I struggle to understand why environmental politics are traditionally regarded as left-wing.  They are not.  The environment is the only place that we have.  The place where we live matters to us; in our local communities and in the wider world.  It is all about respect and stewardship.

Disputes about the science of manmade climate change may be rife, but they are entirely irrelevant.  It might be suggested that only a brave or very foolish person (or a publicity-seeker) would take issue with the consensual opinion of the world’s leading scientists – but in the end this too is irrelevant.

The point is this:  waste of any kind is a bad thing, so we must stop wasting energy, food and material resources.  Fossil fuels are finite, so we must find ways of being less dependent upon them, and sooner rather than later.  Natural resources are limited, not limitless as we in the West have implicitly regarded them for two-hundred years, so we must start trying to obey the laws of Nature.  If Nature goes bust, there will be no bail out.

Conservative-minded people can embrace our current environmental challenges wholeheartedly, passionately and with every confidence in a right of centre political inheritance and vision.

We believe in the merits of order and security: two benefits of civilisation, which are threatened by environmental disruption and the pressure of global population growth.

We recognise the responsibility of stewardship.  We respect the past, and hold the present in trust for future generations.  As Margaret Thatcher said: “Mankind has no freehold on the Earth, only a full repairing lease.”  We need to look after the place where we, and all other creatures, live; not just for ourselves but for those who will come after us.

We understand the need for global action and diplomacy in order to ensure advantages at home and around the world.  In world affairs the conservative approach is pragmatic rather than ideological.

We believe that local actions, in our own communities, rather than Big Government initiatives, can help make changes for the better. The environment is both local and global, and a passion for local solutions can help build and strengthen our communities.

Finally, the conservative understands that whilst politicians have a vitally important role in shaping the framework for action on green issues, only the market can deliver the results.   The paradox is inescapable; it was the power of the market which, through driving unsustainable growth, created the problems mankind now faces. But it now offers the only sure way out of them.

Meeting the various challenges presented by environmental pressures is already creating huge market opportunities for those with the vision, technology and access to capital to seize them. According to HSBC, global turnover in low carbon goods and services last year overtook the value of the defence and aerospace industries. This is no cottage industry.

An unhelpful tendency exists to lecture people on the need for “behavioural change”. Of course those who have made changes in the way that they live in order to reduce their impact on natural resources should be applauded; people who, for example, have determined to drive less, recycle more, buy ethically sourced products, install micro-renewable energy systems, or switch off the lights when leaving a room. I have tried most of these things myself; but we are part of a small minority which has, by and large, made a deliberate political or social choice.

Human behaviour will only naturally change on the massive scale required when change is cheaper or more convenient than sticking with the status quo. Most people don’t want to make deliberate political or social choices; and why should they? It’s what they elect politicians to do. If heroes are to emerge from the battle to manage and defeat environmental damage they will not be eco-warriors, but engineers, physicists, designers, inventors and entrepreneurs. The true friends of the Earth are gradually emerging, and they are not those who spend their time screaming at the capitalist system. They are those who respect our duty of stewardship over the natural environment we have inherited, and embrace capitalism as the most powerful tool for change on the planet.

You can visit the CEN’s website or join their Facebook group

What do the Tories stand for? The charge that the Conservatives have not made clear what they stand for has been slowly gathering momentum ironically ever since the Conservatives started their ‘one a week’ policy series. Right wing commentators who are fearful that a Cameron Conservative government will not govern in an appropriately conservative enough way have fanned this criticism. A few weeks ago Simon Heffer clarified this view when writing “the problem for the Tories is this, succinctly put to me by a close observer to the party of the day: if you board a bus anywhere in these islands, sat down next to a passenger at random and asked what it stood for, he or she could not tell you”. This got me thinking. Does Simon Heffer ever use public transport? Who is this sage observer who bothers random people on buses? Is the assertion true? I grabbed my Oyster card and went to the bus stop. In the interests of polling methodology I should reveal that I live what Alistair Campbell may describe as a ‘bog-standard’ middle-class London lifestyle.

I won’t lie to you. At first I was a bit apprehensive about approaching people, but I was glad to find that most people do not mind being asked about their opinions. The instant response was ‘umm not sure’ which was then followed by an opinion of what the Conservatives stood for. The two most popular answers were that the Tories would:

• Cut the deficit
• Promote the family

A couple of people said that they would protect the interests of the rich and one lady said she was not sure but they had to be better than the current lot so she would vote for them anyway.

It is only fair that I answer my own question. For me the Conservatives stand for opportunity, which they will facilitate through governing by trust. A Conservative Government will trust local groups to decide what needs doing and how plans should be executed. Labour’s obsession with mechanical control has been both expensive and stifling. It has lead to the ID card debacle; massive increase in state monitoring and situations such as a 64.4% increase in NHS managers. The Conservatives will also focus on the important task of regaining the public’s trust in politicians and Government. This will be done through the transparency agenda, which will allow people greater choice in deciding how politicians should be accountable.

Since I started my little experiment there has been a media frenzy over the Tory poll-acoaster. Most pundits have been asking the question ‘Why are the Conservatives slipping?’ and then answering their own question by saying ‘I told you so, you’re not the right type of Conservative’. This sort of analysis loses sight of the bigger picture. For me the real question should be ‘Why were the Tories so far ahead in the first place?’. This election is the antithesis of 1997. The electorate is not in the mood to place the same amount of trust and hope in our elected representatives as they did with Tony Blair in the great political love-in of 1997. There is an underlying feeling that no prospective government should be given an easy ride or have its promises taken at face value. The people I spoke to could tell me what the Conservatives stood for but this was not the same as them believing that the Tories would make a positive difference. It seems to be that the deal can only really be sealed once a new Government has proved that they are governing in a new way. Many people will enter the voting booths begrudgingly. This will lead to certain amount of electoral volatility, which will manifest itself in some odd results. The polls should be taken with a pinch of salt, and should not distract us from working hard to promote the benefits of a Conservative government.

My conclusion after a week on the bus is that this country is complex. It is full of people with differing needs and beliefs. While a couple of consistent themes did emerge no one gave me exactly the same answer (apart from the two people who looked at me as if I was a madman before declining to answer). The truth is that the question Simon Heffer poses does not have a single right answer. The Conservative party itself is a complex coalition which contains people who can both strongly agree and disagree with each other depending on the issue being debated. What I hope we can all agree on is that the future of this country is best served by electing the strongest possible Conservative Government. The rights and wrongs of certain policies can be discussed after 6 May. As Tim Montgomerie puts it “this election isn’t a choice between a perfect Conservative Party and an imperfect Conservative Party but between a strong government led by David Cameron and the chaos of a hung parliament.”

George Osborne was right when he said, “We are all in this together”. We need to work together to ensure that there is the best future for all.

PS I want to give a shout out to www.futurefairforall.org I often consult this treasure trove of information before I go out canvassing. It has a lot of evidence, which shows that 13 years of Labour has spectacularly failed to create a ‘future fair for all’.

I didn’t watch Piers Morgan interview Gordon Brown last night. I had seen the clips, and the pre-briefing, and the rolling back from the ‘floods of tears’ at the beginning of the week to the ‘welling up’ on Thursday and decided that while I feel desperately sorry for the Brown family in many ways, it does not add anything to my understanding of him as Prime Minister to see him cry (or not).

I think we owe it to our politicians to accept that they are human like the rest of us. They feel pain, and loss, and happiness – and yes, hubris and over-confidence and pride as well. I don’t think we need to trot them out on camera every time they have a tough few weeks to cry on demand. Pity is a dangerous thing.

It’s a difficult line to draw though. Whatever our weird constitution says, we have ended up electing our Prime Minister. This election campaign is going to be Gordon Brown vs David Cameron. So at what stage do we say, no that’s private?

I think it’s right that we ask questions about what motivates our politicians, about what makes them tick. It goes to the heart of what sort of leader they are. Sometimes it can go too far – I really have no interest in forcing politicians to conduct every part of their private lives on TV.

But once again, this comes back to what kind of politicians we actually want. Do we want absolutely squeaky clean, dull, automatons with no understanding of humanity standing for election? I don’t. I want politicians who can acknowledge mistakes, who can empathise but not be overwhelmed, and who can fail or succeed like the rest of us.

The most important thing that politicians can give us is not their tears and emotion, but their judgement. And I don’t think that tears on demand are how they prove their fitness for office.

One of the low-level criticisms that we hear about the Cameron style of leadership is that there is a very tight inner circle and not as much collegiate decision-making as some would like. I don’t know the truth or not of these comments. What I would say is that one of the criticisms we have always made of the New Labour style is the way that government decisions were taken by a small group, un-minuted, not properly discussed, and not sufficiently chewed over by enough people to iron out potential problems.

So how do we get from this:

 To this:

Ideally with extra people contributing as well?

I would argue that many of the Tories’ initiatives or pledges for when in government will encourage this – for example, the precedent of the presumption for publication (of expenses, but I hope that minutes of meetings where decisions are made will be published too) or the crowd-sourcing of IT solutions.

But perhaps the most efficient lever is not a Conservative policy or a Cameron initiative. In government, there are literally hundreds – maybe thousands – of things to decide on every day. In opposition, it’s relatively easy to say you want to see and oversee everything.In government, and particularly as Prime Minister, as Gordon Brown belatedly discovered, it is basically impossible. No one person can control everything.

In fact this is quite a neat metaphor for how the Conservatives’ localism plans would work. I’ve always had my concerns about the practical implications of localism (though not the policy itself) – because you need enough of the right people to make a big and long-term commitment, and because you need central government to say ‘No, that’s not our job’ often. But if the Tories mean what they say about this, it would be an absolutely huge social revolution – the thought of a government minister not instantly responding to the ‘something must be done’ cry, or accepting that different police areas have different priorities, or that local health boards believe that they should spend more on social care for Alzheimer’s sufferers than on drugs and that all of these things are properly accountable to the people who pay for them is currently far-fetched, to say the least.

As a final thought, I came across this transcript of Oliver Letwin discussing the need for a social revolution – it is very Oliver and quite complicated but worth a read.

At the bloggers’ lunch yesterday (thanks Sam, Rishi and Craig!) I was asked how I was going to cope with the cuts that any government is going to have to make in the next Parliament. I think the person asking was of the often-expressed view that I belong in another party…

My answer was a bit rambly but went something like this: I am a Conservative. I don’t like waste, I don’t like spending for the sake of it, I think people spend their own money better than any government can. There are some things government has to do, but there are lots that it shouldn’t. There are lots of things that can be funded by the state but don’t have to be delivered by it. And that if we don’t have a functioning, stable, growing and sustainable economy everything else is moot anyway.

If the Conservatives win the election, I do think the Treasury figures are going to be frightening. I think there are going to be some very unpleasant decisions to make. But I also had talked with someone who was asking why, given all that has gone wrong for Labour, the Tories weren’t further ahead. There is the issue of trust in politics and politicians generally – after the surge of optimism in Blair’s government, people have been massively let down again.

I’ve been struggling to really articulate this, but here is my take: the age of austerity is being forced upon us all. The longer that  Brown’s plans involve spending and raising taxes, the harder it is going to be for anyone to return our economy and our society to what it should be. Given that, if we win, there is a certain amount that we will be able to blame Brown for. But there comes a point at which we will have to say, yes we have made things better. And in order to get to that point, we need to tell people why the pain that is coming is worth it. It comes down to giving people a reason to vote for us, in order that we have the mandate to do what is necessary.

It’s a difficult one to really get right – too optimistic and people aren’t ready for the changes that need to be made. Too gloomy, and even I might question why we would vote Conservative and bring all that pain upon ourselves – surely we should stick with what we know?

I think the Tories can get it right. I’m not sure they have managed to say it right quite yet.