Politics is about more than promises. But if that’s all you’re offering. My advice is, don’t break them.

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

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

“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.