David cameron

Saturday

Daniel Korski

The problem with using soldiers to advance women’s rights

Mariella Frostrup, fresh from interviewing Nick Clegg in Cheltenham, writes about women’s rights in Afghanistan in The Times (£). Her pithily-titled piece — “Women’s rights in, before troops out” — makes the case that British forces cannot withdraw from, and the government should give no development assistance to, a country where the plight of women is so terrible and declining. It is hard not to sympathise with Frostrup’s point. During my own time in Kabul I witnessed plenty of examples of female subjugation, and was glad the West was present to help address some of these problems. Western policymakers were, at the time, eager to portray the entire mission as

Friday

Daniel Korski

Commercial quandary

Britain’s diplomacy needs to help British business. The Prime Minister made this clear soon after the coalition was formed and William Hague has followed up, reorganising the Foreign Office and putting commercial diplomacy at the top of the agenda. To some, this risked making diplomats into salesmen and there was even dark talk of “mercantilism”. Both criticisms were far off the mark – there is nothing mercantilist in trying to help British businesses. A year in, however, the policy is facing a number of other, more fundamental challenges. First, the government’s main vehicle for this policy – well-publicised, prime minister-led trade delegations – has faced criticism from a number of

Thursday

Ed Howker

The Winter Fuel Allowance is indefensible

Freed from the shackles of elected office, Steve Norris remains an electrifying speaker. He is also refreshingly honest. So, when I met the 66-year-old former mayoral candidate at a Tory conference fringe on the future of London, he was only too happy to admit how spent his Winter Fuel Allowance: “I’m amazed by the Chancellor’s annual gift. I spend it on Claret,” he said. In fact, he said that when paid to the wealthy, the allowance is “a complete waste of money” and “a bribe to older voters”. I mention this only because the Allowance was referred to again in a different context this week: during David Cameron’s own address.

James Forsyth James Forsyth

The Cabinet cat-flap continues

The Ken Clarke and Theresa May cat-flap has sparked up again this morning, with the Justice Secretary accusing the Home Secretary of using “laughable child-like examples” to attack the Human Right Act. In some ways, it’s hard to take a political row about a cat particularly seriously. But this back and forth between May and Clarke is actually exposing something very important: the Liberal Democrats are not the only brake on Tory radicalism. At the moment, lots of Tory ministers – up to and including the Prime Minister – like to imply that they’d be doing far more on Europe, immigration and the Human Rights Act if it wasn’t for

Will Straw

Another voice: Five lessons from Conservative party conference

Here’s the latest in our Another Voice series of posts, which give prominence to viewpoints outside the normal Coffee House fold. This time it’s the IPPR’s Associate Director, Will Straw, with his five-point take on the fringe events of Tory conference, and the lessons that might be learned from them: 1. The Tories know that winning a working majority in 2015 is no easy task. The most popular fringe event according to Fringelist.com was ConservativeHome’s event on ‘How the Conservatives can win the next election.’ Reflecting his remarks from the panel, YouGov’s Stephan Shakespeare wrote yesterday that, “today’s electoral maths makes an overall a majority a mountain to climb”.  

David Blackburn

What did Fleet Street make of Cameron’s speech?

Not a lot is the short answer. Many commentators argue that the speech failed to match the gravity of this moment in time; that it was safe; that it was not prime ministerial. Steve Richards believes that Cameron was timid, choosing to reassure rather than challenge. He writes: ‘Yesterday in his address David Cameron did Ed Miliband an unlikely favour. He made Miliband’s seem deeper and substantial. The Labour leader’s address last week was poorly structured and delivered, yet compared with Cameron’s it had an argument and was at least an attempt to address the scale of tumultuous change sweeping across Britain. In contrast Cameron’s speech was a giddying guided tour

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Cameron does enough

There were three big themes to David Cameron’s speech. The first was that decline is not inevitable, an attempt to tackle the mood of pessimism that is gripping the nation. The second was an attempt to reassert the Conservatives’ compassionate credentials, hence the emphasis on how the Liberal Democrats would have cut the NHS and the section explaining why conservatives should support gay marriage. The third was leadership, Cameron’s biggest advantage over the other party leaders. The attack on the idea of Britain’s decline being inevitable was powerful in places. But because Cameron has a non-ideological approach to growth it is hard for him to make a stirring argument about

Peter Hoskin

Cameron’s leadership pitch

Leadership, leadership, leadership. You couldn’t miss it. Leadership wasn’t just the clearest theme of David Cameron’s speech to the Tory conference just now, but also one of its most common words. By my count, it popped up around 30 times. “I’m proud to lead this party,” he said in the very first paragraph. “It is leadership we need,” he continued. The aim, I’m sure, was to paint an even stronger contrast between David Cameron the Prime Minister and Ed Miliband the Sub-Prime Ministerial. But Cameron wasn’t just talking about his own leadership. As he put it himself, “success will come: with the right ideas, the right approach, the right leadership. Leadership

Douglas Murray

Why conservatives should welcome gay marriage

David Cameron just told the Tory conference that he supported gay marriage “because I am a Conservative”. In last week’s issue of the Spectator, Douglas Murray said that the best arguments in favour of gay marriage are conservative ones. For the benefit of CoffeeHousers, here is Douglas’s piece. In America a new generation of Republicans is challenging the traditional consensus of their party on gay marriage. They — as well as some of the GOP old guard like Dick Cheney — are coming out in favour. In Britain the subject is also back on the agenda with the coalition government, at the insistence of the Prime Minister apparently, planning a ‘public consultation’

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Explaining Cameron’s debt u-turn

“Millionaire David Cameron wants you to pay off your credit card – are you going to obey the Prime Minister?” asked one local BBC radio station phone-in this morning. This is not what No. 10 had in mind when releasing selective quotes from his speech last night. “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills.” This line in his speech is now being rapidly rewritten – and for good reason. Because the Prime Minister was in danger of making a major mistake.   The premise of the

James Forsyth James Forsyth

An order or a description?

The hours before David Cameron’s speech have been filled by a row about the pre-briefed line that: “The only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households – all of us – paying off the credit card and store card bills.” This was taken by several papers as the Prime Minister instructing people to pay off their credit cards bill now, something that would have reduced the prospects for growth even further. So, the line has now been changed to show that Cameron is just describing what’s going on. It is all mildly embarrassing. But this little flurry can’t disguise the fact that

David Blackburn

Cameron wants to offer the “right” leadership

As flat as flat champagne — that’s the verdict on this year’s Tory conference, which is ironic given that the two year ban on champagne was lifted this year. Bruce Anderson argues that the dour atmosphere is intentional. These are serious times for sombre politics, not the frivolity occasioned by a conference at a seaside resort. David Cameron’s first objective, Bruce says, is to reassure the country and present himself as a leader for a crisis. Cameron’s conference speech has been widely trailed by most news outlets this morning. Tim Montgomerie has a comprehensive overview of the speech. Cameron’s first challenge is to emote: these are “anxious times” for ordinary

David Blackburn

Grieve tucks into May

A fringe debate on the Human Rights Act hosted by the Tory Reform Group might not have been a crowd puller. But yesterday’s feline foul-up and the presence of Attorney General Dominic Grieve, a firm advocate of human rights, ensured the event was a sell-out. If Grieve had been advised against deepening internal animosity on the ‘cat flap’ furore, he ignored the direction. The TRG’s Egremont blog quotes Grieve as saying: “We need to have a rational debate. We must be more productive than just going for the ‘meow’ factor.” Then he added: “The judicial interpretation and case workload of the European Court ought to be a concern for the UK and other

Tuesday

Peter Hoskin

Gove: the Tories are the party of state schooling

Apologies for my recent, extended absence, CoffeeHousers — Vietnam and my immune system just didn’t get on. But I’m back now, and firmly embedded in Manchester, where Michael Gove has just given his address to the Tory conference. Although, I must say, “address” doesn’t really cover it. This was more a political variety show, short on new policy (because Gove’s existing policy is going quite well enough, thank you very much), and big on spectacle and optimism. It started off with a video conversation between Gove and David Cameron, who was in a local school that is on the verge of becoming an academy. There was nothing surprising in what

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Good Boris

Boris Johnson must be one of the very few politicians in the world to make the audience laugh before they even start their speech. Just by walking on stage, he has the effect of a good comedian: the punters start to smile, in anticipation of some good one-liners. In today’s case, Boris got a standing ovation before he opened his mouth. Here is the man judged by Ladbrokes as the most likely next Conservative leader, but he had not come to stir. The Prime Minister – who lavished praise on the Mayor last night – was in the hall. It was all Big Society (BoJo division): affordable housing and a reprise of

David Blackburn

The human rights smokescreen

Today’s papers resound with the news that Theresa May is resisting Liberal Democrat opposition to close the loophole over the “right to family life”, Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. This change, it is argued, will ensure that foreign criminals are deported so that the courts protect, as David Cameron put it, “the United Kingdom”.  The announcement is a carefully choreographed step to differentiate the Tories from the Liberal Democrats. Dr Evan Harris, the self-anointed king of the Lib Dems in exile, told the BBC this morning: ‘It’s actually a useful tool because it enables Nick Clegg to say the Human Rights Act (HRA) is here to say

David Blackburn

What Fleet Street made of Osborne’s speech

The abiding image of this conference may be the sight of Steve Hilton apparently shepherding the turbulent Andrew Tyrie into a booth, from which Tyrie emerged singing George Osborne’s praises. “A huge step forward…you can some consistencies,” he said, which was an endorsement of sorts. What did everyone else make of it? As you can see, David Cameron looked morose at times, but the mood in the hall oscillated between sobriety and quiet optimism, matching Osborne’s blend of austerity and promise for the future. Fleet Street is similarly conflicted: no paper gives him an unqualified endorsement, but no paper entirely rubbishes him either. The Times concludes (£), as Tyrie did on Saturday,

Sunday

James Forsyth

Hague does his leader’s bidding

William Hague’s speech to conference today wasn’t the barn-burner of years past. It did include some jabs at Balls and Miliband. Hague joked that “their shadow Chancellor was Gordon Brown’s right hand man. And their leader was right hand man to the right hand man.”  But the overall tone was serious. Politically, two things struck me as significant about the speech. First, Hague showed how determined the Tories are to play the Cameron card. The speech ended with a long tribute to the Prime Minister which called him “the leader for a better future”. The Tories are convinced that of the three party leaders, Cameron is the only one who

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron’s tricky interview

In a surprisingly testy interview on the Andrew Marr show, David Cameron defended the government’s approach to Europe, the economy and planning. But before the interview really got going, Cameron had to reiterate his Sunday Times’ apology (£) to women for the patronising comments he has made in the Commons chamber. This is hardly an ideal start to conference for a party leader who is struggling to maintain female support. On the Eurozone, Cameron was blunt that its problems were a threat to “the British economy and the world economy”. He also risked a clash with Nicolas Sarkozy by demanding that “action needs to be taken in the coming weeks to