Fraser Nelson

Some thoughts on the Tory reshuffle… 1. This was described to me as an “election footing” reshuffle. It’s the explanation why Maude has gone – he represented the pre-election phase, apparently. 2. George Osborne is given powers for election co-ordinator. He has no experience in the field, and will face a formidable challenge from Douglas Alexander who does the same role for Labour but has been obsessing over the mechanics of elections for years. 3. Pauline Neville Jones has been appointed to Shadow Cabinet, pending her nomination for a peerage. So Cameron, too, can assemble team of all the talents (but you can perhaps say he started it) 4.

Fraser Nelson says that the new Prime Minister has positioned himself in territory that the Tories have left vacant, and is ready to fight a cultural battle to defend the ‘British way of life’ and win over the C1 voters who decide elections It was a phrase that David Cameron would never dare to utter. As Gordon Brown was giving his first speech as Labour party leader in Manchester, he repeatedly pledged to defend the ‘British way of life’. This dog whistle may have been missed by his audience, and was certainly neglected by the press, but resonated in Conservative headquarters. Immigration, an issue which the Tories have dropped as a frontline issue, is now firmly on Labour’s agenda.

Blair’s been interviewed by the police again, and the reformed Spice Girls are giving a press conference.

My only surprise about Quentin Davies' defection is that he joined the Tories in the first place. Last year he stopped me in the Commons to tell me he'd just "36 hours ago" become head of the Conservative pro-Euro group and started evangelising. Isn't it crazy, he asked, that every country has its own foreign aid budget working to its own priorities? Wouldn't it be better to pool the budgets and have the EU decide one set of priorities? He went with this collectivist nonsense for a while, saying he'd rebel and vote for the EU constitution. There were 4-7 more Tories like him, he said. Well, he's found his spiritual home. UPDATE: I've just spoken to a distraught Tory MP who dislikes Davies but is furious about the move. Defections should be going the other way, he says.

Boris Johnson is being rather coy about his chances for promotion. ‘Statistically, I am due to be fired again,’ he tells this month’s GQ magazine. ‘It may be that the psychological effort needed to haul myself around into a more gaffe-free zone proves too difficult.’ This is not the orthodox view: most in Westminster consider this magazine’s former editor overdue a promotion. The only question, as for other rising Tory stars, is: to what job? The new Conservative line-up has been the subject of frenzied gossip for months. For a while, there was a theory that Mr Cameron would announce his new team before Gordon Brown became Prime Minister — as an act of sheer bravado. ‘It would show that we run our own agenda,’ one aide told me.

Blair was good today, buzzing, contemptuous and articulate. Cameron was better. He was on top of the facts and ready with sound bites ("he'll release more prisoners this year than the entire prison population of Australia"). Just the skills he'll need for fighting Brown. Ken Purchase (former PPS to the late Robin Cook) denouncing Lord Harris for "owning" City Academies showed how emboldened the left is ahead of Brown's arrival. Blair immediately counterattacked. I wonder how Brown will respond to such interventions from the left on academies, foundation hospitals and the Iraq war. We'll find out in a fortnight. PS... Brownites (Ian Austin, Jim Murphy, Nick Brown) were all standing at the back of the chamber, unable to find a seat.

I’ve now learnt why today’s event was held in Tooting. First, my former home is now considered a bellwether target seat, and second the candidate in question – Mark Clarke – is considered one of the party’s most promising rising stars. He’s also chairman of Conservative Future and a blogger. His warm-up before Cameron certainly drew more laughs from the audience than the main act.

When you hear the word "progressive" mentioned in Westminster, it is normally a Labour MP (like Douglas Alexander) preparing the ground for coalition with the Liberal Democrats. I've never understood this. Left wing policies are regressive, weigh the economy down, stifle creativity and keep the poor languishing on benefits. So I'm glad David Cameron is taking the title back today. I'd like to see him say more about poverty, as Iain Duncan Smith has handed him ammo on a plate. But it is an encouraging step forward.

Fraser Nelson says that Tony Blair’s swansong summit next week is fraught with danger for Gordon Brown. The last thing the next Prime Minister wants in his in-tray is a new EU constitution that he has to sell to the British public For what must surely be the last time, war has broken out between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The surreal calm of the handover period has been fractured by a return to the bitterness, acrimony and threats that have been the dominant feature of government in the past decade. The Prime Minister has been told, rather than asked, to come back from next week’s European Union summit having agreed a treaty which the Chancellor can plausibly sell to the British public without being forced into calling a referendum.

Add up all the spellings of Mohammed and you learn it’s now Britain’s no2 baby name. I did this for my News of the World column on Sunday, and The Times has followed it up today. It'll be no 1 next year, on current trends. This is partly because Muslims tend to go for a narrower selection of names, while the rest of us choose from a ridiculous array (there were eight poor lads named ‘Conan’ last year - but sorry International Development Secretary, no one called Hilary). A more important point is that foreign-born Britons make up about 8% of the population but 20% of mothers - keeping up Britain’s flagging birth rates. The most important point is that Britain is far more at ease with this than the Netherlands or Germany.

It was a wonderfully subtle point by the Sunday Times. They run a profile of Andy Coulson, the Tory’s new communications chief, and beneath it a piece by David Cameron showing yet again just how badly Coulson is needed. He starts off agreeing with Blair – that the Tories were backward-looking losers. (Remind me, David, which party got the most votes in England in the 2005 election? Then he again misrepresents those who believe in grammars, saying they want to go “back to the 11-plus” and want “some mythical policy of a grammar school in every town” (no myth: both Hague and Major wanted this). The Graham Bradys of this world just believe grammars work and want them expanded, where demand exists.

Even from his holiday home in Crete, David Cameron will be able to sense the waves of schism and confusion which engulf his party this week. Parliament is not sitting, yet the grammar schools row has already triggered one shadow ministerial resignation, with the threat of more to come. It is enough to make Gordon Brown’s allies salivate: the Tories have been pole-axed by a news story which originated in their own head office. How will they cope with the tricks which the next Prime Minister has in store? Until now, the Cameron machine has faced remarkably little hostile fire. Mr Brown had urged an all-out assault from the very beginning, but was vetoed by Mr Blair. When No.

It’s 11pm on Thursday and the Tory grapevine is buzzing with the kind of mutinous talk I haven’t heard for two years. Conservative MPs are talking about open revolt in their constituencies over grammar schools. The party is united – behind Dominic Grieve, who has said he wants more grammar schools to open where they already exist. No matter what David Willetts says, his decision to back Grieve on BBC’s World At One is a climbdown from his original position - as those he spoke to at the time well know. My answer to Matt’s post: this is a U-turn, being dressed up as a muddle. None of this covers Willetts with glory. William Hague recently said Cameron is someone “who leads rather than follows his party.”  Not this time, it seems.