Conservative party

Thursday

James Forsyth

The Tories are still anxious to reach out. And that’s a very good sign

Post-election party conferences usually follow a standard pattern. The winning party slaps itself on the back while the losers fret about how to put together an election-winning coalition. But this year, there’s been no talk of compromise or coalition from Labour. They seem happy to be a protest party, unbothered that voters disagree with them on the economy, welfare and immigration. And the Tories, instead of relaxing or moving to the right, have obsessed anxiously about how to broaden their appeal, to make their majority permanent. This determination to look for new converts is a product of the election campaign. Weeks of looking at polls that indicated they were on

Wednesday

Isabel Hardman

What could the Conservative party offer a working class teenager from Moss Side?

David Cameron had the best warm-up act possible today for his speech: before he was speaking, Scottish Tory leader Ruth Davidson had her turn. It’s a bit odd to describe someone who has been Scottish Tory leader since 2011 as a ‘rising star’, but the truth is that Davidson’s profile has been rising over the past year, and not just because of the Scottish referendum. Her speech was a pretty good demonstration of why this MSP should get an even higher profile in the Tory party across the UK: passionate, insightful, clear and human. Seb explains her key message, which was that the Tories cannot be ‘seen as decent technocrats’,

Andrew Roberts

Where will David Cameron end up in the history of Conservative Prime Ministers?

At a large Tory breakfast meeting that David Cameron spoke to recently, the tables were named after all of the Conservative premiers of the past: the good, the bad and Ted Heath. So there were the Lord Salisbury, Harold Macmillan and Margaret Thatcher tables, for example. (I was delighted to be on the Winston Churchill table; the people on the Neville Chamberlain one looked suitably ill-favoured.) As Cameron — who was sat at the David Cameron table, appropriately enough — looked around the huge room that morning, he could be forgiven for wondering where he will wind up in the pantheon of past premiers. For as Cameron nears his tenth

Isabel Hardman

Who really won in the battle over right to buy?

David Cameron’s key policy theme in his conference speech was housing, and it included the announcement that the government is accepting housing associations’ offer of a voluntary extension of the right-to-buy to their tenants that allows them to avoid legislation. The Prime Minister said: ‘And in our manifesto, we announced a breakthrough policy: extending the Right to Buy to housing association tenants. Some people said this would be impossible. Housing associations would never stand for it. The legislation would never pass. ‘Let me tell you something. Greg Clark, our brilliant Communities Secretary, has secured a deal with housing associations to give their tenants the Right to Buy their home. That

Isabel Hardman

Tories could delay telling tax credit claimants how much money they'll lose from cuts

The Tory revolt on tax credits looks likely to dominate this autumn. Many Tories across the party now regard this as conforming to a similar pattern as the 10p tax row under Gordon Brown, and few expect the cuts, which lower the threshold for withdrawing tax credits from £6,420 to £3,850 and speed up the rate of withdrawal as pay rises, to come to fruition in their current form. There are three camps of Conservatives on tax credits. There’s the large group who think the cuts seriously undermine their claim to be the party of working people and are wrong because they take £1,300 off those on low incomes, and will

Steerpike

David Cameron's Labour defector has supported the Tories since 1988

In David Cameron’s conference speech this lunchtime, the Prime Minister spoke about a voter who had reached out to him ahead of the election. He said that it was never too late to vote Tory given that an 82-year-old man by the name of Bernard Harris had written to him and said that despite being a traditional Labour voter he would be voting Conservative. Why? Well, he had realised that the Labour party does not serve the working class. While Cameron had hoped Harris’s letter would serve as proof that today’s Labour voters are abandoning their old party for his, he may need to think again. It has since transpired

Sebastian Payne

Ruth Davidson: the Tories need to be more than 'decent technocrats'

Ruth Davidson has secured her place as one of the most interesting politicians in the Conservative party. In her speech to Tory conference this morning, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives had the crowd in the palm of her hand with strong attacks on the SNP and another independence referendum. She argued that the Tories are the only party representing unionists north of the border: ‘every cross in the Scottish Conservative box is a vote backing Britain and defending Scotland’s place in it’. But the most interesting part was her compelling vision for the future of the party. In a similar vein to her comments at the Good Right dinner, Davidson argued that the Tories need to

Sebastian Payne

Michael Fallon: Russian air strikes in Syria are ‘extremely unhelpful and dangerous’

Michael Fallon has been touring the broadcast studios this morning to send Russia a warning about its bombing campaign in Syria. On the Today programme, the Defence Secretary said Putin’s actions are complicating an already difficult situation: ‘What it does do is complicate an already difficult situation and make it very much more dangerous because these planes are not being co-ordinated with the rest of the campaign and more importantly than that, the strikes don’t seem to be for the most part strikes against Isil. They are strike against other groups who’ve been fighting Assad and designed to prop up the Assad regime, the dictatorship in Syria, which of course has been the cause

Tuesday

Isabel Hardman

David Cameron makes home ownership the focus of his 'turnaround decade' conference speech

David Cameron’s conference speech today will include plans to increase home ownership, which has become a personal mission of both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor. The Tories convinced that people are more likely to vote for them if they are homeowners, and are well aware of polling that shows most people want to own their home in this country. So David Cameron will overhaul planning rules that his advisers believe slow down development – the section 106 requirements that mean developers must include affordable homes for rent in their plans – so that more homes that people can afford to buy are built. This reform will see the Tories

Isabel Hardman

Tory MPs grumpy about ‘arm candy’ photo rota

One of the fun jobs that new Tory MPs have to perform at conference is joining the special rota to follow David Cameron around. This isn’t a new rota, but it seems to have especially annoyed a number of the rather impressive 2015 intake, particularly some of the female MPs who think they are being used as arm candy. The rota involves walking with the Prime Minister between buildings so that when he is photographed, he has an entourage of supportive MPs with him, and so that they get their chance to have a picture of them walking with the PM in the national media. The photo above, of new

Sebastian Payne

Podcast special: Boris Johnson's conference speech

Boris Johnson’s speech to the Conservative conference in Manchester has gone down a storm. Fraser Nelson, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the return of Boris in this View from 22 podcast special — looking at how the Mayor of London managed to articulate conservative themes through humour, his jibes at George Osborne and David Cameron and what his successful address means for his chances of becoming Tory leader. You can subscribe to the View from 22 through iTunes and have it delivered to your computer every week, or you can use the player below:

Fraser Nelson

Theresa May lambasts her own record on immigration. Why?

What on earth is Theresa May playing at? As Home Secretary she vowed to cut net immigration down to the ‘tens of thousands,’ only to see it increase to a record high of 330,000. A bit embarrassing: the slogans that used to adorn Tory conferences boasting ‘immigration down’ have been quietly removed, and replied by the fictional achievement ‘deficit eliminated’. If I were her, I’d just drop the whole thing. Instead, she chooses this conference to inform us that the immigration she has presided over is bad for Britain, bad for our social cohesion. In her words: ‘When immigration is too high, when the pace of change is too fast, it’s impossible

Sebastian Payne

Michael Gove: 'social progress has always been a Conservative cause'

Michael Gove may have left the Department for Education but he hasn’t lost his reforming zeal. In his Tory conference speech, the Justice Secretary revealed that his inspiration in pursuing criminal justice reforms is Winston Churchill — and not because of his role leading Britain through some of its darkest hours: ‘The man who was, perhaps, our greatest Prime Minister was also a truly great Home Secretary. He argued that there should be “a constant heart-searching by all charged with the duty of punishment, a desire and eagerness to rehabilitate and an unfaltering faith that there is a treasure, if you can only find it, in the heart of every

Monday

James Forsyth

How the Tories are trying to make their majority permanent

This is the first conference since the election where the Tories won a majority and the first since Labour chose an unelectable leader. But, strikingly, George Osborne chose to use his speech to emphasise how the Tories must show the millions of working people who voted Labour in May that they ‘are on their side’. Osborne is a man seized of the opportunity presented to the Tories by Labour’s lurch to the left. He has spent the last few days picking off several of Labour’s best ideas. His aim to make sure that when—or, should I say if—the Labour party attempts to return to the centre ground of British politics,

Ed West

The left's hatred of 'Tory scum' is both stupid and self-defeating

Plenty has been written about the hatred some on the left feel towards their ‘enemies’, something on display at the moment in Manchester, with journalists being called ‘Tory scum’ for covering a party conference. I’ve bored for Britain on the subject of political hatred of the left, but less has been written about how self-defeating it is. For example, one of the best things that could happen to the Tories is for the Labour faithful to convince themselves that Corbyn was defeated only because of a biased, Tory-dominated press. This means that, rather than brutally analysing their weaknesses after Corbyn goes, they’re more likely to retreat into their own comfort

Sebastian Payne

The Good Right paves the way to a greater majority in 2020

The Tories may have won the general election but that doesn’t mean they have won the argument. The Good Right, a project setup by Times columnist Tim Montgomerie, hopes to offer guidance on where the Conservative party can go over the next few years. Last night, Montgomerie hosted a dinner at Old Trafford to examine what Conservatives are doing to tackle poverty featuring four of the most interesting thinkers in the party — Michael Gove, Iain Duncan Smith, Sajid Javid and Ruth Davidson. They all argued that the Tories need to do more to show their compassionate side as well as understand why people dislike them. Each of of the speakers had different areas of emphasis but the

James Forsyth

Sajid Javid positions himself as a Thatcherite and Eurosceptic

Sajid Javid might be downplaying it at this conference – when asked by Andrew Neil yesterday if he would throw his hat into the leadership ring, he said ‘of course not’ – but he is seen by many as a future Tory leadership candidate. Javid’s life-story has marked him out. He is the son of a bus driver who came to this country from Pakistan, had a successful business career and rapid rise up the greasy pole – he was the first member of the 2010 intake to make Cabinet. His speech to conference this morning wasn’t a tub-thumper. But it was striking how he positioned himself as both a Thatcherite,

Sunday

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove sets out the Tory plan to occupy the centre ground

Michael Gove is the Justice Secretary, but his speech to the Tory conference this afternoon showed that he is so much more than that – or at least that he’s interested in so much more than just his brief. The most striking thing about it was that it was a challenging speech for those sitting in the hall, rather than one where he repeatedly challenged Labour on the party’s new direction under Jeremy Corbyn. It wasn’t just that he prompted the conference to applaud his line that it was a Conservative, not a Lib Dem, who ensured equal marriage for gay and lesbian people – which they did, with a

Fraser Nelson

Come and see Charles Moore and Andrew Neil at Tory conference

The waiting is over – the next volume of Charles Moore’s biography of Margaret Thatcher has, at last, been published. It follows the central, triumphal years of her premiership, from the Falklands to the 1987 election. Some of it has been serialised in the Sunday Telegraph today, with more in the Telegraph tomorrow. But if you’re at the Tory Party conference then do join Charles discussing the book with Andrew Neil at the Midland Hotel at 6pm– tickets are just £12, and are selling fast. There are just a few left: you can book them here. And there will be early copies of the book fro sale, too, as well

Isabel Hardman

The Tories are finally facing up to what makes Parliament too posh: but will their solution work?

Lord Feldman’s announcement of a £250,000 bursary scheme for Conservative candidates shows that the Tory party is starting to face up to some of the little-discussed factors behind Parliament containing so few MPs from working class backgrounds. The cost of standing for Parliament in a seat that is considered winnable is obscene: candidates can lose £34,000 of their own money on average (that figure comes from this ConHome survey of 2005 candidates, but my own research which I am conducting currently suggests that it is roughly similar for those who stood in 2015: more on this soon). And this means that it’s impossible for some people to ever consider running.