Currently our 5 most commented posts are:
- Platform 10 backs Obama for President
8 January 2008, 09:56:38
15 comments | Author of this post: Matt Stockwell
Voting today will go along way to decide the two main candidates for the 44thpresident. McCain and Obama are narrowly the favourites in their races. With George Bush’s terrible poll ratings Republican candidates will have a hard time to win the White House and with the Democratic race creating more of the buzz it will be easier for Obama or Hillary to “be the change”.
The Republicans are a shadow of their former coalition because of a mishandled war and intellectual exhaustion on domestic issues.
There are three touchstone issues with their respective wings in the party; Iraq/Iran – Neoconservatives; abortion – religious-conservatives and tax cuts – fiscal-conservatives.
Frustratingly the Republican shadow is what matters in the primaries and the candidates have rushed to the right. The main candidates all have similar policies on the touchstone issues.
These issues has led to Bush’s unpopularity. Yet what would be the repercussions of another Republican presidency? A Middle East or terrorist “incident” that led to a Republican candidate scaring American’s into thinking a Democrat will not protect them (not so far fetched when either a black man or woman will be nominated) could lead to a Republican president.
Why do all the candidates support “strict constructionalist” judges which will overturnRoe V Wade given the declining influence of the religious right? Why do all the candidates support the war in Iraq given it and the neoconservatives has been discredited and made America more vulnerable? Why do all the candidates support (income) tax cuts when the argument could be made for budget deficit reduction?
Parties always pander during the primaries and tack back for the election. But after eight long years of George Bush “the change”, long overdue, looks like it will have to be a Democrat. John McCain, my preferred candidate, has agreed to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent – after being an eloquent opponent. Still the other options are less promising, Romney has flip flopped Kerry style, Giuliani has a dubious judge of character and Huckabee’s moral beliefs are unpalatable. McCain with his foreign policy experience is the most formidable candidate. His bold stance on immigration offers hope that he can make the tough calls which are right.
But I hope Obama wins today and in November and if he does I think President Bartlett and President Palmer will have played a part in the final result. Obama anti-war from the start can bury Vietnam once and for all. His unifying stance and relentless focus on hope, optimism and change even when flagging in the polls shows he has the mettle and hopefully the vision thing. Finally a black man with a Muslim (agnostic) father who spent four years growing up in Indonesia is the only plausible candidate who could win hearts and minds on the “war on terror”.
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- Beyond The Debate On All Women Shortlists. Making The Conservative Party The Embodiment Of Social Mobility
21 October 2009, 11:59:21
13 comments | Author of this post: David Skelton
Certain elements of the blogosphere have gone into predictable tumult over David Cameron’s announcement regarding all women shortlists. Fiona and Joanne Cash have made the counter-point very well – that for all the talk of meritocracy and localism (both of which I’m an enormously strong believer in), women candidates haven’t been playing on a level playing field. Despite the A-List and other reforms introduced since David Cameron’s election, local Associations have clearly not gone far enough towards selecting able women. All too often, local associations have tended to select people who represent an image of a Conservative MP – male, public school educated, married, middle aged – rather than being truly representative of either their constituency or modern Britain.
However, it isn’t my intention to use this post to rehearse arguments that have been made very well elsewhere. I do believe, though, that a lot of the debate about equality misses some fundamental points. Although it is right that we need desperately need more female and BME MPs in the party to increase our representativeness of society, we need to guard against what I would describe as a superficial approach to equality. It is all well and good having a shortlist of six women or six BME candidates, but if all the women went to Cheltenham Ladies College and all the BME candidates went to Harrow does that really make us more representative? Does that really make us more in touch with black youths in the inner cities and the marginalised white working class?
An issue we really need to address, which goes beyond the discussion of All Women Shortlists, is illuminated by a startling statistic. 7% of young people go to independent schools, 93% are state educated. Compare this to the fact that 60% of Conservative MPs are privately educated, with this set to fall to 52% in the next Parliament. This is illustrated below:
It actually amazes me that, at the same time as discussion has raged about All Women Shortlists we haven’t had more discussion aimed at ensuring that we are more representative of the nation in terms of background.
I have said many times that achieving social mobility should be a real priority of the next Conservative Government. The failure, documented in Alan Milburn’s excellent report on Public Access To The Professions, of the Government regarding social mobility is one of their most lamentable failures in office. We were right to point out how outrageous it was that people from independent schools were so over-represented throughout the professions. I pointed out that the extreme social exclusivity of the professions and also the top universities is not acceptable in modern Britain. We are right in calling for the professions to be more representative of modern Britain. We also need our Party to be much more representative of modern Britain. We must make our Party the embodiment of the socially mobile, representative, meritocratic Britain that we want to see.
We are right to prioritise social mobility. But we must ensure that the Conservative Party is the embodiment of social mobility in action. We must ensure that our Parliamentary Party embodies the career open to talent and is truly representative of modern Britain.
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- I’m interviewing David Cameron
10 February 2010, 15:43:34
12 comments | Author of this post: Fiona Melville
Tomorrow I’m interviewing David Cameron about the election for a blogging special in a magazine. We have already set most of the questions but is there anything you’d like to ask him? Let me know.
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- The Case For Ken
11 January 2009, 17:04:06
11 comments | Author of this post: Disraeli
Mr Montgomerie and his friends over at Conservative Home have got a real bee in their bonnet at the moment over the potential return to the front bench of Ken Clarke. When not busy openly undermining the Party Chairman, Con Home seems to be repeatedly rehashing “the case against” a return to the Shadow Cabinet for one of the most formidable figures of his political generation. I fundamentally disagree with them about Ken. I also have to wonder at the temerity of Conservative Home to think that they can dictate who should and shouldn’t be in the Shadow Cabinet. That is the business of nobody but the Party Leader.
Today, Con Home have yet another article about a potential return for Ken, including tiresomely predictable reservations from the likes of Tebbit and Wheeler as though they were mind blowing pieces of new evidence that might have got Woodward and Bernstein excited. The same piece also attempts to pour cold water on a survey of grassroots opinion conducted by, you guessed it, Conservative Home, that supported the return of Clarke. Con Home argues that Clarke is “disloyal” – which is a tad rich coming from the blog that is openly disloyal to the Party Chairman and founded by the man who advised IDS – one of the most disruptive influences to the Major Government. The second charge is that his pro European views would make his elevation to the Shadow Cabinet unacceptable. Of course, that second point is only the case if we adopt the same dash for ideological purity that made us unacceptable to the majority of the electorate for much of the past ten years. Are we the broad church that made us the most phenomenal election winning machine of the 20th Century or should we be, as Montgomerie seems to wish, some kind of 21st Century version of the Jacobin Club?
Of course, whether to restore Ken Clarke to the Shadow Cabinet is entirely up to the Party Leader and this blog would not have the impertinence to push the Leader in one direction or another. Nevertheless, there are some very persuasive and powerful arguments for a return to the front bench of Ken Clarke.
Firstly, he remains one of our most formidable performers. When I speak to members of the public; leaders in business; and work colleagues, most of whom are Conservative minded, they all express their support for a bigger role for Ken. He comes over superbly on TV and on the radio; is a superb debater in the House (one of the few Parliamentarians for whom the bars still empty when he makes a speech); and has a wonderful habit of tearing apart Brown’s Government and it’s tattered claims to economic competence piece by piece.
After George Osborne, Clarke is by our most convincing voice on the economy – reminding people that we gave Gordon Brown a golden legacy, which he has fatally undermined. When you ask the question, will the addition to our team of one of our strongest performers in the House and on the media strengthen or weaken the team the only answer is that it will be strengthen by the addition.
Of course, the thorny issue of Europe always rears its ugly head. But Ken is an experienced politician. He knows that joining the Shadow Cabinet would mean toeing the Party line on every issue, including Europe. There is no reason to suggest that he would not be prepared to do this. What he does on the backbenches is quite different to what he would do if part of a Shadow Cabinet and bound by the collective responsibility that entails.
Don’t forget the fundamental point that we have been making on this blog for some time – in order to win, we need to convince the British people that we are a Party of Government, genuinely ready for the challenges entailed by that. Nobody would remind the British people of our seriousness as a Party and our ability to step into Government as much as Ken Clarke.
These are serious times. Gordon Brown’s casual destruction of the economy is threatening the livelihoods of so many British workers and their families. During these times, we need to utilise all of our strongest weapons. Ken Clarke is undoubtedly one of those weapons. It is up to us as a Party whether we put the internecine disputes of more than a decade ago to one side and go forward as a united force to victory. The hard right ultras need to make a choice between ideological purity and Government. I hope for the sake of the Party and the country that they choose the latter.
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- The Reinvention of British Conservatism
5 August 2010, 10:20:50
11 comments | Author of this post: Betapolitics
The other day a friend who was over from the US asked me: “What’s the story with this new British Conservatism?” Here is my interpretation of our recent history.
The Nasty Party
For close to twenty years the British Conservative Party was tainted by being tagged as the ‘Nasty Party’. The Tories had a “nasty, narrow” image and appeared to be “unrepentant and unattractive”. This harsh assessment was offered up by the then Conservative Chairman at the 2002 party conference. Three big defeats at the polls between 1997 and 2005 proved that the party, which had traditionally viewed itself as being the natural party of government, was no longer connecting with the values of the British people.
The Conservative Party had become a narrow echo-chamber populated by people who were more interested in venting their spleen. It rejected the notion of creating a policy agenda which evolved with society. The 1997, 2001 and 2005 election campaigns were driven by doomsday scenarios and negative messages. There was a distinct lack of desire to embrace the place Britain had become, and as a result, the Tories could not present an uplifting vision for where the country should go next.
Cameron’s arrival
The old instinct of prioritising the need to win power kicked-in at the end of 2005. The Conservative members picked a fresh-faced leader, David Cameron, who was untainted by their previous stretch in government. The party gave him the mandate, and responsibility, of re-energising and re-orientating British Conservative politics. When accepting this challenge, Mr Cameron signalled his intention to modernise the Tories by saying, “I love this country as it is, not as it was”.
Promoting values for everyone
In politics there is an important difference between promoting values and making moral judgements. Pre-Cameron, the Conservatives had the reputation of being castigators of single mothers, scolders of homosexuals and neglecters of the poor. Modern Conservatives have exchanged these judgement-driven attacks for promoting long-tested values in a language that resonates in the current climate. The fundamental principle is that good values and the benefits which flow from them should be accessible to everyone. Strong families, however they are constructed, are important for a stable society which is why gay couples who enter into civil partnerships should be entitled to the same benefits as those in heterosexual marriage. Conservatives should not blindly reject the fact that government has a key role to play in shaping society. Having a positive attitude to what the state can do does not automatically translate to giving handouts; instead the public sector can foster a better environment by giving people responsibility through devolving resources to those who need – or want to – help.
Broadening the message and the messengers
The Winston Churchill quote: “A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject” is a good description of the Tory party from the late 90s onwards. The Conservatives were seemingly obsessed by two subjects, integration into the European Union and immigration, at a time when the public’s primary concerns were the economy, education and health. One of Mr Cameron’s first acts as leader was to head off to the Arctic and ride with huskies, putting the environmental agenda at the centre of the party’s platform. The none too subtle message to voters, and just as importantly party members, was that the Conservatives had changed and were in touch with modern concerns. Cameron and his team developed a set of positions to show everyone how modern Conservatism would manifest itself. This included giving decision making powers over the use of resources to locals, promising to protect the National Health Service budget and linking fiscal discipline with creating a stable, sustainable and productive economy.
Political parties that want to win national elections should resemble the nation. If when a political movement looks in the mirror all it can see is one segment of society staring back at them then they have to recognise that they will find it harder to change society as a whole. In 2005 only 9% of Conservative members of Parliament were woman, 98% were white and 60% were educated at private schools. This situation was viewed as being unacceptable by the leadership. To rectify this, the apparently very unconservative method of positive discrimination was introduced into the parliamentary selection process, to the uproar of many grassroots members. Changing the composition gave the Conservatives an opportunity to show that the party was changing by diversifying its face. Of course, the great irony here is that Mr Cameron and many of his tem arrived in Parliament from privileged backgrounds, having attended some of Britain’s most exclusive schools.
A successful transformation?
Different people/groups have differing views as to what success looks like. David Cameron is now Prime Minister, but as the Conservatives failed to win a majority of parliamentary seats he leads a Government containing members from another party. Is there a desirable Conservative influence on the way Britain is governed? That is a whole other conservation, but what is not in doubt is that the Conservative party needed to change to become, once again, a relevant force in Britain.
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