By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter. According to Evan Davis and Matthew d'Ancona on the Today programme there's a big debate in the Conservative Party. Some want to take the party back to an old-style Toryism while others – who understand Cameron's failure at the last election – know that modernisation didn't go far enough. […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter. "Conservatives never seem to understand the importance of language as much as their Labour opponents do." So it says at the top of Graeme Archer's latest Telegraph column; "Why the Left is winning the fight over the wrongs of the Human Rights Act". I'm 100% with Graeme on the […]
The headline above comes from a leader in tomorrow's Sunday Telegraph. I know where the SunTel is coming from but let's never forget that Maggie was as much a tactical genius as a conviction politician… She wasn't averse to putting politics first: She accepted Callaghan's pay deals with the public sector that delayed fiscal retrenchment […]
Inspired by the Christian campaign, What Would Jesus Do? the Republicans in America already have What Would Reagan Do? What Would Maggie Do? is a favourite media template at the moment. The Daily Mail uses the 30th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher's election to urge David Cameron to emulate the Iron Lady. Last Saturday Matthew Parris […]
When The Times described David Cameron's Conservative team as "women-free" I called it "unfair". CCHQ went ballistic – seeing it as a dangerous attack on the modernisation agenda. Team Cameron believes that the Tory leader couldn't have worked much harder to promote women into the shadow cabinet, into the House of Lords, into winnable Westminster […]
A year ago the Conservative Spring Forum was in Gateshead. I urged the Tory leader to give a speech that levelled with the British people: "It's time for David Cameron to tell the British people that Britain is going in the wrong direction. He needs to say that we're living beyond our means. We're spending […]
William Hague once promised that New Labour would first be greeted with fascination, then admiration, then disillusionment and finally contempt. Speaking to Tory candidates in Cheltenham (right) he made the strongest and most negative attack on Labour of the Cameron era. He described Labour as the "disgustingly grubbiest" of all administrations of the modern era. […]
Newspaper endorsements are not as valuable as they once were but the editorial endorsements of a newspaper are still actively sought by politicians – not least because they tend to influence the overall news priorities of that newspaper. Over the last 24 hours I've been speaking to journalists within all of Britain's main daily newspapers […]
Peter Oborne writes today that a Tory victory is far from certain. He does not believe that there is yet a groundswell of support for David Cameron in the way there was for Tony Blair in the mid-1990s. He also thinks that the views of many Tories on, for example, fox hunting and the NHS […]
Last Wednesday I asked for ideas for unpopular policies that (a) Britain needed and (b) might, through their authenticity, cause a paradoxical increase in popularity. I've repeated my three unpopular policy suggestions in the list below and have added seven ideas from the comments threads to produce what I've dubbed 'The medicine manifesto'. Swallow the […]
That’s Jenni Russell’s message in her column for The Guardian. She accepts that the Conservatives are almost certain to be Britain’s next government and she encourages the Left to engage with David Cameron and avoid him (a) failing or/and (b) coming under the influence of the dreadful Tory right: "The dominance of the progressive wing […]
Iain Dale wrote a short but exasperated blog post late last night in which he expressed his frustration at the Conservatives’ failure to oppose the Government on two measures yesterday: the part-privatisation of the Post Office and the blocking of the release of Cabinet minutes discussing the decision to go to war in Iraq. On […]
Senior Tories are debating the extent of outreach that should be made to the Liberal Democrats in the event of the Conservatives becoming the governing party at the next General Election. Tory strategists are hopeful that the next election will see the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party significantly reduced in size but they also believe that […]
Most Tory members think David Cameron is too cautious. In this week’s leader (not yet online), The Spectator offers three arguments for believing that the Tory leader might be more radical than some believe: On localism: "The ending of Whitehall capping powers and the introduction of local referendums to enable residents to overturn bad budgets […]
The Sunday Telegraph has the story of Labour’s welfare guru, David Freud, and his journey towards becoming a Tory peer. Fraser Nelson writes (my emphasis): "This gives several deeply encouraging signals. First, Cameron is willing to identify genuine experts: he is serious about reform. The appointment of May had, I confess, led me to question […]