David cameron

Sunday

Fraser Nelson

Don’t mention the Conservatives

Has somebody stolen the Tory Party? A stranger walking around here would have no idea that its their conference. The word “Conservative” or “Tory” is nowhere to be seen. Just a slogan, “Together in the national interest” – a form of words that Cameron has repeatedly used to describe the coalition. As I say in my News of the World column today, Cameron will this week perform the impossible – to de-Tory the Tory conference and make them love it. There is plenty Tory red meat being served: welfare reform, school reform. It wouldn’t susprise me if an announcement on keeping Trident is made this week. So the activists are

Peter Hoskin

The Coulson story returns (again)

Call it a professional hunch, but I suspect the Tories won’t be too pleased that this Guardian story has come out on the first day of their conference. It’s about Andy Coulson – and, much like the revelations in the New York Times Magazine last month, features one of his former colleagues alleging that Coulson knew all about the telephonic subterfuge going on at the News of the World. That journalist tells Channel 4’s Dispatches that: “Sometimes, they would say: ‘We’ve got a recording’ and Andy would say: ‘OK, bring it into my office and play it to me’ or ‘Bring me, email me a transcript of it.'” It’s evocative

Peter Hoskin

Cameron sets the mood for Birmingham

It’s that time of year again: Conservative Party conference. And with it comes wall-to-wall David Cameron. Our PM has a couple of interviews in the newspapers today and, to accompany them, he slotted in an appearance on the Marr show earlier. In all three, he hops neatly across the all same lily pads – spending cuts, IDS’s historic benefit reforms and the defence budget – making the points and arguments you might expect. Yet two snippets stand out, and are worth pasting into the scrapbook. First, Cameron’s claim on Marr that, “We have got to ask, are there some areas of universal benefits that are no longer affordable?” It may

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Society 3, The State 0

Cameron and Osborne may just be about to pull off something incredible. This time last year, The Spectator ran a cover story about a new proposal which we could revolutionise welfare: the Universal Credit. It was an IDS idea: he’d sweep away all 50-odd benefits, and replace it with a system that ran on a simple principle – if someone did extra work, they’d get to keep most of the money they earned. It meant a bureaucratic overhaul, of a system that controls the lives of 5.9 million people. The resistance from HM Treasury, the architect of the tax credit system, was as fierce as it was predictable. But Clegg

Saturday

James Forsyth

Cameron, more ideological than he appears

The Tory conference in Birmingham is the last big political event before the cuts come. After the 20th, every time a senior Tory appears in public for the next few years they will be about why this or that is being cut. As the row over defence shows, these questions will come from right across the spectrum. For this reason, Simon Schama’s interview with Cameron in today’s FT is probably one of the last that will start with the assumption that Cameron is genial, non-ideological fellow. Once the cuts are happening, it will be harder to cast Cameron as a consensual figure. His edges will appear harder, more defined.  But

David Blackburn

Fox, Osborne and Cameron engaged in Whitehall’s oldest battle

Tory on Tory is a brutal cock-fight when defence is concerned. After the leaking of Liam Fox’s now infamous letter and David Cameron’s measured retaliation, George Osborne has broken his silence. Making unspoken reference to the £38bn black hole in the MoD’s budget, Osborne tells this morning’s Telegraph that he was ‘not thrilled’ to learn of Fox’s ‘do we really want to cut defence this much letter’ and says that Labour left the MoD in ‘chaos’, signing Britain up to ‘expensive and pointless projects’. The press will run this as a conference Tory splits story. There are clear differences between ministers, but they actually reflect entrenched positions within the MoD:

Friday

David Blackburn

IDS the victor?

There are still conflicting reports, but Michael Crick and The Times intimate that a deal has been struck: IDS has beaten the recalcitrant Treasury over his £9bn universal benefit reform, with David Cameron’s express help. As Frank Field put it on Sky News, IDS’ plan is ‘good for the country, good for the taxpayer and good for those dependent on welfare.’ Field gave no clue as to the final outcome of this battle, but victory for IDS would be a crucial moment in public service reform. If Crick and the Times are right then this is obviously fantastic news ahead of the Tory conference, where I feel David Cameron should

David Blackburn

From the archives – Tories go to conference in government

Strange though it seems in hindsight, the Tory party was not uniformly enamoured with Mrs Thatcher in 1979. The Tories were in government, but doubts over her ability to confront a resurgent Labour party, her shaky presentational skills and the direction of her policy pervaded the 1979 conference. David Cameron goes to Birmingham this week pursued by reservation’s persistent hum, and he does not have winner’s rights to rely on. Ferdinand Mount recorded that Mrs T’s wooden speech did not allay concern or win gratitude; will Cameron fare any better? But do they really love her? Ferdinand Mount – 20th October 1979 Hmm. Or rather perhaps, to put it more

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Cameron needs to show that life is better under the Conservatives

The election of a new Labour leader means that proper politics has resumed. David Cameron now knows who he needs to beat to win the next election. As I argue in the magazine this week (subscribers), if the Tories are to secure a majority in 2015, they’ll need to do better among those in households with an income of thirty-odd thousand or so, what pollsters call the C1s. The last time the Tories won outright, they got 52 percent of the C1 vote—more than double Labour’s total. But in 1997, Labor and the Tories split this group evenly. The Tories have never fully recovered from this.  In 2010, the Tories

Thursday

James Forsyth

An example of union hostility against people who want to do their jobs

Amongst BBC political staff, there’s mounting concern about the plans for a strike during Tory conference. One of them said to me at Labour conference that they just didn’t know what to do, they had been put in an impossible position by the decision to call the strike on such politically important days. These journalists fear that striking during Tory conference would undermine the corporation’s reputation for impartiality. So, a whole host of them wrote to their union rep asking him to make representations on their behalf. His reply shows just the level of hostility these people — who are just trying to do their job — are up against:

Peter Hoskin

Cameron road tests his anti-Ed message

After Fern Britton’s triumph over Gordon Brown a couple of years ago, we should know that This Morning interviews can have a certain bite to them. But if you needed more convincing, then how about David Cameron’s appearance on the show this morning? Lurking behind all the talk of baby Florence and the Obamas, was a sprightly discussion of both defence cuts and the new Labour leader. Cameron was combative on both. Most noteworthy were Cameron’s attacks on Ed Miliband. I imagine they will set the template for how the anti-Ed operation is conducted in future. The main aim, it seemed, was to defuse Miliband’s talk of an optimistic New

David Blackburn

Boles’ immigration revolution

Nick Boles’ Which Way’s Up? is gaining a quiet cult following in Westminster, and John Redwood has unearthed Boles’ radical approach to immigration. Boles dissents from the view that happiness in Sweden’s utopia rests on pay equality; he observes that it is a homogenous society that has controlled mass immigration. He writes: ‘We will not be able to sustain a social contract in which schooling and healthcare are provided to all citizens free of charge and are funded by taxation if we continue to allow, every year, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world to join the queues at A and E and send their children to British

David Blackburn

Forget the culprit, the MoD leak suggests that Fox doesn’t have Cameron’s confidence

Liam Fox is sombre rather than sombrero. A man to reckon with, you’d have thought – determined to fight dangerous cuts to Britain’s over-extended defence budget and an apostle of the Tory right. Which makes yesterday’s leak all the more extraordinary. The question is not who leaked this incendiary letter, but why Fox wrote it. The night before an important National Security Council meeting, and Fox has an important point to convey. Why not ring the Prime Minister? Go round to No.10 for chat? He is the Secretary of State, but he has to communicate matters of confidence and competence between himself and the PM with such formality, and in

Wednesday

James Forsyth

Miliband’s dilemma

The day after the leader’s speech is always a slightly flat time at a party conference. But Manchester today feels particularly flat. Everyone knows that the two big political stories are happening down in London: David Miliband’s expected announcement that he is not standing for the shadow Cabinet and the Fox flap. One of the challenges for Ed Miliband is going to be asserting his authority with his parliamentary colleagues, most of whom didn’t vote for him. Added to this is the fact that many of them remember him as a young bag-carrier. Members of the shadow Cabinet were openly mocking his ‘new generation’ line last night. All this is

David Blackburn

David Davis offers his counsel in good faith

From his roost high on the backbenches, David Davis commands a luminescent eminence that he would not have had if he were a frontbencher. And as the current guardian of traditional right-wing Toryism, his words are clear against the often muddy context of coalition. Talking to the Mail’s Andrew Pierce and Amanda Platell, he offers George Osborne and David Cameron some sagacious advice. He joins the chorus, now stalked by Ed Miliband, which urges the government to articulate its growth and recovery rhetoric. ‘We cannot be defined by a purely cuts agenda. If the only message the public takes away from the events of the next few months is one

Fraser Nelson Fraser Nelson

Plugging the leak

So did Liam Fox leak the letter? Only if he is suicidal. He’s been around long enough (having been a frontbencher from the Major years onwards) to know how the game works. Briefing journalists is one thing, leaking a private letter is utterly counterproductive. It will make it harder for him to get the settlement he wants, and it will damage him by making him look as if he were responsible for it. I gather that the MoD is in a state of terror right now, with phone records and emails being trawled to find the guilty party. And whoever did this has such a crude understanding of media spin

Peter Hoskin

Liam Fox does a David Miliband

At least the political fates have a sense of humour. No sooner had David Miliband’s frustration screamed into view last night, than the Tories were hit by a story that was similar in several regards: the leaked Liam Fox letter, expressing his anger over spending cuts. Here are a handful of those similarities: 1) Leakage. David Miliband’s words for Harriet Harman were meant to be for their ears only, but the TV cameras picked them up. Similarly, Fox’s letter was meant to be between him and the PM – but now it’s splashed across the front page of the Telegraph. The only difference is that the Fox letter has been

Tuesday

David Blackburn

Miliband goes Cameron-lite

Well, it turns out that ‘Red Ed’ is really a social conservative. As both Pete and James say, his speech contained notable sallies into Cameroon territory – community and family. He didn’t follow Cameron’s trail to the metre, but fell into many of the same ditches. Two things struck me: 1). Ever the opportunist, Miliband sees that there is the kernel of a good idea at the root of the ‘Big Society’ and tried to exploit Cameron’s inability to present it. Miliband’s gave us the ‘Good Society’, a clear though sanctimonious slogan for community renewal. However, he, like Cameron, can’t define what he means by community. He talked about post

James Forsyth James Forsyth

Miliband produces the bare minimum, but don’t underestimate him

Ed Miliband did what he needed to do. In his speech he needed to show that he was not some demented left-winger, that he was not a tool of the unions and that he appreciates the need for cuts. He did the first bit with his tone. It is very hard to depict someone as dangerously left-wing when they appear thoroughly reasonable. The union test he got through with the line that no one in the Labour party should have any ‘truck with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.’ As one Tory said to me last week, attacking him over being in hock to the unions was never going

David Blackburn

The eagle has landed

Shades of Jack Higgins in Whitehall this morning: the Prime Minister is convening the furtive sounding National Security Council, which will be presented with initial drafts of strategic defence review. As Richard Norton-Taylor puts it, the government has the opportunity to be radical and make this a ‘horse versus tank moment’, which is ironic given that the tank is poised to pass into obsolescence. In truth, the drama is some way off; the government has delayed decisions rather than take them. The nuclear deterrent is not part of the review – the politics and economics of Trident’s replacement proving too contentious for the precious coalition. Personnel cuts are being resisted