Shadow Europe Minister Graham Brady has become the first shadow minister to resign over policy in the Cameron era. He issued this brief statement: "Faced with a choice between a front bench position that I have loved and doing what I believe to be right for my constituents and for the many hundreds of thousands […]
44.1% should be a chilling statistic for all those Tories who proudly think that Margaret Thatcher transformed the British economy for good. Steadily, stealthily, suffocatingly the transformation is being undone by a massive expansion of the state. Today’s Daily Mail quotes the Centre for Economics and Business Research‘s finding that the British public sector will […]
Channel 4 is currently defying calls from the Conservatives and friends of Princess Diana to axe a programme which contains reportedly graphic images of the Paris car crash that killed her nearly ten years ago. Ed Vaizey MP, our broadcasting spokesman, told ConservativeHome: "We think Channel 4 has crossed a line by showing the inside […]
At the beginning of grammarsgate Graham Brady MP, a former shadow schools minister and now shadow Europe spokesman, wrote an article for the New Statesman in which he explained why he still backed grammar schools. Today’s Times reported that Mr Brady has passed the newspaper data that purports to show "that GCSE results are significantly […]
We learnt yesterday that the Conservatives are considering allowing schools to select by race in order to tackle any problems of racial segregation in ethnically mixed towns and cities. This morning’s Daily Mail quotes David Willetts as saying: "There are parts of England where our towns are divided by race and religion into two very […]
David Gauke is Conservative MP for South West Hertfordshire and a member of the Treasury Select Committee. Has Gordon Brown broken his own rules on statistics? I think he has and I think it is both important and revealing. As with most matters involving the Chancellor, this is a matter of some complexity but, if […]
Earlier this week I called on Liam Fox and David Davis to help sell David Cameron’s modernisation agenda to the right of the party. That is exactly what Dr Fox has done in today’s Sunday Telegraph. Dr Fox believes that the new suite of Tory education policies will "place the power with parents", "kick-start social […]
On the day that it is revealed that John Reid and Tony Blair plan to introduce new stop-and-question powers for the police the Shadow Home Secretary (writing for The Independent on Sunday) documents the extent to which Labour has taken liberties without improving security: Groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Tamil Tigers are unbanned, […]
Throughout the grammar schools debate there has been an underlying suspicion from many that the Eton-educated Tory leader is denying others the kind of elite education that grammar schools traditionally provided poorer parents. A leader in today’s Sunday Telegraph argues that that the idea of a privileged Tory leadership has been reinforced by the last […]
An ICM survey for The Daily Mail confirms a recent YouGov finding that voters do want grammar schools. Although 68% of respondents said that a promise to build a grammar school in every town would make no difference to their voting intention, 21% said that it would make them more likely to vote Conservative and […]
According to today’s Daily Telegraph Alan Johnson wants to compel private schools to lend teaching staff to local comprehensives or risk the loss of their charitable status. The Charities Commission is currently drawing up criteria which will guide private schools in how they should meet the new "public benefit test" that is required of them […]
The headline figures of the latest YouGov/ Telegraph poll (compared to the most recent YouGov survey for the Sunday Times) give the Tories a 6% advantage. Three other important observations from the survey: The Tory rating (5% higher than Thursday’s ICM/ Guardian survey) suggests no immediate electoral damage from grammarsgate; Gordon Brown will be pleased […]
In his article for ConservativeHome this morning William Hague offers a very upbeat review of the grammar schools row. The party’s de facto deputy leader argues that David Cameron’s leadership has been strengthened because of his willingness to face down critics of his policy shift. Mr Hague also believes that the lasting impression on the […]
James, Head of Research at Policy Exchange, offers a conservative perspective on the problems with introducing more academic selection. The grammar school row has at least got people talking about education. There is now broad agreement on the centre-right on many issues: that there should be genuine parental choice where all money – revenue and […]
David Heathcoat-Amory, MP for Wells, worries about the resurrection of the European Union’s constitution. The American Constitution is 15 pages long and every American can recite parts of it. The European Constitution is 511 pages long; unread, unreadable and rejected by the voters of France and Holland. This should have been the end of the […]