brexit comes in all shapes and sizes: hard, soft, clean. Today, Labour added a new type: a ‘reckless Tory Brexit’. That’s what Keir Starmer accused the Government of trying to drive through as he detailed Labour’s plan for waving goodbye to the EU. The main purpose of Starmer’s tour of the airwaves was to clear some of the mud out of the water of Labour’s Brexit tonic. To be fair to Starmer, he did manage to offer some clarity: there would be no second referendum under Labour, which puts helpful space between the party and the Lib Dems who have promised voters a second say. Staying in the single market