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.’
Marriage and Taxation
How marriage is penalised under Labour’s tax regime:
…a one-earner married couple, with children, earning up to £33,000 a year, pays almost a third more tax in the UK than in the average OECD country and 18 per cent more than the EU average.
This is according to a report issued by CARE.
So, Mr Cameron, be bolder in your ambitions for recognising marriage in the tax system. A little bolder than just saying that any changes will be “more about the message than the money.”
