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Posts Tagged ‘Conservatives’
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Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010Just what is Liberal Conservatism?
Monday, April 19th, 2010This week is set to be the International week of the 2010 Election campaign. So in theory, we should all understand a little more of what William Hague’s Liberal Conservatism is all about. Ahead of the week I’ve just read the Tory manifesto International affairs section and am still puzzled. I’m hoping, but not expecting a little more clarity during the week.
Rightly, the manifesto identifies that more than ever the interests of nation states are interconnected, economically and politically. But the policy solutions still seem ideologically unclear and unsound.
While the answers to Britain’s domestic challenges are met with a shrink-state response, the manifesto calls for “a concerted response from the state” in its international chapter.
There also seems to be a glaring contradiction in Conservative policy to the European single currency, varying between forthright hostility to a guarantee for the public to have their say:
“a Conservative government would never take the UK into the euro.”
And later “We will ensure that by law no future government can hand over areas of power to the EU or join the Euro without a referendum of the British people.”
Now, I’m not advocating that now is the right time to join the Euro, but a manifesto is always the right time to be clear what your position is.
The document is unclear of what One World Conservatism is or what Liberal Conservatism would achieve. But from the Tories foreign policy record, I don’t relish the prospect of these ideologies guiding British foreign policy.
Let’s not forget these things as we move into the international week of this election David Cameron went on a free trip to South Africa, funded by a lobbying group founded by a former member of the South African military intelligence to bust sanctions against South Africa. Let’s also not forget that when Labour took office our international aid budget was in decline and we where losing a beef war with Europe. And today in the European Parliament, the Tories lose more legislative proposals than the Liberals, Greens and Communists because of Hague and Cameron’s self-imposed exile from the mainstream grouping.
In the week ahead let’s continue to take a long hard look at the Tories and ask Cameron and Hague, just what is your vision for Britain in the world and where would we be if we took your advice?
Tory Manifesto launch: “Do it yourself Government?”
Tuesday, April 13th, 2010
There’s been a flurry of manifestos being launched today – UKIP, Plaid Cymru but the main event was obviously the Conservatives manifesto launch this morning at Battersea Power Station.
As Anthony Painter has pointed out the Tories have form when it comes to Battersea Power Station, broken promises and unfinished enterprises.
As for the manifesto itself, if Labour was supposedly looking towards North Korea for inspiration for its manifesto cover then Cameron was perhaps looking for the Thatcher touch. In hardback and costing £5 from all good stories that would sell such things, the Tory manifesto is a hefty 131-page tome. This is probably where a couple of short videos could have come in handy to explain what the booklet is about!
Don’t worry, you can even listen to audio recordings of it.
If the launch was supposed to convey a vibrant party entering into the election with energy and conviction then, perhaps, having a launch where members of the shadow cabinet were rolled out to individually give their five minute pitch for a Conservative Government was not the best approach. In fact the BBC online seemed to get bored with in and cut the live feed till the Cameron main event. It all seemed a bit 2005, they even continued with then slightly pained ‘rent-a-crowd’ behind Cameron.
Ideas like the National Citizen Service (that will be £800m please) and the marriage tax break plan (but big KC doesn’t seem to think much of it) all point to a party going backwards in order to seem current.
Ok, what about the manifesto itself? Well the big idea is ‘The Big Society’, it is the centrepiece of the Conservatives agenda which underpins all their policies. Except it isn’t very new or very well developed. Sunder over on Labourlist has pointed out that this all sounds less ‘SamCam’ and more blue rinse Thatcher.
The idea is that the Government is going to do less, but you’re going to have to make up the shortfall. If you want a good school, run it yourself. If you want public services, start your own. The Tories seems enamoured with the idea that ordinary people have endless time and resources to invest in the running and providing leadership of services. And it fails to address the key question of what happens if people just decide not to get involved? Or worse?
All the parties talk about localism but the Conservatives are not talking about alternatives, they are talking about substitutes. It isn’t the only place where the policies seem weak. The Conservatives’ politics around democracy and young people look especially lacking when compared to any of the other major parties.
The rest of the manifesto is, as the FT has pointed out, a rehash of previously announced policies:
- Sack your MP. Tories would give power of “recall” to let electors throw out MPs. Parliamentary Privilege Act to stop MPs evading prosecution.
- See how government spends your money. Central government job vacancies to be published online. All major contracts of £25k-plus to be published on line. In local government all items and contracts over £500 to be published.
- Pensioners. A promise to protect the winter fuel payment; free bus passes; free TV licences; disability living allowance and attendance allowance; and the pension credit.
Commentary seems to be lukewarm with Gary Gibbon from Channel 4 asking whether Tories’ manifesto had been designed by Smythson and the Independent rushing to tell us that Keane’s drummer was ‘horrified’ that they had used on their songs as at the launch. The Institute of Fiscal Studies puts a big question mark over the idea that the Tories won’t have to raise taxes and points to the lack of any further detail on their tax and spending plans for the lent hog the Parliament. Interestingly I could find only Johnthan Freedland on the left who seemed to think that Cameron gave a ‘commanding’ performance and ‘beginning to seal the deal’.
But the real question is why is where is the Party really focused (as Sky points out): both Parties are talking up the economy but, for the Tories, if the idea is to do something about the deficit faster and harder than Labour, then why all these whet spending promises?
Lord Kinnock: voters will back experience and continuity like they did in 1992
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010
Last night Lord Kinnock spoke to Oona King, former diversity adviser to the Prime Minister, and the Young Fabians at an event in Portcullis House, Westminster.
Lord Kinnock spoke about a wide range of topics including reflecting on his own experience of the 1992 general election and the parallels with the forthcoming national poll.
In the video above, Lord Kinnock says that he believes as we get closer to the election, voters will back experience and continuity and this make a Labour victory more likely. He also praises the way Gordon Brown handled the economic crisis.
There’s no substitute for policy thinking and campaigning
Friday, March 12th, 2010
As we move closer to election day and the polls begin to tighten one thing is increasingly clear. There is no substitute for good policy thinking. You can spend money on billboards, pollsters, glossy leaflets and even gimmicks, but if you haven’t done the graft and got the ideas and arguments together, you run the risk of the press tearing you apart quicker than voters put the leaflets in the shred pile.
As Labour begins to put the detail on top of the core narrative of securing the recovery, protecting frontline services and building the new industries of the future, we are already starting to see a Tory party run fast out of ideas as well as direction.
For Young Fabians, sometimes unfairly derided as being a little shy to campaign on the ground, this is a time to step in and do some scrutiny of the Tory parties policy and detail. That’s why we’re re launching, Young Fabian Policy News and have included a brand new feature ‘Opposition Policy Watch’ to look at some of the thinking coming from the Tory right and put it to the test.
If you’d like to contribute to future editions of Young Fabian Policy News please get in touch and if you’d like to receive further information from the Young Fabians, you only need to join.
The press are right to say that this election will be a big choice, a big battle of competing ideas and visions. I think Labour has done the thinking and the graft in policy terms, I don’t think that the Tories have and it’s up to all of us to expose that.
But whilst it is true to say that Labour is winning the battle of ideas, we must also win the argument on the doorstep. There is no substitute for hard graft and thinking in the policy sphere, but there is also no substitute for knocking on doors and speaking to voters to communicate those ideas and I know that Young Fabians across the country will be helping Labour campaign on the ground as well as win the battle of ideas.
Politics is about more than promises. But if that’s all you’re offering. My advice is, don’t break them.
Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010
Yesterday’s announcement about Lord Ashcroft confirmed my suspicions in more ways than one. That one of the Tories’ chief donors and strategists is a non dom is hardly surprising. For a decade Tory leader after Tory leader has tied himself in knots trying to protect him. Yet the real indictment of the Tories is not simply that they hid this truth from the public. It’s that they placed a man at the heart of their operation who was happy to shortchange the exchequer at the same time as he pumped money into their key marginals. Flashy leaflets took priority over tax for public services. That says as much about Cameron as it does about Ashcroft himself.
It’s a matter of weeks until the election and David Cameron continues to refuse to put meat on the bones of his plans for the country. His speech to the Tory spring conference yesterday was another example of Cameron’s cynicism. A speech with as much substance as he had notes. He might as well have saved us all the time and simply said, “look at me, I’ve remembered loads!” The first time he did it (according to him that is. He didn’t actually do his 2007 conference speech without notes. They were sitting right in front of him) it was cute. The second time it was just smarmy.
Across the country the public are getting smart to Cameron’s game. A Comres poll in tomorrow’s Independent shows Tory support falling and Labour as the largest party in Parliament. Local people from across Cheltenham have been swamped by Ashcroft leaflets. The Gloucestershire Echo revealed yesterday that Tory HQ have plowed over £30,000 into the town. But residents know that it takes more than expensive design work to win their support. Politics is about more than promises. But if that is all you’re offering and you refuse to outline concrete plans. My advice is, don’t break them.
Grossly disproportionate
Monday, December 21st, 2009
Today politics seemed all rather familiar. Chris Grayling, doing his best William Hague impression (c.1999), announced that a Conservative government would ensure that the law protected those who acted in self-defence when burgled, rather than the “criminals” themselves.
Grayling promised that rules defining appropriate self-defence in instances where one’s home is under attack would be changed. A Conservative government would ensure only “grossly disproportionate” acts are illegal, compared to “unreasonable” acts at present (it is unclear whether this is similar to scrapping NHS targets for “measurable outcomes”, or something more substantial).
The policy announcement was prompted by the case of Munir Hussain, whose acts of self-defence against robbers who tied his family up in their Buckinghamshire home were adjudged to have gone too far.
The danger with political posturing of Grayling’s sort is that it gives too much prominence to the court of public opinion, and relies too much on electoral calculus than on the cold, hard facts of the case. In the Hussain example, his act of self-defence involved chasing the robbers out of his home, down his street and leaving one of the robbers with permanent brain damage as a consequence of a beating with cricket bats.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Hussain, in the heat of the moment, took the law into his own hands. The court decided that, through his actions, Hussain too became a criminal. Arguing, as some have, that it is ridiculous to expect individuals to weigh up whether their acts of self-defence would be considered reasonable in a court of law misses the point of the criminal justice system.
The Judge in the Hussain case recognised that many in Hussain’s position would want to protect their families. But the Judge rightly described his subsequent actions as a “dreadful, violent attack”. Judge Reddihough said:
If persons were permitted to take the law into their own hands and inflict their own instant and violent punishment on an apprehended offender rather than letting justice take its course, then the rule of law and our system of criminal justice, which are the hallmarks of a civilised society, would collapse.
On this issue, the Conservatives must surely be wrong – our laws should only protect victims of crime to the extent they do not use that as an excuse to commit gross acts of violence themselves.
Judge and jury in this example had enough latitude to decide whether Hussain’s actions were reasonable. They thought not. The Judge had some discretion to decide what an appropriate sentence would be. He decided upon a 30-month jail term.
That some politicians disagree – for selfish reasons – with the way a law is interpreted and acted upon should not, of itself, be cause to rewrite it.
(The Times leader and Catherine Bennett in the Observer are worth reading on this.)
Centralised localism
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009“I am a strong localist, for one simple reason. I know that the small, the personal and the local work with the grain of human nature and not against it. But
this is not some romantic attachment to the patterns of our past. Localism holds the key to economic, social and political success in the future.”
David Cameron, Localism Policy Paper
The attempt to deselect Conservative Parliamentary candidate Liz Truss has received a disproportionate amount of media coverage compared to its political significance. In part this is because of our insatiable desire to gossip about people, rather than process, or policy. Scandal, power struggles and personal attacks all characterised an unfortunate episode in the Conservative’s preparations for the next national poll.
Yet the most interesting aspect of the events surrounding the attempt to deslect Liz Truss was not her affair, or Sir Jeremy Bagge’s vitirol. Rather, it was the way the Conservative party entrusts internal decision making to its local parties and how this fits with their commitment to localism.
Cameron rightly believes the candidates representing his party at the next general election should be reflective of the electorate. In practice, this means more women and ethnic minority candidates. Yet it is clear he doesn’t trust his party to deliver that outcome – A-lists and primaries, a novel way of controlling candidate selection from the centre, demonstrate this.
So Cameron is committed to localism. Except when local decision makers cannot be trusted to make the right decisions.
While it is difficult for voters to evaluate opposition proposals in the absence of a clear track record of action, they should look to how Cameron’s team implement localism within their own party as a foretaste of what localism might mean in practice under a Conservative government. Being committed to localism only insofar as it delivers central aims isn’t really localism at all.
“I am a strong localist, for one simple reason. I know that the small, the personal and the local work with the grain of human nature and not against it. But this is not some romantic attachment to the patterns of our past. Localism holds the key to economic, social and political success in the future.”
David Cameron, Conservative Localism Policy Paper
The attempt to deselect Conservative Parliamentary candidate Liz Truss has received a disproportionate amount of media coverage compared to its political significance. In part this is because of our insatiable desire to gossip about people, rather than process, or policy. Scandal, power struggles and personal attacks all characterised an unfortunate episode in the Conservative’s preparations for the next national poll.
Yet the most interesting aspect of the events surrounding the attempt to deslect Liz Truss was not her affair, or Sir Jeremy Bagge’s vitriol. Rather, it was the way the Conservative party entrusts internal decision making to its local parties and how this fits with their commitment to localism.
Cameron rightly believes the candidates representing his party at the next general election should be reflective of the electorate. In practice, this means more women and ethnic minority candidates. Yet it is clear he doesn’t trust his party to deliver that outcome – A-lists and primaries, a novel way of controlling candidate selection from the centre, demonstrate this.
So Cameron is committed to localism. Except when local decision makers cannot be trusted to make the right decisions.
While it is difficult for voters to evaluate opposition proposals in the absence of a clear track record of action, they should look to how Cameron’s team implement localism within their own party as a foretaste of what localism might mean in practice under a Conservative government.
Being committed to localism only insofar as it delivers central aims isn’t really localism at all.
