Notes from the blue corner: The busted flush

Two posts in one weekend, goodness me we are lucky aren’t we! I shall be brief, as I fear that I have been rather lengthy in my last few blogs. 

As a Tory, I should be jolly pleased with myself, given that we have the first Conservative majority since 1997, but I wouldn’t want to offend the acting leader of the Labour Party so I will refrain from gloating or indeed dwelling on the subject.

No, it is the Labour Party I want to focus on here, taking the opportunity to set the barrels of my salt-loaded shotgun on one Mr. Miliband Snr, a most craven individual if ever there was one. I was inspired to type this by an article I read in the Mail Online, which claims that Ed Miliband was not invited to his brother’s fiftieth. As the elder one of two brothers myself, if  this is true, it shows the former foreign secretary in a dismal light. 

There has been much furore and hearsay about ‘the wounded’ brother, blood apparently gushing from his back. They talk of a ‘Man in the Iron Mask’, cruelly denied his turn as leader of the party. Labour claims it could have edged the election if Miliband Major had been at the helm, an easy thing for a broken and ideologically bankrupt party to claim in hindsight - although in all likelihood they would have still lost. 

The story, really, smacks of fantasy, as if they were casting Cameron as Narnia’s White Witch and Miliband as Aslan, sailing in to rid the land of perpetual winter. The ongoing ‘feud’ between the brothers has been picked apart, analysed to death and David Miliband has been stoking rumours of a return to British Politics, it all seems so dramatic. 

To make the matter more of a story, even Lord ‘Two Jags’ Prescott, the coarse union dinosaur, has waded in, telling Mili to keep his nose out. As much as I loath Lord Prescott, his manner and all he stands for, the man has a point. The Labour Party needs to move on.

It is easy to forget that David Miliband had a number of opportunities to de-throne Gordon Brown during his premiership and he bottled it each time. Caution is often a deathblow for any ambitious politician and to my mind it was so in this case. 

Furthermore, he did not put an appealing case to the broad church of his party, he must have had an inkling that mass union support was unlikely. It must have been gutting to lose but surely, there are bigger things in life - perhaps David Miliband was consumed by the idea of becoming Prime Minister? I don’t know... I merely speculate. 

However there is an even bigger reason that this fraternal feud should make us cautious of embracing David Miliband, aside from the fact that it suggests the man is prone to holding a grudge. In essence, he abandoned his constituency. He decided to take a post in the US, albeit for a worthy cause, and stand down as an MP rather than seeing the electoral term through and then going. Obviously there were reasons, but it does not inspire confidence that the man put his electorate first and foremost. It’s a bit flaky for my tastes, and I dare say a number of other too.

There’s somethings marvellously Heseltine-esque about the whole thing, storming off in a huff and sniping from the sidelines. But at least ‘Tarzan’ had the decency to remain in his seat and serve his constituents whilst he planned his gambit. 

In any case, we need a strong, robust opposition, it’s how an effective parliament works. The only way we will achieve this is if Labour is brave enough move on from Miliband and look to fresh blood untainted by Blair and Brown. 

More notes from a blue corner: Whoops apocalypse!

As the dust settles on Clacton and Heywood and Middleton and attentions turn toward Rochester and Strood, I think it is a good time to reflect on this “earthquake”. Being the sad politico that I am, I have read the contrasting views of the pundits and caught up on the coverage. I must say that the whole thing casts a very dim light on the quality of our politicians from across the party spectrum, including UKIP. 

The nadire of the whole thing came when the lightweight Greg Hands MP and the chippy, cracked-record Michael Dugher MP started slugging it out over the UKIP swings in Heywood and Middleton. It was like watching two adolescents in a ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ competition, full of excuses and dominated by Andrew Neil’s loaded questions. If the main parties was to communicate to the country they need to do better than these turkeys. Why are they not putting their most charismatic, eloquent and media-savvy spokespeople in front of the camera to play this down and rubbish the speculation?

For example, if I had been David Cameron, I would have sent my chief whip down to defend his record (this thing after all happened under his watch) and to offer a shot across the bows for any other Conservatives looking to defect. From a Labour perspective? They should have someone who can effectively communicate the party’s policy and stop Tory-bashing with hollow soundbytes rather than concrete reasoning. I want to see some courage and conviction from an authoritative government and a strong, feisty opposition. Sadly I didn’t see this that night. 

Turning to Clacton, the Conservatives seemed lacklustre, with none of the soapbox sparkling of yesteryear. Of course it was un-winnable, Carswell is a highly popular, local MP who has a very convenient, UKIP sympathetic demographic and has invested a huge amount of his personal time building up support for his cause. However, I think it would have set a good example to have fought the election tooth-and-nail despite the pre-destined outcome, rather than simply saying ‘oh, it’s a by-election, the results will be different in 2015’ - maybe, but this kind of complacency is so deeply unattractive and slightly insulting to the people who want to see the party given the respect and recognition it deserves. 

In my last post, I wrote that we needed to take our message to the doorsteps now, wee beed to have a clear, coherent and thoroughly defiant message. If we believe the Conservatives are doing the right thing by the country, let’s enunciate it through actions as well as words. We should have been all over Clacton, making public statements and vilifying a turncoat, showing that the party machine was prepared to mete its full force on Clacton, in a similar vein to Newark. 

Carswell’s defection reflects the feelings of his voters, the result shows it and he is an intelligent fellow. However, when asked to elucidate his view it was something of a car crash (although no-one probably noticed). His interview with Mr. Neil was spent sparring with the deeply unimpressive Hands and then offering vacuous rhetoric filled with platitudes and the word ‘change’, yet I was left wondering ‘what change’. His speech on re-election was even more devoid of content - then again, isn’t that representative of his new party! Anyway, I had better stop before I am accused of ‘negative campaigning’! 

Rochester and Strood will be a tough one for us, but we (The Conservatives) could win! We need to pull our collective fingers out and dominate the area, the media output, everything! The big hitters need to be seen in the town centre, on the doorsteps, in the supermarket and beating UKIP in the battle of both personalities and ideas - we have so much more to offer, let’s get better at selling it! Let’s stop being complacent about these by-elections. In the words of my old chum, Eric Pickles, “Let’s get campaigning and let’s get cracking.”

Notes from a blue corner: post conference blues...

Rest assured, dear reader that I will be posting on the second half of my trip to Vienna soon. I just felt, as a fellow interested in the political welfare of this green and pleasant land, that I would commit some thoughts to the web casting in another penny to the eternal fountain of the misinformed and the misguided.

So far it has been quite the conference season with Ed Miliband apparently forgetting his lines and David Cameron offering a barnstorming, pre-election rally cry for the rank and file… Of course, this has been punctuated by scandal and defection. It seems that the usual, healthy dose of power, corruption and lies is alive and well in our democracy! 

On the face of it, there is good reason for some optimism from my very much blue corner. Strong policy statements were made, coupled with some tough economic proposals, which directly benefited the rank and file Tory voter. It’s no wonder that Osborne got a standing ovation; with calls to freeze working benefits and to abolish taxes on pension pots it’s the bread and butter that delegates lapped up with glee.

It all sounds so good but, having been to a few Conservative conferences and having worked on the last election campaign we once again risk sacrificing common sense and hard campaigning for a few buzzwords and a large dollop of style over substance.

It has been a tough five years and although I started it on the inside, I have spent the large part of it as an observer in the private sector - at the lower end of the professional pay spectrum for that matter! The Coalition was built on ‘such high hopes and great expectations’ and has, for the large part, been a government of unrivalled reforming zeal, tackling social institution in dire need of fresh thinking and a kick up the arse.

However, it was as much a poison chalice, as reality bit the main actors have found that their popularity has decreased and inherent problems in the system, from weak border administration to failing IT networks, have come to bite them in the goolies through either voter apathy or outright opposition. With the election looming and the threat of fringe parties biting at the heals the main players, especially the Conservatives are desperately looking for fresh appeal! 

As such this seemed to be a conference where the powers that be were intent on making amends with the grass roots and UKIP waiverers for some of their more unpopular policies, offering a portfolio of bread and circuses for those less inclined to the ‘softer’ side of their recent policy making.  

While there was a great deal of nostalgic posturing throughout the conference on past achievements, it seemed that there was little focus on selling it to make a convincing case for the next five years.  At least, that’s how it felt to liberal, middle class muggins like me! I wanted to hear grand strategy, scare-mongering, and some of the dirty-hands ‘ticking tax time bomb’ rhetoric of the days when they employed the likes of the Saatchi’s and Lord Bell – a bit of street fighting. I was in no such luck.

It is also a case that much of the scant tough-rhetoric is a little too late, why wasn’t our leader saying this for the past five years, seeding soundbytes and policy snippets into the hearts and mind? Perhaps as a nation  we are too lilly-livered to hear a few home truths, or maybe we have no taste for it.

Perhaps it has something to do with Cameron’s distinct lack of warmth as a speaker. I do not doubt his conviction, although it is quite idiosyncratic and subtly dogmatic, but he does not express empathy and a robust personality. I think him rather socially blasé (masked by a thin and wearying veneer of  worry and concern) but, I am realistic, he is very much the lesser of three evils. He speaks competently but not engagingly, he’s an intelligent man but, like most intelligent men, he is no salesman and it is this latter quality (backed by sound advisers) that the party needs.

I want to see a charismatic, ruthless leader with some fire in their eyes. This sallow lot don’t have it, at least not yet. I want to see some emotion come to the fore, a leader storm off the stage in disgust, unhooking the microphone using some expressive body language to make their point. All I see at the moment is off the rack M&S suits, hideous one-colour ties (purple or nuclear green – take your pick) on white shirts, nervousness and a distinctly patrician air. Where are the colourful characters like Heseltine and Clarke or the sagely minds of a Whitelaw of a Hurd to back them?

I don’t know about you, but I am sick of seeing Dave, George, Boris and co in high-vis jackets on building sites or pootling around urban centres looking like morons. Right now I want to see them on the soapbox convincing the public why the Conservative way is the right way. It seems not to have hit home yet that Miliband could very easily be elected on default in May 2015 with the appalling Harman, Balls and co as his inner counsel.

Lads, for once can we avoid another f*%! up and make sure we seal the deal on this one once and for all? I’m hopeful we’ll see sense, but don’t bet your money on it! 

Notes from the Blue Corner: Thoughts on the reshuffle...

What a week it has been! The knives were out and many a distinguished cabinet and government minister felt the cold steel pressing against their back as they were flung, Lucifer-like, to the inferno of the back benches or shuffled sideways and downwards into lesser posts – nearer the salt cellars as opposed to the mustard pot, on Cameron’s dining table.

Of course, pundits were out in force offering their penny’s worth about this ‘monumental shift’ in the dream team, and, as a Conservative myself, I thought I’d throw my own coppers into the fountain and give my thoughts to anyone who will listen.

Following the announcements on Monday going into Tuesday, hyperbole flew thick and fast. Words like ‘shift’, ‘earthquake’, ‘sea change’, ‘tidal’ were bandied around, and it all got a bit dramatic. Some were in praise, others were in dismay, especially at The Daily Mail.  Carrot-topped hammer-thrower of the home counties, Simon Heffer claimed that the outcome was ‘simply terrifying’ especially when, apparently, a government advisor thought that a ‘clone’ of highly uninspiring Jeremy Hunt (Health) would be perfect in Education. Nicky Morgan is yet to prove herself, and the question will be whether she carries on Gove’s brave and necessary revolution of our education system.

I’ll come to this more in a second, but firstly, let me pin my colours to the mast and say that I am rather dismayed by the rashness of the reshuffle and they way that it was propositioned to the public yet I am not willing to pass judgment on its ability to govern as it is yet to be proven. It does worry me however, that cabinet ministers who had really mastered their brief over years have been cast aside for a younger, fresh-faced and more glamorous collective.

Of the newbies to cabinet, Esther McVey has been lavished with praise, she did a good job as a minister and has never been afraid to make a controversial statement – will her fire be translated into the new role? Time will tell, but it is usually the convention that a place at table requires a certain degrees of quiet loyalty and curbing of the more pugnacious elements of the spirit. This is something that a personal favourite, Michael Gove, found to his detriment when Cameron was drawing up his new look. I look forward to watching her over the next year in the run up to 2015 and, given her impressive presence on television and radio, used extensively as a party figurehead.

Gove has been the most brilliant Education Secretary in modern times, unraveling the mess made of our system since Harold Wilson decided to tinker so disastrously with the lives of Britain’s youth. This is not to say that his predecessors are any different: the lacklustre National Curriculum (1988) of Lord Baker, the disastrous interventions of the Blair/Brown years and the continual, passive treatment of the NUT have all played their part in seeing our education system sink into the doldrums. Gove’s vision, his combativeness and his desire to see a cultural shift has been one of the most impressive and exciting aspects of this Government.

You cannot force change without opposition and of course, the National Union of Teachers, the darlings of the wishy-washy, liberal left have tried to block reform at every turn. Their cynical campaigning and briefings have culminated in the removal of one of the most dynamic figures in British Politics, consigning him to the role of Chief Whip. It all feels like a desire from Downing Street to placate another professional minority to squeeze out a few more votes.

It’s a terrible waste. I am sure Gove will be brilliantly effective in his new role but his talent for policy will surely be missed.  Will Nicky Morgan, his successor and Osborne apparatchik continue with his reforms or will they be shelved in yet another move to placate an outdated and introspective trade union, it all smacks of ‘In Place of Strife’!

William Hague was another departure yet I’m not lamenting this, a highly intelligent man I always felt he was wasted in the Foreign Office in an age where the Prime Minister focuses more on global and less on domestic issues. Announcing his intention to stand down and probably pursue a far more rewarding career, could we see him doing a Portillo? Maybe touring around Yorkshire in a hot air balloon for ITV? Or perhaps in a cameo in Brangelina’s next blockbuster? My old favourite Quentin Letts assures us all that he is back in his element as Leader of the Commons where he will be able to enjoy himself in a more junior cabinet post, letting him indulge in deliciously-wicked despatch box banter.

Max Hastings summed up his replacement Philip ‘The Hamster’ Hammond well: an accountant who displays the warmth of an undertaker and less personality than most laptops. He is a shrewd operator though, and I will watch his tenure in the office with interest, especially on his stance towards the EU.

My political hero, Ken Clarke, has finally gone but what a career! His balance and advice will be missed but, in the words of Francis Urquhart, ‘Nothing lasts forever…’. I hope that he will still be a vocal voice from the back benches and continue to offer his refreshing approach to the European debate and the financial approach of this government.

Owen Paterson was much lamented, he’d done a good job and was on top of his brief. Alas, his right-wing stance seemed rather distasteful to our dear leader and his ruddy, man-from-the-shires look seemed woefully out of touch with focus group findings. He might be gone but I can see him making quite a stink from the back benches, especially as he will now be able to exercise free-rein over his anti-European views.

Of course I could go on and one, but I cannot cover all the changes in such great detail otherwise the blog would stretch to pages and pages of text, but I do think that the appointment of Michael Fallon was a master-stroke. One of the Government’s most media-savvy performers, his performances at the hands of the BBC attack dogs are always entertaining and his stonewalling is a lesson in departmental discretion. A staunch right-winger the Defence brief seems suited to him and I look forward to more passive aggressive performances on the goggle-box in the coming year.

Summing up, I don’t buy this silly ‘Pale and Male’ argument that is being bandied around in some quarters. Perhaps there was some element of positive discrimination but who cares? The Proof will be in how well they perform and, until I see all the new appointments in action, I cannot possibly pass judgment on their ability to do the job.

The most important thing now is to get behind the party to ensure that we edge over the line in 2015, if we in the party keep sniping internally we’ll get nowhere. One thing is for sure, we must at all costs stop the heir to Michael Foot, Ed Miliband with his brand of concrete and breeze block politics getting anywhere near Downing Street. It will be an exciting battle, but I believe we can do it, and, as much as it pains a large section of the party, we need to get behind this new cabinet and offer our support to ensure we get that majority next year.