Conservative party

The Conservative party has never come third in a nationwide election. But as today’s YouGov poll in The Sun shows, they are on course to be beaten into third place by Ukip in the European elections: Now, European elections are normally an after-thought in British politics. As even David Cameron admits, most of us can’t remember who our MEPs are and almost two-thirds of us don’t bother to vote for them. But as I say in the column this week, coming third behind Ukip will send the Tory party into a panic. In the weeks after the result, there’ll be calls for an electoral pact with Nigel Farage and his

If I was going to measure possible reasons to desert the Tories at the next election, and I can think of a couple, plans to concrete over the countryside would score pretty highly. As a theoretical idea about something happening miles away from my home it almost makes me want to write letters to the Telegraph; if it were in my backyard I’d be shaking my fist at passing traffic or whatever people in the countryside do when they’re angry. This is moderately dangerous to the party, because what’s different now to, say, five years ago is that disaffected shire Tories have a plausible alternative to turn to, one that isn’t

The Conservative debate about the minimum wage continues today, with campaign group Renewal pushing for an increase, at least in line with inflation. Renewal is launching an interesting agenda today aimed at making capitalism work for groups who currently feel it fails them, such as the low paid and those living in deindustrialised towns in northern England. The group’s work, ‘Renewing Capitalism’, is supported by Robert Halfon, the Tory MP who is always trying to work out ways of broadening the Conservative appeal. He says: ‘It was a big mistake for the Conservative party to oppose the minimum wage. We must right that wrong by at least increasing it in

The Chancellor is scaring the horses up in Brum with his ‘hard truths’ speech on the economy. Meanwhile, the troops in Westminster have that ‘back to school’ feeling. Mr Steerpike has been asking Conservative MPs, ranging from loyalists to rebels and from old timers to young scamps, for their New Year predictions. Many of the answers followed a similar theme. ‘UKIP will wipe the floor with everyone in the European elections, followed by a wide ranging ministerial reshuffle which doesn’t include me afterwards,’ said one noisy backbencher. This feeling was echoed by one junior government figure: ‘Big changes to Cabinet in early spring, poll lead by mid-year and minority Tory

When pressed for a statement of their beliefs, conservatives give ironical or evasive answers: beliefs are what the others have, the ones who have confounded politics with religion, as socialists and anarchists do. This is unfortunate, because conservatism is a genuine, if unsystematic, philosophy, and it deserves to be stated, especially at a time like the present, when the future of our nation is in doubt. Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state is not an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to

David Cameron’s New Year message (and his accompanying Times op-ed) is an upbeat call to stick with the Tories to get the job done. He writes of his desire to ‘turn Britain into the flagship post-Great Recession success story. A country that is on the rise’. And in his video message he focuses on the signs that the country is already rising. Downing Street is keen to stress that this message is no Blair/Brown-style relaunch of the government with a shiny new logo and a plan. It is the Prime Minister trying to encourage optimism about Britain’s best days lying ahead of it, but that ‘recovery is real, but it’s

For the Conservative party, 2013 has been the year of Lynton Crosby. Just over a year ago, the Wizard of Oz was appointed David Cameron’s chief election strategist. Now he’s full-time. His brief is to make sure the Tories in government have a clear message – something that eluded them in the 2010 campaign. And to see that the message is articulated in deeds, not words. In April, the Prime Minister described his own strategy by using a quote from the late Keith Joseph: ‘the right thing to do is to address the things people care about; to fix yourself firmly in what Keith Joseph called the “common ground” of

The Sun on Sunday’s story this morning that senior Tories have opened talks with Boris Johnson about a campaigning role for the Mayor follows some advice offered by James Forsyth in the pages of this magazine back in May. In his politics column, James argued that Boris needed a role in the 2015 campaign to reach voters who might otherwise be turned off by the Tories: ‘Persuading the public that Labour can’t be trusted with office again is necessary but not sufficient. To achieve victory, the Tories must connect with the electorate in a way that they are currently not. That means Cameron finding a role for Boris; he’d be

After a seasonal interlude, rival Tories are back to doing what they do best: warring over the heart and soul of the party. In the cuddly corner, we have Bright Blue; a think tank of hoody-huggers who are imploring the PM to be nice to immigrants. The Guardian has been purring with approval since Bright Blue’s director Ryan Shorthouse ‘specifically called for the Tory Party to adopt a Liberal-Conservative manifesto for the election’: ‘At the moment, the messaging is quite negative and uninspiring – it’s not enough to win voters and gain momentum. We need to be more inspiring and bigger picture than that and we need a positive vision, not

In the latest episode of Tea at 22, I interviewed Conservative business and energy minister Michael Fallon on his work in two Whitehall departments, Tory EU policy, and the party’s approach to Ukip. Fallon was the Spectator’s Minister of the Year for 2013. He had some very interesting points about how the Business department in particular might look different under a Tory majority government, suggesting that the Lib Dems had held the Tories back in getting more young people into work. Asked whether the Lib Dems had left the labour market rather more gummed up than the Tories would like, Fallon said: ‘Yes we would certainly have liked to have