By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter Here is something that’s become clearer today: the Leveson Report will mean a tricky game of Parliamentary politics for David Cameron. There are — as a comparison of the letter signed by 42 Tory parliamentarians last night with the one signed by 42 Tory MPs a few weeks ago suggests […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter David Cameron began the EU budget summit with two aims. To avoid being blamed for any budget settlement by his Euro-sceptic rebel backbenchers, who would have been satisfied with nothing less than both a smaller budget and a cut in Britain's contribution – neither of which were on, let […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter One of the most intriguing stories in today’s papers comes courtesy of the Mail on Sunday. George Osborne, it tells us, has drawn up a plan with Nick Clegg: in return for Lib Dem support for a benefits freeze, there could be new council tax bands imposed on homes worth […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Conventional wisdom is that elections are won from the centre. That image naturally leads to debate about where "the centre ground might be", and whether the image works in the first place: are elections really won in a centre ground or in a common ground? Centre-right commentators such as […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter There’s no denying it, this morning’s Guardian story about Chris Heaton-Harris is an embarrassing one for the Conservative Party — and a troublesome one for David Cameron. Mr Heaton-Harris, who is the Tory campaign manager in Corby, was recorded suggesting that he encouraged the writer and anti-wind farm campaigner James […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter Forget the huskies — computers were a considerably more important part of the early Cameron leadership. The man himself could barely stop talking about them, about the Internet, about data and technology. And much of this fell under the banner of the Post-Bureaucratic Age, the idea that ordinary citizens, armed […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter We shouldn’t overstate the overlap between American politics and our own, but some lessons can still be wrung from the campaign that ended with Barack Obama’s victory last night. Here, briefly, are five for British Conservatives, although you might care to add more: i) Demographic change means that parties ought […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter Boris having a dig, even just a friendly dig, at the Tory leadership? We’ve seen that a thousand times. But the Tory leadership having a dig at Boris? That’s a rarer species altogether, so it’s worth pasting into our collective scrapbook. Here, as recorded in today’s Times (£), is what […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter The last Tory manifesto made much of what it called “collaborative democracy” — pushing power away from Westminster and towards the public, whether to individuals or to local communities. This restless form of localism was also an area of easy overlap with the Liberal Democrats. And so a great deal […]
Here's a paradox for you: The more rightwing that some rightwingers get, the more like a bunch of lefties they behave. Thus, once upon a time, it was only leftwingers who were hung-up about tests of ideological purity. But, these days, one only has to declare one’s belief in the reality of climate change, for example, to be […]
Iain Anderson is co-founder of Cicero Group and is an expert in global political risk and economic public policy issues. He was worked for a range of Conservative policymakers. He writes in a personal capacity. Follow Iain on Twitter. Commentary on the state of the Government – and Conservative fortunes within it – is starting to […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter Yesterday, in PMQs, David Cameron announced that “we will be legislating so that energy companies have to give the lowest tariff to their customers.” It was an announcement that made, for instance, the front cover of today’s Times. Industry spokespeople described it as a “big moment”. Except there’s a problem, […]
By Peter HoskinFollow Peter on Twitter “I’m going to continue to lobby for a long-overdue solution to our aviation problem,” said Boris at ConHome’s rally in his honour last week, “but no one as a result of that has any cause to doubt my admiration for David Cameron.” Jogging through this morning’s newspapers, I wonder whether […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter How to be successful on Twitter Anyone who cares to can have their own definition of how to be successful on Twitter. Mine is: the writer's tweets must give a sense of his personality. You must get more across to your audience via the vast broadcast system that is […]
Who said the Germans don’t have a sense of humour? Here, for instance, is an in-depth report from Spiegel Online on the prospect of a British exit from the EU, which contains one entire joke: “When then-President Charles de Gaulle blocked England's accession to the European Economic Community, one of the precursors to the EU, […]