Grant shapps

Grant Shapps on the Tories and Thatcher

It is one of the paradoxes of modern British politics that in the post-war era the power and hold of political parties have declined and our system has become more presidential. But the two most electorally successful leaders of this era have both been deposed by their respective parties. This has created problems for both parties, as today’s Sunday Politics with Andrew Neil demonstrated. After John Reid had been on to discuss Tony Blair’s comments on Ed Miliband, Grant Shapps was up to be questioned on Margaret Thatcher’s legacy for the Tories. Shapps was reluctant to declare that the Tories are a Thatcherite party. Trying to suggest that it is

The Fox pulls in a crowd

An impressive turnout in the Churchill Room of the Carlton Club last night for Liam Fox’s New Year drinks. My eyes in the room reports that a smiling Liam claimed he had ‘invited 180 people’ and 162 had turned up. Interestingly, the big beasts came out for the former Defence Secretary, who is said to be eyeing a political comeback. Chancellor George Osborne stopped by, as did Party Chairman Grant Shapps, and Chris Grayling joined the party together with ‘a smattering of Whips’. Though he was left high and dry by colleagues during the scandal that ended his frontbench career in October 2011, his friends were back for the free

Ed Balls reverses over his own progress on fiscal responsibility

The battle-lines over the Welfare Benefits Up-rating Bill — which faces its second reading in the Commons this afternoon — have been drawn. Labour has tied its opposition to the Resolution Foundation’s analysis showing that the bulk of the policy will hit working families. As Ed Balls put it last week, ‘Two-thirds of people who will be hit by David Cameron and George Osborne’s real terms cuts to tax credits and benefits are in work.’ They’ve labelled the move a ‘strivers’ tax’, a continuation of the divisive rhetoric from both them and the Conservatives that seeks to pit ‘hardworking families’ against ‘people who won’t work’ (as a recent Tory ad

Isabel Hardman

Tories make hay with Labour’s welfare stance

The Welfare Uprating Bill won’t fall into difficulty when it has its second reading in the Commons today, but with around five Lib Dem MPs expected to vote against or abstain on the 1 per cent rise in benefit payments, it’s going to be a lively debate. The Conservatives are focused on making the debate less about Sarah Teather and other angry colleagues in her party and more about Labour’s welfare stance. Grant Shapps has a new, bald poster campaign today on six sites in London. Shapps’ new posters simply read: ‘Today Labour are voting to increase benefits by more than workers’ wages. Conservatives: standing up for hardworking people.’ Iain Duncan

Grant Shapps launches Tory target seats campaign

If the Tories are to win a working majority at the next election, they are going to have to take seats off Labour. Even if the Tories won every single Liberal Democrat seat they are targeting — something that is highly unlikely to happen, they would still only have a majority of one. Doing this after five years of austerity government is going to be extremely difficult. The Tory strategy for it, involves boosting the party’s vote among groups that the party traditionally underperforms with. Tellingly, Grant Shapps is launching the Tory target seats campaign today in a Hindu temple in Harrow West, a seat where the Tories underperformed last

Shapps’ campaign skirmish

There’s long been a sense on the Tory side that the party’s campaigning isn’t as sharp as it should be, that CCHQ isn’t up to the job. The Ashcroft target seats campaign was so valued not just because of the money but because of the organisational and management muscle behind it. The new Tory Chairman Grant Shapps was sent to CCHQ in the reshuffle with instructions to address the place’s institutionalised incompetence. The early signs are encouraging. When Labour announced that it was launching a campaign in the 60 seats where the number of people on working tax credits, which are only going up by 1%, was larger than the

Grant Shapps tells Coffee House: there’ll never be a Tory/UKIP pact

I’ve just spoken to Grant Shapps, who was pretty unequivocal about the chances of the Tories and UKIP teaming up in 2015. ‘No,’ he told me. ‘There will be no pact with UKIP.’ Michael Fabricant might have thought he was being helpful when he suggested the Tories engineer a pact with UKIP, but his discussion paper (which you can read in full here), has now been rejected by both parties. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage and his deputy Paul Nuttall have been doing the rounds on the airwaves, and have rather upped their price for any co-operation between the two parties. Nuttall told BBC News: ‘It would be difficult for UKIP to talk to the

Grant Shapps: No talks with the Lib Dems on a party funding for boundary changes deal

Grant Shapps, the perky new Tory chairman, has just been grilled on The Sunday Politics by Andrew Neil about the Tories’ majority strategy. In a sign of how tight the next election will be, Shapps stressed that you don’t actually need 326 seats to have a majority in the Commons because Sinn Fein don’t take their seats. He said he was able to “reveal” the Tories’ 40/40 election strategy:  “We’re going to defend our [40] most marginal seats, and we’re going to go and attack the 40 seats that we will need to win. We’re going to focus and target on those seats in a way that we’ve never done

Steerpike at the Tories’: Grant Shapps’ ‘how to guide’ on gate-crashing

If warm white wine and dodgy canapés are your thing, then party conferences will be your heaven and I urge you to gate-crash them before the parties become extinct. Gate-crashing is an innate skill. Mr Steerpike crashed a members-only do for constituency bigwigs at the Tories’ tempestuous conference in Birmingham, and found himself in good company: Tory party chairman Grant Shapps revealed that he is an expert gate-crasher. Back in the nineties, ‘a strong young Conservative, who was never going to be a real security threat’ swiped John Major’s schedule and invitation list for an entire party conference in the loos. While a flustered member of the prime minister’s security detail scoured

Conservative conference: Shapps pushes ‘shy’ Tories to shout out about their achievements

Grant Shapps used his speech this afternoon to the Conservative party conference to encourage Tories to not be shy. It’s not a charge you could level at the Conservative party co-chair himself, especially after he devoted the first section of his speech to talking about himself and his own election battles. He also revealed to the conference ‘exactly’ what David Cameron had told him on reshuffle day: ‘The day of the reshuffle I went to see the Prime Minister in Downing Street, and today I can reveal precisely what he said. “Grant, you’ve got one task as chairman, get out there and kick-start our campaign, rally the troops, take the

Re-arranging the desk chairs on the Titanic

New Tory Chairman Grant Shapps has taken the dramatic step of reinstalling the general election countdown clock in CCHQ to remind staffers that there are only 959 days until voters deliver their verdict on the Conservatives’ time in government. Shapps has also got something else planned, which is to rearrange the desks. I understand that he told the 1922 committee last week that he wants to make Tory party press officers sit next to the researchers who cover each specific policy area so that they can feed one another information effectively. Currently they sit on different banks of desks. One CCHQ veteran points out to me that Shapps’ exciting desk

Grant Shapps addresses the 1922 committee

Grant Shapps, the new Tory chairman, has been addressing the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers this evening. Shapps appears to have gone down fairly well. MPs are glad to have a Chairman who is in the Commons after two and a bit years with a peer doing the job, though Andrew Feldman remains a co-chair. Shapps told MPs that he was keen for CCHQ to offer them every assistance it can. He announced that he would be placing a CCHQ staffer in the whip’s office several days a week so they could handle MPs’ requests. I also expect that there will not be the usual by-election edict for the Corby

There’s no right to live in Chelsea

Your local council owns prime real estate and could sell it to build new social houses. Housing Minister Grant Shapps says the appeal of this idea promoted by Policy Exchange is ‘obvious’. With a potential pot of £5.5bn to build up to 170,000 affordable homes, what’s not to like? Plenty, apparently: Labour MP Karen Buck warned of a risk to communities, and the importance of mixing groups within our population. Lord Prescott called the idea ‘gerrymandering’. The empty slogans come from both sides. When someone says ‘nobody has a right to live in’ Chelsea they ought to remember that some people do have a right to live there, and that

Shapps leading a reshuffled pack?

The wettest drought on record has made work for idle thumbs on Twitter this afternoon. There is a smattering of reshuffle chatter about, prompted by the ‘omnishambles’ as much as the rain. The gossip is inspired by this report in the Mail, which tells of more rumours that Ken Clarke and Caroline Spelman are for the chop, together with Baroness Warsi. Meanwhile, as James reported a couple of weeks ago, Andrew Lansley has ingratiated his way back into the safety of the inner sanctum. Promotion has been complicated by the allegations engulfing Jeremy Hunt, who has, of course, been tipped for the very top. The names among the favoured Tory ministers remain fairly

How serious is Miliband?

The Tories reckon that Ed Miliband’s proposed donation cap of £5,000 is a con that will hit their funding every year, while preserving Labour’s funds except at election time thanks to the union levy being exempt. Housing minister and regular attack-dog Grant Shapps laid out the party’s position on Andrew Neil’s BBC Sunday Politics show earlier today. Here is the transcript of their exchange: Shapps: Well I watched the interview and I thought this sounds big and important, so to a quick look afterwards and discovered that of the £10m Labour got from the unions last year, they still get 9.9 million of it, so this is a complete wheeze, one of

The politics of taking big money out of politics

Ed Miliband is nothing if not persistent. Party funding has been a running theme of his leadership, necessitated by his cosy relationship with the unions. He has returned to the subject today, with a blog post and an appearance on the Andrew Marr Show. The news is that Miliband wants to cap donations from individuals, organisations and companies at £5,000. That is £5,000 less than was recommended by Sir Christopher Kelly, and £45,000 less than the Conservatives propose. Miliband claimed that this would dramatically reduce Labour’s funding from the trade unions, forcing his party to diversify its revenue sources. Obviously, it would also reduce the Tories’ funding sources. This is

Shapps has ‘deep reservations’ about the ‘conservatory tax’

There is deep unease among Tory ministers about the proposals for a so-called ‘conservatory tax’. The idea, which was pushed hard by Chris Huhne when he was Energy Secretary, is that when anyone does substantial home improvement work they would be made to make other changes to make their house more energy efficient. It is estimated that this would add about 10 percent to the cost of adding a conservatory or an extension to your house. The government is currently consulting on the policy. But I understand that Grant Shapps, the housing minister, has ‘deep reservations’ about it. He fears that the proposals are anti-aspiration and could risk bolstering the

Shapps sharpens the Right to Buy

It’s a day for growth initiatives. In addition to those described earlier, George Osborne has announced that Whitehall’s annual underspend will be reinvested into capital spending projects. The emphasis on infrastructure echoes Danny Alexander’s statements during the Lib Dem conference, when the Treasury secretary disclosed that existing programmes would be brought forward and funded by recalibrating budgets. So there seems to be agreement between the two parties about bolstering the coalition’s growth strategy in a certain way, which may explain why the Tories are so determined to resist pressure to introduce politically awkward tax cuts. Grant Shapps has also been elaborating on the changes to the Right to Buy. He

Housing crisis on the horizon

There is grim news on the housing front this morning: the National Housing Federation (NHF) reports that the housing market will descend into “crisis” unless the supply of houses is dramatically increased. It points out that only 105,000 new homes were built last year, the smallest amount since the 1920s. This is a long-term trend, as demand has consistently outstripped supply.  The NHF thinks that those facts will not change and predicts homeownership will fall to the level of the mid-1980s, when Margaret Thatcher announced that her goal was to help “more and more people to own property.” The conclusion is obvious if those are the premises: average property prices will

Stable house prices won’t happen by themselves

Grant Shapps has impressed in the housing brief, arguing that house prices rising faster than wages is not a good thing (with which Policy Exchange’s report, Making Housing Affordable, agreed). He has probably been encouraged by the fact that some recent polls have shown even a majority of owners want prices to stop rising. Perhaps having your kids live with you until they are 40 just isn’t a popular option? More so, rising house prices only benefit those who downsize (now rare) or own multiple properties; and in the wider economy it mostly discourages productive investment and encourages borrowing – hardly good things.   But while Shapps’s aim is laudable,