TRG@Conference 2007

As the Conservative Party Conference opens in Blackpool, today, I find myself flicking through the official handbook. It has the complete listing of main hall and fringe events. One name that keeps coming up is that of David Willets MP. He seems to have the most hectic schedule of any speaker at the fringe, this year. If you think anyone else is doing more, then let us know.

The TRG’s own programme for conference looks pretty impressive and I should stress that I don’t have much to do with organising these things, that is mainly down to Tim Crockford, our events committee chair, and Clare Whelan, our National Director, so thanks (in advance!) to both of them.

We are hosting “4 Days, 4 Events”, with speakers including Lord Hurt, Oliver Letwin, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, Damian Green, David Mudell, Sayeeda Warsi, Nick Bourne, Dominic Grieve and others. It should all be informative and, hopefully, a lot of fun.  As things develop, we will try and get some things posted on this blog to offer the TRG’s perspective on the conference as it unfolds!

TRG By Invitation: Steve Norris on the London Mayor Campaign

Steve Norris, TRG Patron and former Conservative Candidate for Mayor of London writes for the TRG about what he thinks the Conservative Mayoral Candidate in 2008 should campaign on.

Even a stopped clock’s right twice a day so perhaps it is inevitable that even this government occasionally gets something right. That was the case when the incoming administration decided there ought to be an elected body responsible for strategic issues in London, and that the best mechanism to deliver those strategies was an elected Mayor. Before too many Conservative hackles rise, let me explain.

…more

Have-a-go Hereos

Jack Straw’s comments about the need for the law to be made clearer so that those willing to do so feel safe to intervene in the face of crime are welcome. This is not least the case because his government has successfully oppossed several Tory attempts to do the same thing over the last ten years.

Straw wants to protect those people who intervene to prevent crime or to catch those who have carried it out. Good. Some might even say, about time. Crime, particular at the low levels of public disorder, are vastly worse than they need to be because too often those involved are not challenged by the people around them. Anything that can be done to address that should be perceived as a good thing.

It also reminded me of this great little piece by the BBC’s Jeremy Vine, who witnessed a couple of doses of anti-social behaviour on the tube and why is ashamed to not have acted as he would have hoped he would.

Boris 4 Mayor?

Some political predictions are harder than others. It does not seem that a prediction that Boris Johnson will be announced today as the Conservative candidate for London Mayor will rank as a great act of political insight and it is the common view.
The question has become: will Boris be any good as a candidate?

On the one hand, Boris is a remarkably popular figure among sections of the electorate that do not normally get as engaged in elections as others. So, there is a chance that new voters will become pulled into the vote and that more bodies will be available for campaigning activities. Sadly, the students are unlikely to be able to bolster his vote as they will be engaged in exams or registered at home come election day.

On the other hand, there is a fear that Boris will issue another gaffe, of the type he has made over cities including Liverpool and Portsmouth.

This is not the problem that some perceice, either. The strangest outcome of these Boris comments, though, seems to be that no one really holds it against him when he says these things. It is simply a case of what makes Boris, Boris.

There is a further question. That relates to Boris’ role as an MP for an Oxfordshire constituency. Boris has already said he would not remain as an MP if he becames Mayor, as he repeated on the Today Programme, this morning. But what if he becomes the candidate and a general election is called early? How will he manage two elections that do not geographically overlap?

The first question will be answered today.

The others may take a little longer, but I suspect that Tory party members will not be disappointed.

Update - 27 September 2007

So, as we thought, the result was not a surprise. Boris has won and good luck to him! The scale of his win, though, is unprecedented. Boris took 75% of all votes cast, with a majority of some 14,000 over the next placed candidate. That is impressive.

BBC report is here.

Farming and the City

I have written before about the split between town and country, which I view as one of the biggest divides in Britain today. One lady, Jane O’Neill, feels the same way and has been on Radio 4 this morning.

Jane has a small holding in Sussex, where some of my own family used to farm. She told a story about a teacher from the South-West of England who refused to to take children on a farm trip because she thought farming was cruel. Why? She thought that cows had to be killed to remove their milk!

The gap between town and country is getting even bigger. Jane’s response has been to do something about it and she is driving geese through London, as it used to be done, tomorrow to highlight the problem. All of this forms part of “The Farming to Food Show”, which sounds like a pretty great way to bring some understanding of farming and where food comes from (that is, where it comes from before it gets to the supermarket!).

The Farming to Food show is at Potters Field, right by City Hall, London on 27, 28 & 29 September 2007 and is open from 10 a.m.

Something to do before conference! If anyone goes along, leave a comment here with your thoughts.

Magna Carta - The Heart of the British Constitution

The Financial Times is carrying a story today about the upcoming sale of one of the earliest issues of Magna Carta.

Magna Carta is very dear to my heart, which may or may not be connected to the fact that I read history at university.

However, in the frequent debate about whether Britain needs a written constitution, it is important to remember that Magna Carta is an early forebear of just such a document. For example, it recognises and enshrines limits on the power of the state and offers the basis for an impartial legal system.

No freeman shall be taken, imprisoned, or in any other way destroyed, except by the lawful judgement of his peers.

Over the years, most of the copies that were originally sent out to each county, have been lost or damaged beyond repair. The British Library holds four copies, of which only one is in a good state. The one on sale is one of only two copies currently outside the UK and the last in private hands and has been on display at the National Archives in Washington since arriving in the US in 1984, alongside the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence

Sotheby’s are estimating that it will reach around $30m, which I believe is a bargain for such an important document for both British history and the cause of human rights. It might be worth a quick whip round among some of the Conservative Party’s biggest donors, too, as we should be looking to preserve such a rare document.

After all, Tony Blair had a pretty good go at trying to tear-up all the other copies…

Tough on Grime, Tough on the Causes of Grime

Gordon Brown has tried hide to shake of the shackles of the Blair era. But has he really moved so far from Tony?

His speech to the Labour conference, yesterday, reminded us that, like Blair, he is a top-class political act. He may not chime with many Tories, but he chimes with enough of the country as a whole, just like Tony.

Some of the reasons for this are not so different either. Gordo’s focus on cleaning hospitals made me think of that most vibrant of Tony’s conference speeches. The variance was not huge and he only just side-stepped,

“Tough on grime, tough on the causes of grime!”

Like Tony B, Gordon B also wanted to reach out to Tory and other non-natural Labour voters. He had a nice blue background and managed to pull off that most Blairite of tricks: pleasing both the Gaurdian and the Daily Telegraph at the same time (see their headlines this morning) .

But it was the one thing that I could not stand more than any other about Blair that made me cringe. The Reverend Blair used to continually emote rather than argue. He would assert his moral authority more than present a case based on facts. It was that, more than anything, that led to the British involvement in Iraq. And what of Gordo? He is guided, it seems, by his own ‘moral compass’ above all other instincts. While this sounds like a virtue, it reminds me only of the problems we had with the last chap to say that.

It seems that Gordon’s greatest political trick may just be to have convinced anyone that anything much has changed at all. Maybe the Blair-era has not passed at all.

When Will We Hear the Starting Gun?

This evening’s edition of the London evening standard is being promoted with bill board’s covered with words to the effect that Brown has already fired the starting gun for an election.

Of course, this is not quite the case, but there does appear to be a shift towards an election given the Prime Minister’s speech at the Labour Party conference this afternoon.

Discussing this issue with people over the weekend, the common view seemed to be that if there is an election in 2007 it would be at the end of October, before the clocks go back on the 28th. I am going to to put my neck on the line and suggest that IF there is an election, it will be in November and probably on the 8th rather than the 1st.

Firstly, I don’t think that the clocks going back is the issue for Labour that is for the Tories, and even then it is small. Secondly, the perception amongst Labour advisors is that local Conservative Associations are not as ready for an election as the central party machine likes to make out. In particular, it is their observation that a great many seats remain without candidates and they do not want to declare an election before the Conservative party conference has concluded next week as that would give ample opportunity for Tory Association Chairmen and candidates to get together if needs be. They also want the Tories messages to be blunted by being unsure whether they are looking three years out or three weeks. Finally, Gordon ‘Prudence’ Brown will be wary of the Tories pulling off a minor miracle and getting a big enough bounce from conference messages to look more threatening.

All of this points to a decision on or around the 9 October when the first poll data after the Sunday papers review the Tory performanceI. Adding three weeks to that will take us into November.

Anyone think otherwise?

Lech Walesa, Political Cool?

So, the same politicians that did not get that excited about meeting Kasparov, did have something else to look forward to.

They were cheering the imminent arrival of the former Polish President, Lech Walesa.

I have to say, this did impress me, too. As the leader of the Polish trade union, Solidarity, Walesa led the fight against communism in Poland and was awarded the Nobel Peace Price in 1993 in recognition of his efforts. He attributes much of his success to the Polish-born Pope John Paul II, whose support and moral authority Walesa valued highly. It is hard to meet someone who has achieved something so extraordinary and not be impressed. He is a man who was made for his time and met the challenges of it head-on.

The difficult nature of the timing of his presence, however, was not discussed at the conference, anywhere and I was surprised about that. The EU has issued the Polish government with a warning, on competition grounds, about the subsidies that it offers to the Gdansk shipyards were Solidarity first took hold. This is an iconic place for Poles, and rightly so. Sadly, without the subsidies the yards have little future. Somehow, they seem less worried by this than I had expected. It seems that the Poles have moved on from their past and are happier to abide by the rules of their present. That says a lot that is positive about them, too.

Between a Northern Rock and a Hard Place

And if you will excuse me a moment of I told you so, I told you so… :0)

On the “Blogger TV” show on 18DoughtyStreet.com on Monday, we debated the issue of the likely effects of Northern Rock on the opinion polls. I suggested that provided no-one lost any money (which they didn’t) then the Northern Rock affair would blow over and do precisely no harm to Labour’s polling. One of my fellow bloggers disagreed.

My assertion was based on a comparison with the run up to the 2001 election, in which thousands of burning animal carcasses were on TV each night in an attempt to clean up the foot and mouth infection. Blair was advised by almost everyone to not hold an election because of the damage that the affair was thought to be causing to his ratings. He judged, correctly, that once the images were gone so would the memory.   Something similar happened here and the moment there were no longer pensioners queuing around the block, all was revealed to be fine.

Last night’s Newsnight poll showed the results. Labour undamaged by the whole affair. An election in 2007 seems ever more likely.

Garry Kasparov and Geek Cool

In the bus from the airport to the conference venue, several of the other attendees for the EIN event could not understand why I was getting so excited about the chance to meet Garry Kasparov.

Kasparov is an extroadinary man. He excelled at chess, the most intellectual of all games. He was not just the best of his time, he may have been the best of all time and with that deserves to be thought of as one of the greatest minds of all time. But more than that, many people excel to the point where they represent their school, city or country. Kasparov represented humanity. All of it. In a fight against machines, and he won.

To me, Kasparov is cool, ‘geek-cool’ maybe, but certainly cool.

When he retired from chess, he took a role in politics as the leader of the United Civil Front in Russia. He continues to campaign for democracy there. However, some in the audience today criticised his choice of political partners, citing that some are neo-Stalinist. Kasparov pointed out that he and his partners did not agree on many things, not least the importance of a market economy but that there was a bigger issue they agreed on and to which Putin is opposed:

“In Russia, we are not fighting to win an election. We are fighting to have an election.”

He went on to criticise the use of poll evidence that is often used to indicate support for Putin. He pointed out that in a country with a long memory of the KGB, if someone asks whether you support the government, you say yes. After all, you are never sure who else might be listening. Kasparov’s assertion was that the silent majority are very unhappy about the systematic abuses of the state and the destruction of it by a cadre of Putin’s supporters.
Sadly, In the end I think I may have upset the man that at least one speaker from the conference floor referred to as “maestro”.

After he finished speaking today, I asked him whether he worried that as an out-spoken critic of Putin, he might share the fate of Alexander Litvinenko. After all, I had been surprised by the lack of security surrounding Kasparov. His reply?

“Thanks for reminding me.” Sorry, Garry.

The Vision Thing

I am sitting in a conference hall in a Warsaw hotel. 300 other centre-right activists, politicians and associated hacks are here under the umbrella of the European Ideas Network, a rather impressive pan-European grouping that works to stimulate political thoughts among like-minded people associated with parties that are members of the EPP.

Among the other attendees are several Conservative MEP’s as well as some MP’s, including a couple of shadow ministers and  a shadow cabinet member or two.

What is really striking is the level of debate. Some of what is being discussed is really mind expanding stuff and I am very much at the junior end of the attendees. The discussions have a theme, “The World in 2025″ and there are some very impressive speakers coming up. My first impression though is overwhelmingly positive and this is for one main reason: there are big ideas here, there is vision and the contrast with the managerial nature of politics at Westminster at the moment is very stark. Some of what is being said is inspirational and for those of us who are followers of politics that is exciting.

So, over the next day or so I will do my best to blog some of my thoughts as they happen and offer my flavour of what is happening here.

Science and Technology Report

It would be remiss of me to miss out the Tory’s latest policy report. This is because I was on the panel that helped to write it.

That probably means I should not really comment on it too much, except to say it is an extremely useful document that can be found on the Conservative Party’s own site.

The BBC has reported on it, too.

The Clash of Civilisations

You know how it is. While innocently sitting at my desk this morning, the father of a friend of mine sent a round-robin email with a link to a piece of video. Mostly, these things tend to be rubbish, occassionally funny, but rarely informative. Today, this one was.

In this clip from Al Jezeera,  Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychologist from Los Angeles, takes on a panel of Arab traditionalists and other Muslim leaders. It is a fascinating comment on the debate taking place within the Muslim world. It is a “must see” clip.

Finding Direction Without a Map

As the last of the Tory’s major policy review groups to report, the finding of the Quality of Life team are particularly welcome. Firstly, their weighty tome has added a large number of exciting new policy options to the party for its consideration. Some were to be expected, such as calls to curb airport expansion. Others were less so.

However, throughout the long roll-call of ideas, there was a set of clear themes. In the first instance, the idea that the environment is rightfully at the top of the political agenda and will be seen by future generations as the defining moment of our political generation. Get this wrong, and those in power will be infamous. Get them right and they will be rightfully famous.

Secondly, their is a consistency of approach in their solutions. Top among these is the basis of using both carrot and stick to solve major issues. The stick in this case is invariably tax. While the group has gone to great lengths to make clear that they are advocating no change in the total tax burden, they do see the need for a redistribution of it to ensure that the true cost of our actions is reflected in the price. This is almost the definition of the case for government intervention in a market-based system and no practical capitalist will disagree with principle.

Where things are looking less firm, in the ideas of the media at least, is in how the results of these labours are to be squared with those of the others that have already reported, as this editorial from the Financial Times discusses.

But I am not sure that there is really the problem that some commentators have supposed. Not long ago, the Tory Party was under attack for not having enough policies. Now they think we have too many. There really is no pleasing some people!

The ability to really choose between policy options is really an opportunity. After all, decisions will have to be made and no one will be able to say there were no options. So whatever the Cameron administration picks out, it will have to stand by. The values that those decisions embody will become self-evident and the charge that there is no moral map to guide the party will clearly be null and void. Come election time, whenever that may be, there will be a real choice for voters and the basis of the Conservative choice will be clear.

Good luck to David, George and Oliver in making their decisions. We all have a lot riding on them.

A New National Service?

I am at home over the weekend and my father, who was in one of the last intakes of National Service, has just expressed his support for what he thought was David Cameron’s idea of re-introducing it, as reported by the BBC.
Now I am not really sure that the idea of a service that is voluntary and one that is about community service rather than preparing men for war is really something that should be classified as National Service, even if it is a national service. Perhaps the most telling difference, though, is that this service is expected to last for six weeks rather than for two years or more. Is this really enough time to allow those taking part to bond and to learn the lessons of discipline, team work and camradre that my father so hopes it will? I suspect not.

However, it does illustrate, once again, the way that many people such as my father see the problems of society. He is not someone that has been the victim of a major crime, nor is he generally fearful. But he does believe that there is a general slackening of law and order based on a relaxation of fairly basic values.

I am not sure that the proposals outlined for this scheme so far, really will achieve what they have set out to do. However, the TRG values of social justice do lead me to praise the attempt to find a big solution to a big problem. This is a problem, after all, for everyone in society and not just those targeted by the scheme. With such high stakes, we should be prepared to be bold with these ideas, going further if necessary, and welcome the options of new choices for young people that have been failed for far too long.

One Telling Big Number

It is a sad admission to have to make, but I nearly became an accountant.

To be honest, I was on the road to such an end. Having worked for a year or so at one of the big accounting firms of the day as a management consultant, I started my accountancy exams. There was clearly no natural talent on display there, though, and I was probably wise to cease pursuing them when I changed jobs and my new firm was less keen to pay me while I took the time off to study.

However, there are always things you learn from such experiences. One was the value of Tolley’s big, yellow books.

Now the BBC is reporting one of those facts that, to me, sums up the Brown years.  The new edition encompasses all of the main UK tax laws, just as it always has done.

However, in 2001 this needed 5,952 pages. Just six years later this has expanded to a massive 9,866 pages across four volumes! What is worse, it would have had to have been even longer but they chose to save some trees by making the type smaller!

So, by this crude measure, the amount of tax law that every business and person in the UK has to comply with has doubled since Gordon Brown became Chancellor. He really is all about control and meddling with the details, rather than that big picture.  I have spent the last seven years running my own business and know form my own experience the real burden that this law delivers. It will be to the credit of any incoming Conservative Chancellor to reverse this trend and save struggling accounting students everywhere some real backache!

September Poll: Should Ming Stay or Go?

Following from our very definate result in the poll on David Cameron this month, and mindful of the approaching conference season, we thought we would stick with the theme of political leaders this month and ask a question about the venerable Ming Campbell.

We are interested in the results from the point of view of the readers of this blog, the majority of whom describe themselves as One Nation Conservatives.

Have a look at the poll on the right of this page and vote now!

Update - 17 September 2007

What intrigues me about Ming is that he has never really got going. I thought he might turn out to be a real threat to the Conservative Party as it attempted to capture the middle ground of voters, but this has never really come to pass. This piece from the Times (from where the photo also comes) echoes my feeling that little has really changed for him over the last twelve months. But is this to the Tories credit or not?

August Poll Results

In August, we asked,

Do you support David Cameron as leader of the Conservative Party?

The reponses were as follows:

• Yes - Completely - 48%
• Yes - Mostly - 28%
• Not sure - It’s touch and go - 4%
• No - But there is no alternative at present - 8%
• No - He must go now - 12%

So, in the eyes of the readers of the TRG blog, DC has a massive 76% approval rating and only 12% want him gone now.

That seems pretty convincing. Well done!