The Conservative Shadow Cabinet
Iain Martin’s description of the Tory Shadow Cabinet:
The shadow cabinet (AKA the mushrooms, kept in the dark and covered in…)
Get Gordon! Fight Fire with Fire
Daniel Finkelstein is not too happy with the newly aggressive approach adopted by the Conservatives in their attacks on Gordon Brown:
The Tories will get burnt fighting fire with fire
To the contrary, the recent ‘Death Tax’ poster, and Cameron’s attacks on Brown, have been the most effective parts of the Conservative campaign so far. I’m sure that if they continue in this mode it will be reflected in a higher opinion poll lead. If they follow Finkelstein, and his softly-softly, ‘look-at-me-I’m-a-nice-guy’ approach, and neglect negative and aggressive campaigning, the opinion poll lead will sink towards hung parliament territory.
Come on, Cameron. Take the advice of Iain Macleod: the best time to kick a man is when he’s down.
I’ve Never Voted Tory Before….
Iain Martin interprets the latest Tory campaign as marking the development of a new version of Cameronian Conservatism:
What is happening, and what these latest ads suggest, is that Hilton and others are trying to construct a pitch for a Cameron conservatism better in tune with the uncertain aftermath of The Great Recession. In this way, in the adverts Hilton gives the father battling hard to keep his business going equal weight to the young woman from Brighton who works in a hostel.
He sees great potential in the fusing of two strands of Conservatism:
Yet fuse together the rhetoric and concerns of One Nation with economic dynamism (compassion and responsibility meet growth and efficiency) and Cameron might have something potentially very powerful and enduring.
Although he is not to impressed with the implementation:
But if that truly is what he or any of his fellow senior Conservatives are trying to do they are making quite a meal of serving it up to the watching public.
Tories Plan to Combat Travellers’ Exploitation of Planning Rules
A commitment to cheer.
For too long a small minority of travellers and squatters have been given the green light to exploit the rules and occupy illegal or unauthorised sites, which are often on Green Belt land.
Amongst the proposals are:
- a new criminal offence of intentional trespass
- curtail the ability to apply for retrospective planning permission
- scrapping of Prescott’s John Prescott’s Whitehall planning rules compelling councils to build traveller camps on the Green Belt and compulsory purchase people’s land to find sites.
Does David Cameron Believe in Decentralisation?
In his speech yesterday to the Scottish Conservative Party Conference in Perth, David Cameron declared:
Today we are the party that passionately believes that local is best, the party that knows that the more power people have, the more responsible they become, the more fulfilled they are, we are the party of decentralisation.
As things stand we can only take Mr Cameron at his word, and hope that this aspiration towards decentralization becomes a guiding principle of his government when (if) he wins the General Election. The omens, however, do not look good.
As leader of the Opposition, the only area in which Mr Cameron is able to exercise real power is in the running of the Conservative Party. And in this, he has demonstrated a tendency towards preferring centralisation over the devolution of power. Nowhere is this more evident than in the selection of parliamentary candidates.
In his desire to ‘modernise’ the Conservative Party he has, since the beginning of the year, taken the power to impose shortlists of approved candidates on constituencies that have yet to select their champion for the General Election. In doing so, he has opted for candidates that fit a politically correct template. If one were parodying the modern Tory Party, one could do no better than to come up with the shortlist of candidates that has actually been imposed on Surrey East: three women, a black businessman, a Muslim businessman, and a gay man.
Such a cavalier attitude towards the activists who actually run Conservative Associations, for whom Mr Cameron appears to lack any instinctive sympathy, could pose problems for him in the long run, as Andrew Pierce warns:
With the polls pointing to a hung Parliament, David Cameron needs to realise that there is a real anger simmering among the party faithful. If he continues to treat these stalwarts with such disdain, his army of Tory heartland volunteers could rebel — making his life very difficult indeed.
So come on Mr Cameron. You can talk the talk on decentralisation – it’s time to walk the walk: give local constituencies the power to select who they want to represent them. Show us you mean business when you say that ‘Today we are the party that passionately believes that local is best.’
Andrew Lansley and the Search for ‘Consensus’
Andrew Lansley has apparently been in secret talks with his opposite numbers in the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties to try and forge a ‘consensus’ over the future of social care:
Lansley confirmed he had entered secret talks with his Labour and Liberal Democrat opposite numbers without telling Cameron.
Firstly, it seems remarkably stupid to have done this without telling David Cameron – if that is the case. The more important point is did Lansley realise what the consequences would be if he had been successful? At a stroke, he would have effectively removed an area of controversy from political debate, and deprived the voters of this country of any say in the direction of social care policy.
More on Joanne Cash
There are some stories that you know you shouldn’t be interested in, but which exercise the fascination of a car crash. I’m afraid the Joanne Cash saga is one of them. More details from James Forsyth here.
Joanne Cash Reinstated
Apparently Joanne ‘will-she, won’t-she’ Cash has been reinstated as Conservative candidate in Westminster North. She announced this on Twitter thus:
I did resign. Assoc did not accept. CCHQ has resolved specific issue so I am not leaving. It’s official DC [David Cameron] has changed the party!!!!!!!!
Joanne Cash is apparently a ‘high-flyer’, tipped for the top by the Tatler, no less. I’m not sure that I’m too keen on being governed by someone interprets her own reinstatement as evidence that David Cameron has changed the party, or who feels the need to use that many exclamation marks.
