Uk politics

Friday

David Blackburn

Should Cameron have told us how he will do it?

From our UK edition

The left’s criticism of Cameron’s speech is that it contained no new policies and that begs the question: how will Cameron set the people free? Steve Richards has an essential article on the subject in today’s Independent. Here are the key paragraphs: ‘Against quite a few paragraphs in Cameron's speech I wrote a single word: "How?" I used to do the same with Blair's early speeches only to discover in 1997 that he had no answers to the question in several key policy areas. Most fundamentally it is still not at all clear how Cameron plans to reduce what he calls Labour's debt crisis.

Thursday

Fraser Nelson

Gove’s ‘free schools’ will be able to profit

From our UK edition

In all the excitement, I forgot to flag up to Coffee Housers a fact that we dropped in the leader column of today’s magazine. Michael Gove’s new Swedish schools will, it seems, be allowed to make a profit. I said in the editorial that: “Crucially, it now looks likely that the new schools will be able to run for profit — as Anders Hultin, the architect of the Swedish system, argued in this magazine last week. This may come in the form of a ‘management fee’. But if this happens, then Britain’s obsession with the quality of schools could blossom into an education industry.” Hultin’s article was picked up by The Daily Telegraph. Profit, he says, means Britain would have an education industry.

James Forsyth

Modernisation for a purpose

From our UK edition

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.

David Blackburn

The people will make it happen

From our UK edition

Cameron’s speech might have lacked flair, but it was a brilliant rhetorical exercise. He cast himself into the distant future and reflected on his premiership. He saw a society that had paid its way back from the brink of collapse by rationing excess and embracing austerity. He saw a society that was flourishing, where the poorest attended the best schools, where people were empowered to work hard and were rewarded for doing so. Returning to the sombre present he said: “It will be a steep climb. But the view from the summit will be worth it.” But this rhetorical tour de force was inspired by a substantial philosophical argument. Cameron’s vision saw the State diminished to subservience.

Fraser Nelson

Cameron’s revolutionary speech

From our UK edition

This was one of the best speeches I have heard David Cameron give. It may not have been a masterpiece of oratory, he may have read from notes, left too make lulls lulls inspiring only a few standing ovations.  But it was packed with mission, seriousness, vision, principles – and, most of all, a real agenda.   Just as last year’s conference speech laid out a Conservative defence of the free market, this year’s laid out a vision of the conservative society. That is to say: one which hands back power to communities, which trusts people and places huge emphasis on social mobility.   First, he positioned the Conservatives squarely in the fight against poverty – on the explicit grounds that Labour has lost that fight.

Lloyd Evans

Dave will slay the Goliath-esque government

From our UK edition

Clever in its lack of cleverness. Cameron’s performance today was shrewd and unexciting, a speech of nursery-school simplicity. Large bland ideas, plain language. No detail. This was certainly no masterpiece. It didn’t have to be. Cameron’s in a holding pattern. Keep circling and he’ll land safely. Before he arrived, William Hague frustrated the eager delegates with two corporate videos of more than ordinary dullness. The BBC, flouting its own policy of censoring political broadcasts, aired both of them on BBC Parliament (albeit with the sound turned down.) First, a surpise. No less a figure than Bono, the UN's top Guilt Ambassador, spoke to the Tories about debt relief.

Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part II

From our UK edition

George Osborne has embraced the 50p tax as a central tenet of the “We’re all in this together” theme. CoffeeHousers will be aware of my deep scepticism about this. It is justified on presentational grounds: if you squeeze the rich, and their pips squeak, it will create ‘permission’(to use that Blairite phrase) to do the horrible things like deny pay rises to nurses and social workers. Ergo, presentation and economics are fused together on this issue, he says. Without popular support for the cuts agenda, it cant happen and the deficit won’t be tackled. So the 50p tax should be judged not on its own merits, but on the grounds of its ability to unlock the ability for deeper cuts to be made.

Peter Hoskin

A pledge which Cameron looks set to break

From our UK edition

In its preview of Cameron's speech, the Sun highlights the Tory leader saying that "...in a Conservative Britain, if you put in the effort to bring in a wage, you will be better off."  The implicit reference, here, is to Labour's combined tax and benefit system, which frequently acts to disincentivise extra work.  All too often, effort isn't met by reward - so what's the point? As the Centre for Social Justice's recent Dynamic Britain report showed, this effect impinges, above all, on the least well-off in society - and with tragic consequences.  It's all to do with effective marginal tax rates, which measure what proportion of a small rise in earnings would be lost to both tax and the withdrawal of benefits.

Fraser Nelson

The Cameron transcript: Part I

From our UK edition

While were all waiting for the Cameron speech, I thought I’d post some of the out-takes of my interview with him last week (full text here). Many thanks for your suggestions for questions, which were disconcertingly good. When I was a trainee reporter, I went to a coroner’s court and noticed that the jury asked better questions than the lawyer. It’s often like that with CoffeeHouse comments: you guys had all the obvious and oblique angles covered. But I suspect that our little wiki-exercise forewarned Cameron a bit because he seemed to have ready answers. Every journalist leaves an interview thinking what was the top line in that? and if your subject is slick enough, there normally isn’t one.

Fraser Nelson

The radical plans the Tories are keeping under wraps

From our UK edition

So what is George Osborne really up to? If Coffee Housers are feeling depressed at the paucity of ambition in his speech (his ‘cuts’ package  would shave just 1% off government spending) then take heart. In the magazine today, James Forsyth lists the far-more-radical changes that are being discussed by the Cameroons – but kept under wraps. The full piece is here, and the main points are…   1)   Corporation tax cuts. No mention was made of a growth agenda in the speech, but there are plans to cut Britain’s company tax rates quite aggressively with Ireland’s 12.5% as a lodestar.

James Forsyth

Who has the time to watch a weekday conference speech?

From our UK edition

The activists here are already queuing up for David Cameron’s speech. But very few people outside of this conference centre are going to watch the whole speech: how many people have an hour free at 2.15pm on a weekday?   If we want conferences speeches to be watched by more than conference delegates, then they need to be on in the evenings or on the weekend. Just imagine how many more people would watch Cameron, or would have watched Brown last week, if the speech started at 8pm. US conventions take place mostly in prime time, with the networks being strong-armed into covering them for at least an hour a night. In 2008, more than 40 million people — about 20 percent of the US electorate — watched Obama and McCain’s acceptance speeches.

Peter Hoskin

Here lies the General Well-being agenda

From our UK edition

Remember David Cameron's General Well-being agenda? You may not. It was pretty nebulous stuff, which he deployed during the decontamination overdrive early in his leadership. We haven't heard much about it since - probably as Cameron & Co. realised it could fuel the worst Notting Hill caricatures of them, at a time when the economy was going south and thousands of people are losing their jobs. Which is why it was striking to see "General Well-being" exumed for this Manchester conference. Yes, the press centre cafe is called the GWB cafe (picture below). Kinda tells you all you need to know about that particular Cameroonian non-starter. P.S.

Peter Hoskin

Contrasting Cameron and Osborne

From our UK edition

Judging by the Independent's preview, as well as the quotes that ConHome have managed to get their hands on, Cameron is going to do Hope 'n' Change in his speech today.  Yes, he talks about a "steep climb ahead," but he adds that "the view from the summit will be worth it." This sounds like the growth and recovery element which many thought was lacking from the Osborne speech.  As it happens, there was actually a growth section in a near-to-final draft of the Shadow Chancellor's address, but it was taken out over concerns about timing. I suspect the double act - Osborne selling pain, with Cameron selling hope - will work out quite nicely for the Tories, and will become their template in the run-up to the election.

David Blackburn

Osborne is the key to Cameron’s success

From our UK edition

Initially, I thought George Osborne’s conference speech was unremarkable. Osborne, the second coming of Stafford Cripps, painted the grimmest picture since The Scream. He was relentless, remorseless. in fact, the argument that the Tories ‘relish cuts’ and are out of touch almost seemed plausible, as Osborne, the heir to an Anglo-Irish baronetcy with a flair for interior design, told the nation that “we’re all in this together”.  But in the wider tactical context of securing a Conservative victory, it was a brilliant speech. Writing in the Independent, Matthew Norman concludes: ‘Adorable he will never be, and as an orator he makes the Speaking Clock sound like Cicero, but undeniably he is extremely clever.

Wednesday

Daniel Korski

Defensive moves

From our UK edition

So, General Dannatt is to be a Tory Peer. This worries me greatly. On balance, General Dannatt did a good job as Army chief. Not a great job, but a good one. His interventions boosted the morale of frontline troops and his concern for the care of soldiers, especially the wounded, was important. Conversely, many defense analysts thought he was too cautious on military reform, blocking the Army’s transformation into an effective counter-insurgency force and opposing stop gap procurement in case it compromised future acquisition projects. But the real concerns over General Dannatt’s ennoblement are different. General Dannatt should have given his sucecssor a clear run at the job. He should have had the decency showed him by his predecessor, Mike Jackson.

Fraser Nelson

Activists for Dave

From our UK edition

I don’t know this lady’s name, but she is a genuine example of an enthused Tory grassroots activist. She was queuing behind me in security and I noticed her bag. “It’s my own kinda Blue Peter job,” she said. What inspired her to make the design? “Because my party was going nowhere for eight years, then David came along and changed that. When your party recovers, and you know your country will, then that’s something to be pleased about.” So pleased she made this handbag. Surely Smythsons should buy the design?

James Forsyth

The demise of the speed camera

From our UK edition

One of the more interesting influences on the Conservatives is behavioural economics. The book ‘Nudge’ informs quite a lot of their thinking and one of its author Richard Thaler is now an official advisor to the party; his co-author is heading up regulatory policy for Obama. One of the major British evangelists for behavioural economics and its insight is The Spectator’s own Wiki Man, Rory Sutherland. He drew this magazine’s attention to Thaler and Nudge long before people in the Westminster Village had cottoned onto it.

Peter Hoskin

Pre-Freudian slip

From our UK edition

Theresa May is chairing a discussion with a set of Conservative PPCs on 'job clubs', as part of this afternoon's focus on welfare reform.  She kicks off asking one of the Tory PPCs on the panel, Maggie Throup, to talk about job clubs in her area: "So, Maggie, tell us about...". Problem is, May addresses her remarks at the wrong PPC, Suzy Davis. Mistake realised, she wheels round and puts the same question to the actual Maggie Throup.  Not a good start. It's picked up since. The welfare adviser David Freud, who jumped ship from Labour to the Tories, is now on stage. And he gets a cheer when he says "I've always been a Conservative.". This is a significant time for Freud.

James Forsyth

The Tories provide the only route away from educational inequality

From our UK edition

The level of educational inequality in this country is appalling. I have heard the numbers that Michael Gove listed off in his speech several times before but they never fail to shock. One wonders what future there can be for the half of the children who left comprehensives last year without five good GCSEs. The worst schools in the country are in the poorest areas. The Tory plan, to put parents in charge of the £5,000 per year that the state spends on a child’s education, with pupils from deprived backgrounds receiving additional funding, would end the monopoly on state education provision that has failed the poorest. In its place it would put a system that offers choice to all parents, not just the few who can afford to go private, through the emergence of new schools.

Peter Hoskin

Rolling in it

From our UK edition

Well, the Tories will be pleased.  According to Channel 4's Gary Gibbon, they've made a tidy £1.5 million profit from their party conference.  When you consider how much must have been spent in Manchester - it's a very slick operation with banners, screens and corporate hospitalities everywhere - this news is yet another sign (were one needed) of the Tories' momentum.