Reflections on calls for a leadership electionThe Daily Telegraph reports that up to half-a-dozen Tory MPs have written to Sir Michael Spicer asking for a leadership election. The magic number triggering a ballot is 29. Is the situation as straightforward as everyone is saying today or are there other interpretations?
Greg Hands MP: War in
Last month, our armed forces reached two unlikely milestones. On 12th June, after 2,074 days, the war in
Stephan Shakespeare: The public need to be convinced that changing government is worth the risk
Michael Portillo, who I greatly admire, used his Sunday Times column on the weekend before the Southall and Sedgefield by-elections to call on David Cameron to show more ‘cojones’, reminding him that the ‘half-hearted’ don’t get to the top. He meant that up to now the modernising project had lacked the necessary ruthlessness, and that DC should stop feeding the party’s ‘baying right’.
Where has conservatism gone?
Our party leader promised that 2006 would be a year of transformation for the Tory party. Indeed, eighteen months on the results are spectacular. Mr. Cameron’s search for a ‘modern and compassionate Conservative Party’ has resulted in a palpable loss of party identity and an acrid erosion of time-honoured conservative values. Today it seems that the Tory party can no longer call themselves ‘conservative’ nor that they are ‘right wing’. Instead their political compass is spinning adrift in a
The stamp of moral authority
Our politicians' soundbite on youthful drug use betrays a hopelessly simplistic attitude towards law-making.
Why the cash for honours inquiry is a success
The cash for honours fiasco? A triumph.
The purpose of raising money is to advance a party's political cause. But if you handle donors and donations carelessly you risk damaging the party's cause more than the money secured advances it. In a competitive political system, you won't do this too often. That's why democracy works.
Brown should be fighting the Europeans, not America
When a British prime minister visits a
Trial by media?
Quite a number of those who've responded to my blog on the cash for honours saga have questioned or criticised the media's role in it. Now, the wife of one of those caught up in the police investigation has gone further.
Covered in glory on honours
The Times has the only new information on the cash for honours story. It claims that eight people who loaned Labour large amounts of money were initially put forward for peerages - to some extent reported before - and that a diary entry from one lender recorded an agreement to nominate him. Meanwhile, the Observer quite shamelessly gives the Blairites' side of the story.
Labour’s YouGov lead jumps to 7%
Another big boost to Brown’s Labour comes with a YouGov poll for tomorrow’s Sunday Times showing the party now has a 7% margin. These are the shares compared with the last YouGov poll three weeks ago - CON 33% (-2): LAB 40% (+2): LD 15% (nc).
Was Cameron’s mistake to have even tried?
As we’ve discussed on the previous thread things don’t look too good for the Tory leader, David Cameron, this morning. With two new opinion polls showing Labour in the 40s and reports of Tory MPs wanting a confidence vote this is certainly going to be a period that will test him to the hilt.
What’s the political fall-out from the flooding?
As was seen in the
Clearly what we have had in the
How not to impress as a prime minister in waiting
The likely next Prime Minister of Belgium is Yves Leterme, a Flemish speaker. About 1.18 into the clip below he is asked by a reporter if he can sing La Brabanconne, the Belgian national anthem. He declares that he can, and even those readers with no knowledge of French, and little of national anthems will be struck by what he decides to sing. Anyway, enjoy.
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