George osborne

Ever the contrarian, Michael Portillo makes a case that you don't hear from many on the right in his interview with Andrew Neil on Straight Talk this weekend.  George Osborne has given "a fair amout of detail" about the Tories' debt-reduction plans, he says, but that could be the wrong approach: "I wouldn’t seek probably to give very much more detail ....  You know, I was with Margaret Thatcher when she came in to Government in 1979, we faced a big public spending problem.  It was terrible.  It was a hard slog but she didn’t cut public spending.  I was Chief Secretary between ’92 and ’94 – big public spending problem – I was trying to cut public spending; I did not succeed in cutting public spending.

So Boris is attacking the 50p tax rate again - and rightly so.  In his Telegraph column today, the Mayor of London repeats the lines he pushed in April: that the measure will drive business talent away from our shores, that it will damage London's competitiveness, and that it could actually lose money for the Exchequer.  It all comes to a punchy conclusion: "What Gordon Brown wants to do is therefore economically illiterate." I imagine a few commentators will see that last line as a veiled attack on the Tory leadership, given that they're committed to the tax rate too.  But, as Tim Montgomerie says over at ConservativeHome, and going off conversations with Tory types, I doubt that Cameron and Osborne would disagree with the thrust of Boris's article.

George Osborne’s speech on Monday calling for huge cash bonuses not to be paid this year drew an angry response from those hoping to receive huge cash bonuses – and various City and business pressure groups. A few years ago I would have felt deeply uncomfortable with what Obsorne proposed, but because nearly every bank has drawn heavily on state support over the last year, I think politicians do have a right – even a responsibility – to offer firm guidance to the banks. The FT led the charge against Osborne with both a critical news story, gleefully dissected by Iain Martin, and a harsh leader. Today, the paper follows up with a page two story on a letter Alastair Campbell has sent the paper criticising the shadow Chancellor.

Brace yourselves. According to the Guardian, Brown is about to sell himself as a Great Reformer: "Brown, the cabinet sources say, decided in the past few weeks to adopt a tougher pro-public sector reform stance, in order that his defence of the state in the face of recent attacks on big government by David Cameron does not become confused with complacency about the current performance of the public sector." Despite the sensibleness of the reform argument, I can't imagine that Brown will make much headway with this. For starters, he has that "Roadblock to Reform" label, and Labour's patchy record on public service reform, hovering over him like the proverbial albatross.

One already hears grumblings from members of the Shadow Cabinet about how much power has been concentrated in Norman Shaw South, the suite of offices where Cameron and Osborne and their teams sit in Parliament. But judging by a report in The Times today the leadership is thinking about centralising power even more when in office. Jill Sherman writes that: 'Cabinet ministers have traditionally had two special advisers with another 25 in Downing Street. But Mr Maude is said to be thinking of giving ministers one each, supplemented by a separate pool of advisers, who would be based at No 10. Only advisers from the central pool would be authorised to speak to the media, “spinning” policy proposals and giving David Cameron control over the message going out to voters.

Just before David Cameron came on stage they played a video looking back at his four years in charge of the party. It concentrated on the modernising moments — the huskie hugging, the efforts to get more women into Parliament and the rest. When Cameron did these things, some critics mocked them, claimed that they showed he was all style and no substance. But today we saw what those moments have made possible. Cameron devoted his pre-election conference speech to a classic conservative message, that the big state is the problem. Crucially, this message is getting a hearing. It is not being dismissed as those ideological Tories banging on again. Modernisation has achieved one of its principal purposes.

Sifting through this morning's papers, you'd say that it's mission accomplished for George Osborne's speech yesterday. The realigned Sun demonstrates how much it has got behind the Tories, by giving the Shadow Chancellor an absolutely glowing report ("the Shadow Chancellor came of age"). He also receives good-to-medium notices in the Times, the FT and the Independent, while the Guardian is more mixed, but hardly damning. In the Mail, Quentin Letts writes that "Yesterday the Boy became Boss George". And so on and so on. You can see where they're all coming from.  As I wrote yesterday, there's much that was impressive in Osborne's speech. But there were also some weaknesses on the policy side of things.

They stopped letting people into the conference hall for George Osborne's speech long before the Shadow Chancellor took to the platform - it was packed, not even standing room.  There was certainly an anticipatory buzz among Tory supporters, particularly after some of the policy announcements trailed in the papers this morning.  One delegate assured me that "this is the speech when George will convince the nation that he's the man to deal with Brown's mess."  Everyone seemed pretty breathless. So did he pull it off?  Well, my immediate response is "yes and no".  Probably more "yes" than "no".  There was much that was impressive in the speech.  Osborne touched on all the right themes: debt, reform, compassionate conservatism, etc.