David Cameron put climate change at the heart of his campaign to transform and modernise the Conservative Party. I don’t doubt his personal commitment or that of many other Ministers and MPs. However the same cannot be said for the entire Conservative Parliamentary Party, with a significant number of climate change sceptics on both front and backbenches.
 
Not long before the General Election, TimMontgomerie, a former CCHQ staffer and editor of the influential website Conservative Home, suggested that “80-90 per cent” of my party are “just not signed up” to the climate change agenda. His comments were backed up by a poll of Conservative candidates in the 250 most winnable seats conducted through his website before the election. Candidates were asked to rank 19 different policy priorities in order of importance. Britain’s carbon footprint came bottom.
 
It may sometimes be effective to shift the focus of the argument. Those who are sceptical about climate change and the need to cut GHG emissions may still accept theoverriding need for more investment in energy efficiency, thedesirability of new nuclear power stations and even of some forms of renewable energy because both help to cut our dependence on imported oil and gas. The dangers of being vulnerable to the whims of volatile foreign regimes that may not always be friendly unites climate change sceptics and enthusiastic greens alike.
 
We must persuade the public that it is in Britain’s economic interests to move to a low carbon economy faster than other countries, not least to give us a competitive edge. This will not be easy, but if the carbon price rises substantially as the world economy recovers and other nations get tougher with emitters, then we will have a very significant advantage if we have already invested in low carbon electricity generating capacity, low emission transport infrastructure and environmentally-friendly buildings.
Low carbon products and services will be a growth market in the medium to long term, as trends in the car industry already show.
 
Now is the time to invest in research and development of the products and services that will be in demand as the low carbon revolution takes place. Clean coal in particular offers immense international potential, and the Government should continue to prioritise the demonstration of carbon capture and storage.
 
The EU has a role to play in the big picture. If aligned with either China or India, it would easily outweigh America on the global stage. Imagine a common EU/China or EU/India standard for electricity generation or for buildings. The rest of the world would have to pay attention. Of course the EU’s approach to these issues may at present be poles apart from both China and India, but it must be worth at least exploring the possible benefits of bilateral agreements with those countries even if initially such agreements were only voluntary.
 
David Cameron is inheriting a far more difficult and complex situation than anyone foresaw. When that iconic photograph was taken of him dog sledding in Norway, en route to view the retreating icebergs, nobody had any idea of the looming global financial meltdown. His green enthusiasm in the early days of his leadership proved how the Conservatives had changed but those were very different times.
 
Nonetheless there is no going back now. One measure by which his Government will be judged is whether it accelerates the transformation of Britain to a low carbon economy.

Posted by Administrator on behalf of Tim Yeo MP. Tim is MP for South Suffolk, and chairman of the Energy and Climate Change Select Committee.

The full pamphlet, Green Gold, can be downloaded from the Tory Reform Group

Two weeks ago, the Queen undertook a week-long homecoming to Canada.  On the 1^st of July, she and the Duke of Edinburgh were in the nation’s capital to celebrate Dominion Day, marking 143 years since the enactment of the British North America Act and Canadian Confederation.

Yet the United Kingdom and Canada have more in common than Queen Elizabeth II and constitutional monarchy:  the rule of law, parliamentary government, and inter-twined histories are just a few political realities shared by these two Commonwealth members (and countless others).  Both countries are also witness to the successful exploits of One Nation Tory politics – ‘progressive conservatism’ – of which the Victorian prime ministers, Benjamin Disraeli and Sir John A. Macdonald, were master practitioners.

The monarch, serving in Walter Bagehot’s ‘dignified capacity’, is above the hurly-burly of partisan politics, and offers to all parties the benefit of its accumulated wisdom, signified by its prerogatives rights to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn.  ‘The nation is divided into parties, but the crown is of no party.’  Nevertheless, the monarchy represents two ideals that have especial resonance for progressive conservatism:  limited government and the obligatory State.

Limited government, as historians will attest, is predominantly a Whig tenet.  But when the alternative on the political spectrum is the all-encompassing State, setting limits to legitimate government becomes no less a conservative principle, too.  King Louis XIV is rumoured to have boasted, ‘L’état, c’est moi’, setting up visions of material and financial rapacious as the ends of absolute monarchy, though this is not necessarily the case, according to Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Professor Hoppe is a libertarian economist (or ‘anarcho-capitalist’) and, true, if he had his druthers, there would be no State at all, but simply free people co-operating voluntarily amongst themselves.  That being said, he believes that monarchical government has a valuable lesson to teach democracies:  ‘if one has to choose between two evils, a monarchical state or a democratic state, then monarchies have certain advantages.’

Because everybody knew I cannot become a king, there was resistance against attempts on the part of kings to increase taxes and to increase exploitation of their subjects.  Under democracy, the illusion arises that we all rule ourselves even though it should be perfectly clear, of course, that also under a democracy there exists rulers and people who are ruled.  But because of the fact that everybody can potentially become a public employee, the illusion of “we rule ourselves” arises and this then leads to a reduction of the resistance that existed vis-à-vis kings when it came to the attempt of increasing tax revenue.

A king sits on the throne with only the impediments of old age to curtail the longevity of his reign; he views public lands as personal property, to be passed on to his heirs, and tends it with care and with an eye for its future prosperity.  Likewise, his subjects, knowing that they will never directly partake of the royal bounty, are jealous of their own property rights.  A relationship of mutual (if wary) respect is established, which is reflected in restricted policies of appropriation and aggression:  an overzealous king must always fear the loss of popular support and ensuing revolution.  Monarchy thus inculcates, after its own fashion, the conservative beliefs in personal freedom, property ownership, and the modest State.

In a democracy, however, the tension between rulers and ruled is weakened, since it is widely held that ‘we are the government’.  The limited government that constitutes the relationship of king and people morphs into the unlimited government of citizen legislators. Elected officials, holding office for the short-term—and with no concern for the circumstances of their political successors—more readily spend for immediate public gratification (and sometimes for the benefit of their associates and hangers-on).  Furthermore, according to public choice theory, these leaders are more apt to spend on initiatives that will help them get re-elected.  Citizens, meanwhile, who see themselves as possible office holders themselves one day, are less jealous in defending their rights.  As many public works will benefit them, and with the tax burden spread among many, democratic welfare programmes are welcomed.  Funding concerns are left to another day.  Bagehot, in words that predate Hoppe, believed the Crown could provide a salutary counterweight:

But a wise and great constitutional monarch attempts no such vanities. His career is not in the air; he labours in the world of sober fact; he deals with schemes which can be effected – schemes which are desirable—schemes which are worth the cost.

These are the dangers of atrophied accountability and the evils of expanded government, that centuries of royal rule and experience can teach modern democratic States—but these lessons are wholly of a negative character:  a caution against democratic government encroaching upon our rights.  A more positive libertarian approach to the monarchy is to emphasis our natural rights as individuals, which no authority, royal or democratic, can morally infringe. ‘Governments are instituted among Men,’ in Jefferson’s immortal Declaration, ‘deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed’.  This is the truest sense of equality under the law.  As Seán Cronin argued in ‘A Libertarian Defence of the Monarchy’:

But the most important, if least tangible benefit of a constitutional Monarchy, is that if forces [the First Minister] to refer to himself as ‘Her Majesty’s Prime Minister’.  He is Her Majesty’s servant, and not just him but all politicians.  The constant reminder that there is someone set above them, that they serve someone else, must have a salutary effect on the most arrogant mind.  It is true that these are only symbolic words, and real power lies with the Prime Minister—as is perfectly proper, because we exert some control at least over his excesses.  But anyone who doubts the importance of symbolic words in politics is ignoring the reality of what is, in favour of what they believe should be. [...] Better for my freedom, and yours, that our Head of State be a constitutional Monarch, able to rein in politicians but not to reign politically, than the alternative.

Admittedly, the United Kingdom and Canada are both constitutional monarchies, yet each has seen exploding deficits and crippling debt accumulation—where is the royal reproach when we need it?  Obviously, the virtues of limited government need additional proponents than the example set by the monarchical model.  Still, the relationship between the Crown and the premier is a symbol of the limits of power—whether exercised by the Crown or its ministers—a lesson not to be forgotten by prime ministers in relation to their cabinets and backbenchers, and duplicated by governments toward the people.

This is the conservative element in royalty and politics.

The Crown also serves as a symbol of the obligatory State.  What do I mean by the obligatory State?  Libertarians, as exemplified by Professor Hoppe, view the State as a coercive institution, compelling people through its laws and tax policies to redistribute property from those who generate wealth to those who don’t.  True concern for the least advantaged, they argue, is exemplified by voluntary charity, given freely and without force.

Under the obligatory State, however, our natural relations, arising from time immemorial—‘no man is an island’—are understood as embodying more than the voluntary associations of civil society, as valuable as they are.  As members of society we have obligations that transcend the here-and-now.  ‘As the ends of such a partnership cannot be maintained in many generations,’ insisted Edmund Burke, ‘it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.’

Classical liberals, for instance, make the case that it is quite legitimate to pool our resources to pay for security services (domestic and foreign) and to establish a legal system.  Yet if it’s permissible to establish government services in these affairs, why not go a step further to support community initiatives, as well?  Why be bound by arbitrary definitions of State action?  Why not progress to a more inclusive, more organic, point of view?

The question of the degree of government support will always arise, and it is important to remain vigilant about the insidious growth of welfare statism—ever mindful to resist majority tyranny over the minority—but that is no reason to spurn using the levers of government altogether to achieve community-approved goals.  Even Simon Heffer, a Gladstonian liberal, advances a template of government activity that hews fairly closely to the One Nation Tory vision:

The state’s functions, in a compassionate and ordered society, can be confined to relatively few things.  It should protect the public with a police force and armed services.  It should provide education and health care, while perhaps finding ways to incentivise people to use non-state provision wherever possible.  It should give the support that the elderly and the disabled require to live with dignity.  It should see that public hygiene and essential infrastructure are maintained; and that’s about it. This requires a revolution in our way of viewing the state’s relationship with us.

The Monarchy, in addition to its own charitable causes, patronises voluntary organisations and honours those selfless volunteers who give of their time and skills for the public welfare.  And as Head of State, the Crown sanctions those government activities that aim to help the young, the aged, and the disadvantaged.  These are obligations we owe to each other as inter-dependent citizens, obligations that are beyond the finite abilities or comprehension of civil society—obligations that are as ageless as civil society itself—which, as the overseers of government, we direct our elected representatives to undertake on our behalf.

This is the progressive element in royalty and politics.

In British political history, the monarchy has deep and long-lasting roots—a tradition that spread throughout the Commonwealth and is nowhere more evident than in Canada.  The Tory tradition, too, is strong in both countries.  Together, the Crown and Conservatism stand for government limited to its proper sphere, in service to the people who are its governors; at the same time, the monarch and the Conservative party are proof that government has a legitimate role in offering progressive legislation that aids and embodies society’s aspirations for the Common Good.

Our Queen’s presence in Canada to celebrate Dominion Day is an opportunity to remember our continuing blessing under the Crown and our glorious progressive conservative legacy.

Vivent la reine et le pays du Canada!

Stephen MacLean’s research website is focussed on Organic Toryism

The sun was shining in Liverpool for the NHS Confederation Conference last week but inside the conference centre clouds gathered as NHS managers congregated to review the issues of the day. Dark mutterings of discontent could be heard in the corridors and seminars about the prospects of managing cost and efficiencies and in particular the removal of commissioning from Primary Care Trusts, the Confederation’s main constituency, to GPs – regarded by some as the biggest fly in the ointment of efficient and cost effective distribution of care.

Attention focussed on the arrival of the new Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley, the purveyor of the unwelcome reform and shortly of a controversial strategic White Paper which is to set out the transferral of some £60- 80 billion pounds to GPs control and said by one ‘unnamed’ yet ‘senior’ Department of Health source to herald the end of the age of PCT autonomy. Besides being a surprise to many commentators, who believed that the freedom given to PCTs under the Labour Government would be continued or even extended under the Coalition, the policy raises as many questions as it answers with details of the practicalities and process of reform remaining unclear.  In the absence of clear information, an air of panic prevailed as delegates attending discussions expressed doubt that a cooperative relationship between primary and acute care could be continued and asked whether they would be wise to jump ship from PCTs before it was too late.

The press presence at this year’s conference was unusually high for what was otherwise agreed to be a relatively low key event and it promised to be an intriguing show-down as Andrew Lansley faced a sceptical crowd. Mr Lansley had made an uncertain visit last year shortly after deviating from Conservative Party policy on Departmental spending and someone was heard to remark that he might bring a bodyguard and leave his car running for this year’s speech – given the likely hostility of his audience.

In the end, Mr Lansley’s speech was deemed by many to be underwhelming and uninformative. He was clearly keen to win over the delegates, who refrained from heckling but made their feelings clear by grumbling to themselves and roundly applauding those questioners who expressed their doubt about the direction and feasibility of his plans.

No one left the conference much clearer on the implications for PCTs or the wider NHS although they were soon greeted with the news that the Treasury are reluctant to give Lansley the GP money after all – which did not surprise the assembled health commentators and gifted the Opposition health spokesman, and former darling of the NHS Confederation, Andy Burnham, with a wonderful opportunity to pitch in and help boost his profile ahead of the forthcoming Labour leadership election.

Overall, however, the Treasury’s decision didn’t make the delegates much happier as, whatever the outcome of the White Paper, they know they will face competing demands to cut costs whilst remaining flexible enough to accommodate a new system which may threaten their existence. It is clear that Andrew Lansley already faces a battle to keep the NHS workforce onside, from executive level through to the grass roots, and the success of any reforms depends on their cooperation and agreement. In the end, his more detailed proposals may not meet with as much opposition as he faces now and there are many elements – GP consortia for example – who will view it as an interesting opportunity. But for now, in the shadow of a Budget of heavy cuts, it is the lack of information and the fear of being thrust into ill-thought out and articulated reform that is as much a factor in the anger of NHS managers as any.

Posted by Administrator on behalf of Isabella Sharp

David T Breaker expands on his conversation with Betapolitics

Nick (@Betapolitics) blogged on these pages earlier about his recent Twitter discussion with me (@Davidtbreaker) regarding the “living wage”, and how these internal party discussions show that coalitions are nothing new. On this point I very much whole-heartedly agree; we are the party of Disraeli and Thatcher, Heath and Churchill, but all are held together by the common bond of an over-arching umbrella of conservatism, an impossible to precisely define world view that works remarkably well as a governing philosophy.

I must however disagree that there is “a tug-of-war going on between economic liberal Thatcherites and the socially orientated Disraelite brigade…[over] where Conservative priorities should be, in fostering a Big Society or promoting small government?” I feel particularly strongly on this issue because, generally, I’m part of both so called factions – an economic libertarian cheerleader for the Hilton/Letwin Californian style of thinking, a believer in a small state and a big society. Neither being economically liberal nor being a Disraelite are mutually exclusive; indeed a big society needs a small state, and a small state needs a big society.

The living wage argument is a case in point.

Advocates of the Living Wage assert that there is a moral, social and economic case for a Living Wage set by Government to increase the living standards of the low paid. Unfortunately life isn’t that simple. Increasing minimum wage levels increase the costs of employing staff, reduces demand for labour and leaves more people out of work. That is no way to run a country.

That doesn’t however mean that there isn’t a case for improving the living standards of the low paid – because there is – it just isn’t an arbitrary, flat, labour demand reducing wages policy diktat.

If Conservatives are genuinely keen on improving living standards we must use conservative means rooted in economic reality to achieve our social ends. We may share desired intentions with it, but the Living Wage is a simplistic socialist means to those ends. A simple socialist means best left to simple socialists.

The liberal-conservative way to increase wages is the market – indeed it is the only way to genuinely do so – and comes in a three pronged attack. Increasing the demand for labour, reducing the tax burden on low income earners, and reforming welfare.

Tax reform could boost labour demand by abolishing Employer National Insurance Contributions – reducing real wage bills, making the UK more competitive – whilst manufacturing could be boosted further by shifting the tax burden from production (paid only by firms manufacturing in the UK) to sales (paid fairly by UK and foreign firms). Increasing demand for labour through a thriving economy – facilitated by this kind of low tax, deregulated, pro-enterprise free market – and also reducing the labour supply through controlled immigration, is the genuine way to increase pay. It’s supply and demand. Take home pay could be further boosted by cutting Employee NIC, increasing income tax thresholds and lowering rates.

There are then conservative means to increase the incomes of the low paid beyond the market. Welfare reform to make work pay, perhaps topping up wages of the low paid, or perhaps – more radical yet – a Negative Income Tax.

My point, I guess, is that the conservatives are united in our aims. What we mustn’t let happen is allow issues such as the Living Wage tear us apart by conflating means and ends. And as for those such as myself more rooted in economic liberalism, we need to start promoting economic liberalism as a means to social ends.

David T Breaker blogs at www.davidbreaker.com as well as ConservativeHome, and is @Davidtbreaker on Twitter.

At the age of five I learned to mix colours with my poster paints.  I was not the world’s greatest artist – to be honest my greatest creation at that age was something I called “Modern Art Slosh”!  However, I did begin to learn about colours and that if I mixed blue and yellow together I would get green.

That early lesson has stood me in good stead – and not least politically.

Green is not only the environmental “colour du jour” but is the colour of balance and equilibrium.  It is no coincidence that operating theatres – an area of high stress where calm and order needs to prevail – are often green.

There is no doubting the stressful and combative environment prevailing in Westminster politics – the seating which reflects its adversarial “cockpit” nature as opposed to the consensual politics symbolised by the hemicycles in Strasbourg and Brussels is testament to that.

On May 6^th the British public delivered their verdict in the latest contest (perhaps the last) to take place under that adversarial “first-past-the-post” system.  They judged that despite the fact they were heartily sick of the last thirteen years of Socialist incompetence and arrogance, they did not wish one Party to completely rule the roost.  They yearned for a more “grown-up” form of politics where legislators would need to consult, debate and negotiate terms in order to produce new solutions to some new and some very old challenges – fixing our Broken Society and our Wrecked Economy prime amongst them.

I have been a Conservative since the late 1970s – I joined the Party to campaign for Margaret Thatcher and see a woman Prime Minister elected for the first time in the history of our country.  Thatcher was the right woman for the time – she transformed Britain and pushed back the power of the State.  She gave people control over their own lives by buying their own homes.  She curbed the power of the mighty Trade Unions.

However, Thatcherism outgrew itself.  It became hard, authoritarian and intolerant.  A gentler Conservatism was needed.  The mid-90s were an unhappy time despite the vastly under-estimated John Major being at the helm.  In-fighting almost destroyed our Great Party and in 1997 came our Nemesis in the form of Tony Blair.

It was clear that the people did not want unreconstructed right-wing Tories.  Our name was – frankly – “mud”.  It was considered eccentric, strange and deeply “uncool” to vote Conservative.  Despite the best efforts of the Party under William Hague (who had yet to grow into the mature statesman that he is today), 2001 saw little improvement and even in 2005 under Michael Howard, the mountain still proved insurmountable despite the very real progress made in terms of seats won back.

Those of use on the modernising wing of the Party had been looking for a Champion and we found it in 2005 in the shape of David Cameron.  Since that time he has “detoxified the brand” beyond all expectations.  Moderate, compassionate, empathetic – yet tough when needing to be – he is not afraid to take difficult decisions and to upset some in the Party occasionally…..

I am delighted that we now have a Coalition Government – an anti-Socialist alliance of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.  I am optimistic about the future provided that we can face down the “naysayers” and the wreckers from both the Left and Right.

I am convinced that with Blue and Yellow mixed together, a very real Green balance can be achieved.

Posted by Administrator on behalf of Sally Roberts