Conservative party

#ToryBingo could still benefit the Conservatives

Isabel and Sebastian are right: #ToryBingo is embarrassing. The advert was crass to the point of being idiotic. The use of the word ‘they’ rather than ‘you’ to describe ‘hardworking people’ was sloppy. The episode has taken some of the gloss off an otherwise shiny Budget. It is, emphatically, bad PR. That said; I don’t imagine that the Tories will be too displeased by the furore. #ToryBingo has given a huge amount of exposure to two Budget measures that would otherwise have been buried beneath the pension announcement: the Tories have cut tax on bingo and duty on beer. Neither of those measures is going to turn the next election

Isabel Hardman

Tory Wars: Backbenchers threaten backlash against Shapps backlash

There is a rather furious backlash underway against the backlash that Grant Shapps finds himself in the middle of after his bingo gaffe. Supporters of the Tory Chairman suspect he has been stitched up in some way. I understand that the graphic was emailed out to a number of tweeting MPs who all tweeted it at roughly the same time – Shapps was the first. And as Chairman, he has to take the flak. Others privately suspect that other ministers who are after his job are responsible for briefings such as this one to the Sun that he could lose his job if the Tories take a drubbing in the

Tories: There never was a bingo poster

George Osborne got the front pages he wanted this morning. ‘A budget for Sun readers’ proclaims his target newspaper. But Labour, which doesn’t have very much to say about the Budget, has been celebrating Grant Shapps’ unfortunate infographic which he tweeted last night which takes a rather David Attenborough-style tone when describing what hardworking people like to do in their spare time. ‘Cutting the bingo tax and beer duty to help hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy’ the image says. Labour is delighted and many Tories are horrified. George Osborne has been pressed repeatedly about it on his post-Budget broadcast tour. listen to ‘George Osborne: We’re creating

What I want from the Budget: some conservatism

Budget day tomorrow, and I’m sure many of you will relish the reminder that you are, in George Osborne’s reported view, ‘successful’ because you pay 40p tax band. It’s better than that, in fact. I know of men who ask their partners to make obscene references about their tax contribution during intimate moments, about how they are part of the 15 per cent of taxpayers who are reducing the deficit and making Britain the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Stranger still, Osborne is reported to have said, although he denies everything, that the 40p tax made people more likely to vote Conservative. This is the polar opposite of the truth;

Nick Cohen

Who judges the judges?

I like Jonathan Calvert and Heidi Blake of the Sunday Times. I will not pretend they are anything like close friends or family. I doubt if I see them more than once a year. But before you read any further you should know about our acquaintance. It is important for journalists to declare their interests. Readers must be free to make up their own minds, even if I believe – especially if I believe – that a friendship or family bond could never influence my writing. In a few days, the Sunday Times will apply for the right to appeal against a decision by Mr Justice Tugendhat from July last

Isabel Hardman

Tory leadership rivals may be jumping too early

The Coalition is trying to make today about childcare after announcing plenty of housing initiatives over the weekend. Announcing different policies in a drip-drip in the run-up to the Budget means they get their own limelight – and that’s fine if you’ve got enough left in the larder once the statement itself arrives. George Osborne has learned from the 2012 Budget the art of spinning things out while leaving enough to hand out on the day – particularly giveaways that Sun readers like. But today is also about the frankly weird shenanigans at the top of the Conservative party which continued this morning with Boris Johnson’s father pressing his case

Steerpike

Hold the front page: Anne McIntosh is holding a constituency surgery!

Mr S takes embargos very seriously. He respects the convention. An embargo is sacred. Yet the news that Anne McIntosh MP is holding a constituency surgery is so momentous that it took every ounce of my integrity not to share it with you before the appointed time this morning. Most ordinary MPs don’t embargo news of their surgeries. These events happen every week, more or less; they ought not to be newsworthy. But McIntosh is extraordinary. Readers may recall that McIntosh, the Tory MP for Thirsk and Malton, has not been re-selected by her association. The Spectator’s Martin Vander Weyer, a member of the association, wrote an account of the row.

Exclusive: PM vents fury at Gove for interview on Etonians

Unsurprisingly, Michael Gove’s FT interview in which he attacked the ‘preposterous’ number of Old Etonians around David Cameron – widely interpreted as a sally on behalf of George Osborne – has gone down like a lead balloon with the Prime Minister. I understand that Cameron had a stern word with the Education Secretary over the weekend, with one source telling me that ‘he was torn a new one and given a right royal bollocking’. Cameron has made it very clear to Gove that his words were ‘bang out of order’ and that his aim is to focus on the Cabinet job in hand, not go on freelance missions. Meanwhile, those

Isabel Hardman

Ken Clarke: We don’t need treaty change to reform Europe, and my eurosceptic colleagues are eccentric

Tory europhiles don’t often come out in the daylight: they normally give the impression they’re frightened that their associations will get grumpy, or that their fellow MPs will try to shout them down. But today the pro-EU group European Mainstream launched their new pamphlet, In Our Interest: Britain with Europe, which takes a stance that is quite unusual in the Conservative party: it agrees with the Prime Minister’s Europe strategy. The 62 MPs on the group – who include Ken Clarke, Damian Green, Richard Benyon and Caroline Spelman – didn’t seem at all shifty or nervous when they gathered in Westminster Hall this afternoon to launch the pamphlet and make

Isabel Hardman

Why no Tory can lecture another on leadership challenges

The continued speculation about who in the Conservative party is putting the most effort into preparing their leadership hat to throw into the currently non-existent ring is quite amusing. But it also means that those involved will struggle to have such a moral high ground when they need to lecture backbench colleagues for getting overexcited about potty-sounding leadership challenges after the European elections. Boris and George Osborne may be engaged in a strange fight about who is gaining the most currency with backbenchers so that they’re in the best possible position post-Cameron, while backbench unrest will be focused on Cameron’s own position. But the problem with this hysteria, where the

Melanie McDonagh

David Davis should be in Cabinet – or at least in government

Class never quite goes away as an issue for the Tories, for the simple and sufficient reason that it matters. Lately it was Michael Gove stating the obvious, that the Prime Minister mixes mostly with people with backgrounds like his own…a perfectly human impulse, but not a good look, the Old Etonian coterie. Now David Davis has observed (on the radio) over the weekend, as John Major did last year, that it’s much harder than it was when he was growing up for a working class boy to get ahead in the world. Mr Davis is a product of a Tooting grammar school, a route that’s now closed, but it wasn’t just

George Osborne readies his tax dividing line

George Osborne was on Andrew Marr this morning announcing support for a new garden city at Ebbsfleet in Kent and the extension of Help to Buy on new build homes until 2020. The Tories hope that these policies will show both that they are planning for the long term and that they are supporting aspiration. But what struck me as most significant was Osborne’s response when told by Marr that he was sounding more like a Liberal Democrat than a Conservative. He instantly replied, ‘Conservatives believe in lower taxes, Liberal Democrats want to put taxes up.’ We already know that Osborne believes that the rest of the deficit can be

Polling worries for Miliband – and for Cameron

There’s been much hullaballoo this afternoon over a Populus poll that shows a Labour lead of one point. The usual caveats apply (it’s just one poll!); but, nevertheless, this sample adds to the sense that Ed Miliband is in difficulty. There is, incidentally, only 419 days to go until election day. If the Populus poll was disappointing, then this projection compiled by Stephen Fisher of Oxford University could have Miliband reaching for the scotch: ‘Forecast Election Day Seats: Con : 307 Lab : 285 LD  : 31 Con largest party, but short of a majority by 19’ A dismal prospect for Labour; but there are also worries for the Tories because they are

Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and the return of Tory wars

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_13_March_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth discusses Gove vs Boris” startat=722] Listen [/audioplayer]From the moment he took his job, Michael Gove knew that he would make energetic and determined enemies. The teachers’ unions, local councillors and even his own department all stood to lose from his reforms — and all could be expected to resist them. What the Education Secretary did not expect was hostile fire from those who should be his friends. At the start of the coalition, Gove and Nick Clegg were allies. With a moral passion rarely seen in British politics, they used to argue that social mobility should be the centrepiece of the government’s reform agenda. Two years ago,

Podcast: Gove’s last stand, the march of the dog police and the future of conservatism in America

Why is Michael Gove under attack from his coalition partners, his own party and numerous enemies? On this week’s View from 22 podcast, Toby Young, James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson ask whether the Education Secretary’s attitude and policies are his own undoing. Is he, as Anthony Horowitz describes in this week’s magazine, an unsettling character who is too abrasive in his approach to reforming education? Which of Gove’s friends are out to get him? Should he be worried about the threat from Boris Johnson? Are we witnessing a return of the Tory wars? And is Rupert Murdoch involved? James Delingpole and Freddy Gray ask if conservatism is in a better

Renewal offers a vision for a Tory workers’ budget

How can the Tory party broaden its appeal? Renewal, a group founded to do just that offered its answer at a packed Westminster pub yesterday evening. With just eight days to George Osborne’s 2014 budget, Robert Halfon MP and Renewal’s David Skelton offered their vision of a ‘workers’ budget for the Workers’ Party.’ Arguing that ‘what happened in Scotland [to the Conservative party] is slowly happening in the North’, Halfon outlined why he believes the Conservative Party needs to change its narrative, mission and structures to go beyond its traditional reach, particularly with working class and ethnic minority voters. Firstly, to address the Conservative party’s lack of a ‘moral mission’,

Ed West

‘Almost a conservative’ – in praise of Bob Crow, 1961-2014

Very sad to hear of Bob Crow’s death. Doubtless his erstwhile political opponents will be falling over themselves to say that he will be ‘sadly missed’. But I’ve admired him for a while. He was in many ways the last of a breed: a union leader feared by the government. I used to share the view held by all floppy-haired men in pink shirts, that  Crow was basically a thug holding London to ransom by demanding absurdly high salaries for Tube drivers; blokes who just sit there pushing a button while we hard-up arts graduates slave away for much less money. Plus there’s the fact that he lived in social

What’s next for Tim Montgomerie?

Normally, we wouldn’t blog about a journalist moving jobs — but Tim Montgomerie is an exception. He is an actor in, not just an observer of, Britain’s political drama which is why it’s significant that he has decided to step down as opinion editor of The Times, to do other things (as yet undefined). Normally, ‘do other things’ is a euphemism – but in Tim’s case, it fits a pattern. He is a serial political entrepreneur, an ex-Iain Duncan Smith staffer who set up ConservativeHome website, and the Centre for Social Justice think tank and can be found behind various other projects (PoliticsHome, 18 Doughty Street TV, and others). A

Iain Duncan Smith ties himself into universal knots over welfare reform

Will Universal Credit ever become universal and will the lowest paid still face an effective tax rate of a sometimes outrageous 76 per cent? Iain Duncan Smith took a grilling over his plans for welfare reform on the Sunday Politics today, but didn’t give a clear answer to either of these questions regarding his reforms. Firstly, on the progress of implementing Universal Credit, the Work and Pensions Secretary claimed that ‘Universal Credit is already rolling out and the IT is working’, despite just 6,000 people currently on the ‘Pathfinder’ stage. In his initial plans, a million people claiming six existing working-age benefits were due to be on the Pathfinder stage by