David cameron

The Tories invite you to join government

Battersea Power Station was the site of one of the Tories’ most effective publicity stunts of recent months – and it will be the venue for their manifesto launch tomorrow.  Details are already emerging about the document (ConHome has a good summary here), which sounds as though it won’t contain much, if anything, that we haven’t heard before.  As with Labour earlier, this approach risks an indifferent response from the media and the public.  But at least the Tories have clearer flagship policies to broadcast – the national insurance cut among them. While the manifesto may not contain any new policy, it sounds as though the Tories have gone to

Come out, come out wherever you are

Chris Grayling, the Shadow Home Secretary and former attack dog, seems to have been cast into outer darkness. As with Oliver Letwin’s disappearing act in the 2001, Labour is toasting this unofficial scalp. Denis MacShane has been adding poison to the potion this morning. The Tories are paying a heavy price for Grayling’s B&B gaffe, but it’s self-inflicted. Grayling’s comments were cackhanded and I think he is wrong, but they were nowhere near as controversial as was claimed – he was seeking a clarification of the law, not calling for Sandi Toksvig to be lynched. I doubt Grayling will be Home Secretary but such a senior Shadow minister can’t hide

What would you ask Cameron?

David Cameron takes a few journalists with him on each of his one-day tours, and it’s my turn tomorrow: 6am start. I should be able to get  half an hour or so with him, to do an interview for The Spectator. As is customary, I’ll try and ask him some questions on behalf of CoffeeHousers – so please add any thoughts as a comment below.

Does it pay to be mendacious?

Lying is a politician’s occupational hazard. The Independent on Sunday has published a Com Res poll confirming that truism. The majority of voters do not believe that David Cameron and Gordon Brown are being honest about how they will tackle the deficit. We voters resent being taken for fools. If Brown and Cameron are being disingenuous about the economy, the honest Sage of Twickenham benefits – the Liberals are storming the marginals, a hung parliament is odds-on according to some pollsters. Is Vince Cable honest about reducing the deficit? Emphatically not. One minute he’s against a VAT rise, but refuses to rule it out the next. He’s in favour of unilateral charges

An ICM marginals poll points to a hung parliament

The News of the World has its expensive and much-awaited ICM poll of the marginals tomorrow. There is some good news for Cameron, and some not-so-good news. First: 66 percent of voters in the marginals agree with the message “it’s time for change”. Bad news: a surprisingly large number think that Nick Clegg represents that change. A Lib Dem surge means that Tory swing is just 6 percent in the marginals, versus 5 percent nationally. Where is the Lord Ashcroft magic? In James’s political column this week, he says the Tories had been so confident about the marginals that they reckon they need a 5-point lead nationally to win, rather

Fraser Nelson

The Times is wrong about the Tories’ marriage tax break

Since The Times moved its leaders on to page two, they’ve also taken on a new vitality. For years, they were the voice of solid good sense. It was pretty difficult to disagree with them. Now, they are more polemical, more risk-taking – and more wrong. But I’m not complaining: I far prefer reading a fiesty opinion with which I disagree, than boring opinion that I nod quietly along with. And I could not disagree more with the leader today denouncing Cameron’s marriage tax break. Let’s kick off: “This is surely no time to be giving money away so that people can just carry on doing what they are already

Fraser Nelson

The case for voting Conservative

Why vote for Cameron? The reasons for voting against Gordon Brown are so numerous that the positive pro-Tory reasons for voting are often lost. This week’s Spectator gives you all the ammo you need to win around wavering friends, colleagues and family. We have restricted ourselves to the ten most compelling points. I summarise them below: 1. School reform. In itself, it’s enough reason to vote Tory. Gove has specifically promise that within four years of a Tory government everyone will have an independent school offering to educate their kid for free. This should have been a 1981 Tory proposal, but Keith Joseph lost a battle with the civil service

Are the Tories ready for joined-up government?

The Civil Service is readying itself for a new government. The BBC has already reported a discussion of efficiency savings among senior officials. In another part of Whitehall, work is a foot on how to set up a National Security Council should the Tories win. I have in the last few weeks been interviewing ex-ministers and senior officials as research for a RUSI paper, due out soon after the election, on how to improve the government’s security set-up. Traipsing around various departments, a number of interesting conclusions have come to light: – Conservative ideas for an NSC are not the same as the government’s NSID committee, however much ministers say

Darling in cloud cuckoo land

Labour can’t lay a finger on the Tories over national insurance. And desperation has morphed into hysteria. Alistair Darling has just told Sky News that David Cameron contradicted George Osborne and that the Tory plan is “unravelling”. “He is going to have to find deeper cuts, some experts are saying tens of thousands of jobs will go,” he said. “He’s had to go on to say that he’s going to have to cut which will mean job losses.” Now, Cameron said: “Even after our plans for public sector pay and pensions, benefits, ID cards – yes, it’s still not enough. I accept that.” But that does not contradict George Osborne,

Cameron is Mr Reasonable on Today

Another day, another party leader on the Today Programme.  This time it was David Cameron, and his interrogator was Evan Davis.  My quick capsule review would be that the Tory leader did quite well, sounding measured and reasonable for most of the twenty minutes – which is certainly better than Brown managed yesterday.  But for more, read on… Unsurprisingly, Davis led on this morning’s FT interview with Peter Gershon, the Tories’ efficiency advisor, who has fleshed out some of the party’s spending plans.  This was the most aggressive segment of the interview, with Davis asking how many job losses would be incurred by a “£2 billion saving on public sector

Why Labour Needs To Be Much Fleeter of Foot

It is difficult to fault Cameron’s idea of a national volunteer force. While the Labour Party was forced to spend today defending the National Insurance hike, the Tories were able to seize the intiative with a genuinely far-sighted proposal. All the more galling for the government that this idea has been rattling around in Labour circles for at least a year. Cameron has stolen Labour’s clothes on this just as he did on co-operatives. David Lammy will be seething. His ideas for compulsory civic service were promoted in the pages of Prospect a year ago. He has been lobbying within the Labour Party for the policy for considerably longer. Unfortunately,

Win one for the Gipper

A Cameron government has the potential to change Britain – but not much else beside.  A Tory loss, however, could change much more. The Cameron Tories are a bellwether for Conservative movements in a number of countries, including the US. If they succeed, they will prove a powerful model for many moderate Republicans who believe their party is in an earlier post-Major phase – angry, divided and negative. If David Cameron fails to defeat Gordon Brown, few Republicans will look across to their British cousins for inspiration. The party will eschew any modernising project for a while longer and stick to their equivalent of IDS. In this scenario, the Republicans

James Forsyth

Hope springs eternal

The Tory press conference this morning, launching their plan for National Citizen Service, shows how they hope to run a two track campaign. On the one hand, they want to be hammering Labour over their plans to increase National Insurance — Cameron called it a ‘a recovery killer, an economy killer, a job killer’ and said that Labour wanted people to pay ‘taxes for government waste’. On the other, they want to be presenting hopeful, optimistic ideas like a National Citizen Service. This fusion campaigning enables the Tories both to be attacking Labour and presenting themselves as the party that is offering a positive alternative. National Citizen Service is very

What the Party Leaders Are Saying

I really enjoyed Anne McElvoy’s Standard column today. She is absolutely right to identify the false notes of day one of the election campaign. Gordon Brown really was talking nonsense about his ordinary middle-class background and David Cameron should certainly drop the glottal stop. She is right to say that neither has any clarity of vision yet. For what it’s worth I agree with Kevin Maguire agreeing me that Labour looked more confident on day one and that the Tories seemed nervous. On day two, Cameron was beginning to get into his stride and Brown’s interview with NIck Robinson was awful. The wall-to-wall media coverage is almost all completely absorbing,

How the Tories are decontaminating their associations with Big Business

Over the past couple of years, Big Business (as in, “being in hock with…”) has been deployed almost as an insult against the Tories.  But they’ve now used their campaign on national insurance to turn their business associations into an advantage.  Exhibit A: the above picture (via PoliticsHome) of Cameron’s visit to the Warbutons HQ in Bolton, where the company owner has come out in support of Tory proposals.  It sends the message that Big Business doesn’t just mean the financial services, and a lot of people, in a lot of regions, rely heavily upon it for their livelihoods.  And too right, too.  Expect plenty more like this from the

James Forsyth

Straight out of the Brown textbook

What was probably Brown’s last PMQs performance as Prime Minister was classic Brown. He answered questions that hadn’t been asked, dodged ones that had, rattled off list after list of tractor production figures and mentioned Lord Ashcroft at every opportunity. But, as he has in recent months, he had some one liners to get off including the jab that Cameron ‘was the future once’, an echo of Cameron’s put down of Blair.   But that line couldn’t disguise the fact that Cameron got the better of Brown. Cameron’s speed on his feet just makes him better in this setting. His response to the heckle that the business leader he was

PMQs live blog | 7 April 2010

Stay tuned for live coverage of PMQs. 1200: We’re about to start.  Brown is flanked by Harriet Harman and Jim Murphy.  Douglas Alexander, Alistair Darling and Alan Johnson are also on the front bench.  The heavy hitters are out in force… 1201: And here we go, for what could be Brown’s last ever PMQs as Prime Minister.  He starts, as usual, with condolences for fallen soldiers. 1202: The first question is as plantlike as they come: will Brown take £6 billion “out of the economy”?  Brown spins the usual dividing line about investing in frontline services, adding that the Tories would risk a “double dip” recession.  Hm. 1204: Massive cheer

Goodbye world, see you in a few weeks (for a proper EU dust-up)

With plenty of domestic issues to debate, the election campaign promises to see little intrusion from the outside world – barring Russia invading a small neighbouring country, a terrorist attack or another financial meltdown. Nor will Britain say much to the world in the next couple of weeks; ministers will be be represented at international meetings, for example in NATO, by senior officials, and Britain’s diplomats have been told to keep quiet. As soon as the election is over, however, there will be plenty of action. The Cabinet Office is busy planning a quick update of the National Security Strategy, and then will come a slightly longer Security and Defence

Inauthenticity, meet skewer

We’re not even one day into the election campaign proper, and already the internet is fulfilling its role as the Exposer-in-Chief of spin, deceits and slip-ups aplenty.  I direct you towards Guido’s post on Brown’s – ahem – impromptu support at St Pancras station earlier.  Or Left Foot Forward’s account of the omissions from Cameron’s list of The Great Ignored.  Or Sam Coates’s tweets about the #stagemanagedelection.  And there’s plenty more where they came from. In a campaign where inauthenticity is going to get skewered at every turn, politicians clearly need to go about things differently.  But there are all too many signs that they’re stuck in the old, familiar