A Party Political Broadcast by the Conservative Party

Impressive stuff. John Major won the 1992 general election by getting out and talking to real people on his soap box and arguably limited the defeat in 1997 the same way, and it appears that David Cameron will be doing the same.

As you will note from the broadcast, it is always easy to promise the impossible, like ending boom and bust, but people respond better to honesty.

David Cameron's speech gets good headlines!

Well, there you have it. Gordon Brown reads out a rehash of speeches primarily from unsuccessful Democrat Presidential candidates by Bob Shrum, which goes down OK, but is later slamed for plagiarism, whereas David Cameron goes unscripted and gets great headlines.

I did not watch the speech, opinions vary, but I think it may have been a tad long, and did not move the world, but Gordon Brown is a naff speech maker, so Cameron looked good by comparison.

The important thing however is this, the media reception. The sound bites looked good on TV, and the papers in the morning look good as well.

The Times has this, The Telegraph has this, The Daily Mail this, the Guardian this and the Independent this.

So why are civil servants doing political work?

Well, you will no doubt have heard that George Osbourne has announced to planned tax cuts, by raising the threshold for the tax on death, otherwise known as inheritance tax to £1 million, whilst also eliminating stamp duty for first time buyers for houses up to £250,000.

These adjustments will cost around £3.5 billion, or 0.7% of the total size of the state. In terms of ordinary people, think of taking home say £20,000 in which case we are talking about a budget change of £140.

Now this is to be funded by changing the rules for non domiciled tax payers. These are people who mostly live here but are resident abroad for tax purposes. They have to go through quite a few hoops to get that status, so presumably it makes sense to do so.

The Conservative party will levy a fee for this status of £25,000 per year. We estimate that there are of the order of 150,000 such people, and if all paid that would raise £3.75 billion. You can read more, and indeed watch the speech here.

Labour has of course launched into attack mode on this. Benedict Brogan has been getting some interesting government press releases. Apparently civil servants at the treasury have been digging up the numbers to trash the Conservative claims:

What strikes me though is the scale of the Labour spin operation tonight, which is designed to turn a "Tories promise you tax cut" story into a "Tories rocked by funding row" tale. I have in my inbox a press release from the Labour Party Press Office, in which Alistair Darling, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, claims: "Today George Osborne made a £3.5 billion tax commitment. Treasury analysis shows it is impossible for him to raise the money he needs to pay for this commitment from his proposals on residence and domicile. Initial costings by the Treasury show that George Osborne's proposal would raise a maximum of £650m, leaving George Osborne at least £2.9 billion short. So George Osborne cannot afford the promises he is making. He cannot afford to cut inheritance tax."

Benedict Brogan wants to know what civil servants are doing working on party work, and so do I.

The other thing of note is this:

The treasury have claimed to have no figures on how much non domiciled people earn abroad, yet when it becomes a political issue, within hours they claim they do.

Is this really the end of spin in government?

The Unacceptable face of the Conservative Party..

Has been invited to advise the Labour government on terrorism.

Patrick Mercer was described by Labour as the unacceptable face of the Conservative party, after this storm hit him, in March this year costing him his job.

Now they want his advice!

Amazing.

How politics changes.

Ali Miraj needs to learn when to shut up

Well, David Cameron has now come out and said that at his meeting with Ali Miraj he was asked to nominate him for a peerage.

This occurred during a meeting in which Ali Miraj and David Cameron were discussing a critical article that Ali said he intended to publish. (The article is here on Conservative home, please note the number of loyal comments from party workers and Benedict Rogers reply here). Fair enough, however he asked for a peerage at the same meeting, something which he has not denied.

Are we seriously supposed to believe that had he been nominated for a peerage that he would have then gone on to publish the same article? I certainly do not.

So it becomes difficult to believe that this was anything other than a crude attempt at blackmail. Ali Miraj of course denies this and has accused David Cameron of spreading smears, spin and avoiding the issues. The problem with this analysis is that many will find it hard to believe that he would have published the article had he been given a peerage. Had he not meant to associate the two then he should not have mentioned both at the same meeting.

The Need for Discipline

I have read with horror over the past few days, a number of attacks on the party leadership, made in the most public and damaging ways which seem to almost guarantee another election defeat.

We have had all sorts of people popping out of the woodwork the latest two fo which are Maurice Saatchi and Ali Miraj.

Firstly voters do not like a divided party, secondly morale is important in a party, and sniping from behind at the leadership does not help morale.

Graham Brady needs to learn to shut up

I note that Graham Brady will be on BBC Radio 4's the World This weekend saying things like:

Mr Brady told BBC Radio 4's The World This Weekend: "The changes David Cameron has made in the Conservative Party have been very successful in some places, and have been better at reaching out to a more liberal, metropolitan mindset.

"But they have not been making the same impact further away from London - in the north, in the Midlands, in places which really are an absolutely key electoral battlefield if we're going to win a general election.

"I think some of it is about the issues that David Cameron has chosen to focus more on, and some of it is about just tone."

Frankly he needs to learn to keep those conversations private. Unfortunately since he shot his political career in the foot, the only people who can control him is his constituency association. Let us hope some people with influence can get him to be a bit quieter.

The BBC has this.

Rumblings in the Conservative party

Since Gordon Brown has taken over Labour has led in the polls. The last YouGov poll had them 9% ahead.

There then seems to have been some rumblings in the party, some pointing to the great grammar school row, others to the flooding. Some appear to be questioning David Cameron's leadership.

There is an interesting article in the Spectator by Fraser Nelson, looking at who the potential contenders could be should David Cameron fall under a bus, whilst over the weekend we are going to be treated to a series of articles on who could follow Cameron with the finale being an article on who Labour would most fear.

Personally I don't buy it. David Cameron is the only game in town. However there are concerns about the front bench.

Just where the **** was Peter Ainsworth the Conservative shadow Environment minister during the floods asks Iain Dale? What ever he was actually doing he got no air time. Guido pens a short article on the same theme here.

In this article Ben Brogan expresses some concern over just how many part timers the Conservative party has on its front bench. (I have covered the number of part timers on the Liberal Democrats front bench here).

What it all boils down to is this: If we want to win, and I can assure you many of us do, we are going to have to work very very hard. What is more we are going to have to up our game. Those members of the front bench who can't get air time need to take lessons from those who can and do like David Davies. Also Andy Coulson needs to seriously help up the game. It is not just about press releases.

Over the summer, we need to up our game, hit Labour and hit it hard, day in and day out. There is much work to do.

"You're an intelligent chap Ben, why do you vote Conservative?"

I posted this article a year and a day ago. Some people who read it emailed me to say it changed the way they thought about the Conservative party and indeed may join as a result, so I thought I would give it a run out again.

Here it is:

I used to get this all the time from a friend of mine, who supported Labour.

Well one night before the May 2005 general election I sat down and explained lots of areas of conservative party policy to him and another "New Labour" friend, and they all agreed the policies were good.

So I think the question says more about the person asking it than me.

I have always voted Conservative in national and local elections. During the 2005 general election I was hoping (against all the evidence) for a conservative win. I had read all the policy documents I could find, and had no problem getting people behind the policy. I then saw Tim Yeo on Newsnight talking about the environment and nuclear power. It seemed he had not read the policy document at all. This made me angry. I emailed the party to say that if they did not pull their finger out and win the election, then I would join and give them all a good kick up the A....

Well I have. I joined around the 15th of May 2005 and have since been to a few meetings.

So why a Conservative?

Well, it's all down to what you believe, and to some extent in what order of priority. I believe:

1. In the rights (and responsibilities) of the individual.
2. In The rule of law.
3. That the individual is best placed to make their own decisions.
4. That the individual has the right to make their own mistakes.
5. The right to create wealth.

I suppose the obvious question is "Why believe that?"

Well, any unit larger than the individual is made up of individuals. In law all sorts of non persons are treated as individual persons, for example a company is an individual person at law.

Given that, individuals need rights and protection from each other. A person doing work needs the right to get paid for it and the person who is paying for the work needs the right to expect it to be carried out to a good standard.

Individuals are better placed to know what they want to achieve, what makes them happy and what is for them a fulfilling life. This means giving people choices.

When making choices we make mistakes. "The man who has never made a mistake has never done anything." Furthermore what may be a mistake to you may be my deliberate choice as an adult.

I think the last point is obvious. Everyone should have the right to generate their own wealth and provide for themselves.

So what are conservative party values?

Well, on the conservative party web site there is an article titled built to last
which starts with these two paragraphs:
"Our enduring values mean we believe in trusting people, sharing responsibility, championing freedom and supporting the institutions and culture we share as one nation.

Conservatives are not ideologues. That is why in each generation we change, applying our values to new challenges."

Well it seems to me to close enough.

The next question will be why not any of the other parties, and perhaps I will post another article on that another day!

You can read the originals comments here.

What Conservatism means to me

Is an article that I wrote for the Birmingham University Conservative Future blog here.

Please have a read.