Conservative party

Boris Johnson's speech at the Centre for Policy Studies, much misrepresented, is still grabbing headlines. Boris gave the Margaret Thatcher memorial lecture, so it’s no surprise it has been interpreted as a bid to succeed her. But another relationship is just as intriguing: was Boris also stealing Michael Gove’s clothes? The Mayor said much about the significance of the Conservatives' past, but the Govian aspects of his speech offer a glimpse of what the party's immediate future might look like, particularly when it comes to a future leadership contest. Boris' 'cornflake packet' argument about meritocracy is a classic piece of Govian thinking. Posing the question 'what would Maggie do?

One of the techniques that horror writers employ to make their novels as frightening as possible is to avoid describing their monster in any great detail. Read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and by and large it will be your own imagination filling in the details of Victor Frankenstein's creation as the creature lumbers out of its inventor's room and into the streets of Ingolstadt. Our imaginations frighten us far more than authors can. The same elision is at work in politics, except the authors aren't doing themselves any favours. The Tories have a habit of staying very quiet indeed on a social problem, whether it be payday loans or something else awkward, until the issue becomes too big to ignore, and then they U-turn.

When George Osborne stands up next week to deliver the autumn statement, he’ll have some good news to deliver. Not only is autumn, the dreariest of the British seasons over, but borrowing has come in lower than expected and the OBR will upgrade the growth forecasts. But the return of growth, as I say in the magazine this week, poses a strategic dilemma for Osborne. If he declares the economic emergency over, the public might conclude it was safe to turn back to Labour. But equally he has to show voters that he’s sharing the proceeds of growth. I suspect that Osborne will steer clear of too many sweetners.

Boris Johnson prides himself on being one of the few politicians who gets away with saying the unsayable. He stuck to that theme tonight with his Margaret Thatcher lecture to the Centre for Policy Studies, in which he argued that greed isn't a bad thing. He said: 'But I also hope that there is no return to that spirit of Loadsamoney heartlessness – figuratively riffling banknotes under the noses of the homeless; and I hope that this time the Gordon Gekkos of London are conspicuous not just for their greed – valid motivator though greed may be for economic progress – as for what they give and do for the rest of the population, many of whom have experienced real falls in their incomes over the last five years.

The next time you see a Tory minister on television, count how long it is until they say that David Cameron is a leader with a long term plan for this country. This is the Tories’ new message. In a presentation to Cameron’s political Cabinet on Tuesday morning, Lynton Crosby told the ministers present that the Tories would probably lose the election if it was held today or tomorrow. But, as I report in the Mail on Sunday, he stressed that the election was still 16 months away so the Tories had time to turn things round. He emphasised that they should play up that Cameron is a man with a plan and attack Ed Miliband and Labour foir being opportunistic, something that is already showing up in Crosby’s polling.

For months now, Number 10 has been fretting about what to do about Romanian and Bulgarian immigration. From the end of this year, any Romanian and Bulgarian will be able to move here in search of work. Downing Street knows that if they come in large numbers it’ll negate everything that the government has done to try and get immigration under control. Fairly or not, it’ll be fatal to the Tories’ reputation for competence on this issue. David Cameron is, as today’s Times and Mail reveal, now planning a major intervention on this issue. He wants to achieve three things. First, show that his government is handling the issue better than Labour did.

In September 2012 Mr Steerpike revealed that 14 Tory MPs had signed letters to Graham Brady, the Chairman of the 1922 Committee, calling for a leadership challenge to David Cameron. Today, Adam Afriyie, the alleged leader-in-waiting (who has not written to Graham Brady), called a vote on his amendment to James Wharton's EU Referendum Bill. The amendment is designed to bring forward the plebiscite to 2014, because it’s Afriyie’s belief that delaying the vote until 2017 will cost the Tories the next election. Mr Afriyie won just 15 votes. A coincidence? Probably not, but it’s certainly a telling sign of just how small the real anti-Cameron brigade is.

Another outbreak of the Tory Modernising Wars! What larks! Nick Boles's speech to Bright Blue, a newish think tank for metropolitan swells folk who think the Tory message needs rethinking, has, as it was designed to, caused a minor rumpus. Rod Liddle thinks Boles is off his head. Iain Martin is kinder but concludes the Cameroons are still obsessed with fighting the wrong battles. Other commentators are gentler still, conceding that Boles is asking the right question but that he's searching for answers in the wrong places. Nick Denys and, to some extent, Paul Goodman fall into this camp. On the other hand, Ian Birrell and Matt d'Ancona essentially agree with Boles while James Kirkup concludes that Boles has inadvertently conceded the failure of the Cameroon modernisation project.

Another interesting contribution to the great debate from Nicholas Boles, the MP for Grantham and Stamford and someone who is considered ‘influential’. Nick has explained away the Conservative Party’s unpopularity in the polls, and its likely defeat at the next General Election, on a failure to proclaim loudly enough on liberal issues. The party should be ‘shouting from the rooftops’ about such issues as gay marriage, he said. I assume he means being in favour of gay marriage. I wonder if the rest of the country sees it that way. Have you ever heard, anywhere – outside North London - anyone express dissatisfaction with the Conservative Party because it is insufficiently liberal on the issue of, say, gay marriage?

‘On their own’ – those are  Nick Clegg’s watchwords for the 2015 election. His speech on the economy last week was spun as ‘one of his strongest attacks ever on the Labour Party’; but, while Clegg certainly did say that Labour would seriously damage your wealth, he remembered his mantra: 'So don’t be fooled again: you cannot afford Labour. Let loose in government on their own they would wreck the recovery – costing jobs, driving up interest rates and undermining the growth needed to cut tax bills and fund public services. They cannot be allowed to undo all of the sacrifices that have been made and everything that has been achieved – the British people would pay the price.