David cameron

Days, perhaps only hours away from the expected announcement of a Con-Lib deal, the Tory party rank-and-file is getting increasingly restive. Many MPs and party activists do not feel that Team Cameron has been sufficiently attentive to them and their concerns. They look longingly at the Lib Dems, whose democratic set-up enables MPs and party members to make their views known to Nick Clegg and the leadership. In a Tory party that has always favoured single-minded leadership, the options for representing rank-and-file views are few, particularly as the chairmanship of the 1922 committee remains vacant. As a result, many senior MPs have been reduced to calling hacks to find out

David Cameron never really had a Clause 4 moment. True, the Conservatives never believed anything so absurd as socialist economics. But the fact that he never had a genuine dust-up with his party made many voters think that he had rebranded but not reoriented them. In the end, it made many would-be supporters wary of voting Tory. Now, the Tory leader may have a Clause 4 moment thrust upon him by virtue of the Lib Dem talks. For if a Con-Lib pact is to be made, it will include a lot of things the party finds unpalatable. Like Tony Blair’s experience with the Labour Party over the Clause 4 discussions,

Woah, I didn’t think Cameron would go that far.  In his statement just now, the Tory leader started off by talking about minority government, as one might expect.  But he soon skipped past that, and onto what sounded like a more formal coalition with the Lib Dems.  He called it the Tories’ “Big Comprehensive Offer”. This offer trumped the one that Brown put forward ealier by virtue of its clarity.  Where Brown had hints and innuendo, Cameron had an itemised list of policies and specifications.  And so the Tory leader set out the areas where he wasn’t willing to compromise with the Lib Dems: Europe, cutting the deficit and immgration. 

I’m sceptical of the value of newspaper endorsements. Readers are often irritated by being told which way to jump – if you’ve read the letters page of the Times recently you’ll know what I mean. However, the weight of Fleet Street support for the Tories is significant. In addition to the usual suspects, the Sun, the Times, the Financial Times and the Economist have all defected from New Labour since 2005. Today, the Evening Standard joins them, endorsing the Conservatives in a general election for the first time since 1997. As with the endorsements in the Times, the Economist and the FT, Labour’s exhaustion, Cameron’s comparative vitality and the belief

The Telegraph reports that a Conservative minority government would rely on an ‘informal understanding’ with Unionist MPs and that David Cameron is preparing the ground for co-operation.  It’s a courageous plan, in the Sir Humphrey sense.  Many journalists argue that Cameron has a duty to preserve the Union. Certainly he does, but his overtures to the Ulster Unionists have been self-defeating. There is an assumption that the Unionist parties are conservative. Besides conserving the Union, they are not. Back in February, I reported that the Tory alliance with Reg Empey was serving only to eviscerate the UUP, as its socialist and social democratic factions revolted against Tory alignment. Sylvia Hermon,

For the past few years, the Tory task has been to look like a government-in-waiting. Now, with the election only a matter of days away, David Cameron has dialled that process up to eleven. In interviews with the Sunday Times and Andrew Marr today, the Tory leader concentrates firmly on the nuts and bolts of government. The content of the Queen’s speech, the depth of Tory cuts, the possibility of coalition – all get name-checked and cross-referenced. There’s much in there to encourage Tory supporters. Indeed, CoffeeHousers have been clamouring for one of Cameron’s proposals: a “Great Repeal Act,” which would “scrap ID cards, home information packs and dozens of