Geoffrey Lean writes in today’s Telegraph about why it is no accident that conservation and Conservatism are neighbours in the dictionary.

One of the most extraordinary pieces appeared on Conservative Home at the weekend and I don’t think that it should be allowed to pass without comment. 

The piece by ‘Arty McBain’ reads like a piece of Francoist propaganda or an editorial from some of the worst of the hard wight wing appeasing press of the 1930s. 

The piece was also hugely historically ignorant and the author really has to be taken to task for blithely ignoring the horrible brutality of Franco’s regime.

The piece rips into The Times for so-called “Communist propaganda.  That is probably one of the most hysterical statements that Con Home has ever made (and there is quite some competition for that honour).  It attacks The Times for saluting the bravery of the British men who volunteered for the International Brigades.  I am very much with The Times on this one.  The article is based on an entirely misplaced analogy with Britain in the 1980s (as well as some petulant pouting about the fact that Franco was called a Fascist when he was actually an extreme nationalist authoritarian…), whilst ignoring almost every fundamental point about the Spanish Civil War.

It manages to gloss over the fact that the Popular Front had actually won the election in 1936, rather than merely “taking over” as the author of the piece suggests.  He completely ignores the fact that the Communist Party of Spain was actually tiny at the time of the 1936 elections.  Forgetfully, McBain glosses over the coup against a democratically elected Government launched by Franco, his Generals and the assorted thugs he surrounded himself with.  Nor does he mention the fact that the Republican forces included believers in liberal democracy, anarchists, social democrats and socialists, rather than being purely a Communist brigade as the author tries to make out.

The Francoist forces were heavily armed by Nazis in Germany and Fascists in Italy while, at the same time, the western powers imposed an arms embargo meaning that weapons could not reach Republican forces.  Then, and only then, did Stalin take advantage of the first stage of the West’s policy of appeasing extreme nationalists and Fascists by arming the Republican forces.  This was a genuine moral failure on behalf of Britain and France.  The first of many terrible moral failures that littered our foreign policy in the mid 1930s.   

Above all, it makes absolutely no mention of the horrible brutality of Francoist Spain in the aftermath of the Civil War.  Franco was responsible for the politically inspired deaths of hundreds of thousands of Spaniards; the imprisonment of many times this number; the removal of the freedom of any other political parties and trade unions; and the subjugation and persecution of the traditional cultures of the regions of Spain that did not subscribe do his clichéd, traditionalist viewpoint. 

Such a piece surely has no place in a blog dedicated to modern Conservative politics.  It is a gift to our political rivals and is morally questionable for ignoring the horrible, repressive nature of Franco’s regime.

Today’s Guardian articles and speech by David Cameron are probably one of the most important statements he will make as Leader of the Opposition.

If he means it, if he’s elected, and if he achieves what he says he wants to, he will go down in history as a great reforming Prime Minister.  If he doesn’t… well, I don’t really want to get into that.

He has a number of factors working to his advantage at the moment. He is a lucky politician – never underestimate the advantage that can bring.  (See Gordon Brown for what happens if you’re not). He is able to sound reasonable, likeable and moderate on pretty much any subject.  He is not in government – which means he is able to explore ideas with greater ease, and indeed ditch them if need be – and he is not easily panicked by political turbulence or poll ratings.

But perhaps the two most important factors are these: he sniffs the political wind and is able to respond to it far quicker than most.  I say he; obviously there is a group of people within Parliament and CCHQ who do this with him.  However, he is the face of it.  And secondly, he uses his political and personal judgement to great effect.

I’ve lost count of the number of comments on politicalbetting I’ve read recently that say something along the lines of, “I’ve been out canvassing/talking to co-workers etc, and they think that while all politicians are at it, at least David Cameron gets that it’s a problem and is doing something about it.” 

There is currently a fundamental disconnect in how our institutions interact with people.  I get the impression that MPs’ behaviour over their expenses is linked to a rise in a culture that says, ‘I must take all I deserve,’ which I think has been encouraged by the ongoing reduction in the control people have over their own lives.  In other words – as the state increases its role, people no longer feel part of a community or a society, and instead see themselves much more as just an individual with no obligations to the wider world. And as a result, they just think of their rights and not their responsibilities.

Returning control to people makes institutions more accountable.  As I’ve argued time and again, governments don’t like ceding power – it makes them twitchy; it’s hard to implement and even harder to maintain.  But, like David Cameron, Douglas Carswell and Dan Hannan, I believe it’s the only answer.

I’m still a little bemused by the whole Twitter concept.  I’m not in the slightest bit interested in some of the ‘Tweets’ that plenty of people insist on sharing with the outside world.

This Twitter scepticism made me chuckle at this tale of the Telegraph’s doomed attempt to put a “Twitterfall” at the centre of its online budget coverage.  FT readers have rightly mocked it as a “Twitterfail”.

http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/04/20/54882/twitter-fail-on-twitter-fall-at-the-telegraph/

Some great pieces from James Forsyth and Michael Brown about the shame of Jacqui Smith following the absurdity of her husband claiming X rated movies on expenses and what that means for the Government as a whole.  Both make a similar point.  The Home Secretary is now a figure of fun and one of the great offices of state.  The Government as a whole is no longer taken seriously.  The G20 – the great hope of Gordon Brown as the springboard to political recovery is falling apart around his ears, with Angela Merkel being dismissive of the PM’s approach and the Czech Prime Minister quoting AC/DC to damn Brown’s accumulation of debt.

At the same time, Obama has infuriated Brownites by requesting a meeting with David Cameron.  Clearly the master political operator from across the Atlantic knows which way the political wind is blowing.  As Simon Hoggart has mentioned, Labour MPs will now walk out of the Chamber when the Prime Minister is speaking.  This is a Government losing authority almost on an hourly basis.  The road from a Government being held up to ridicule to a Government being condemned in an electoral test can surely not be a long one.