CentreRight

What's your favourite political slogan?

Eric Pickles has just Twittered this:

It is a reminder how many words commonly appear in electioneering slogans. A few words are exhausted by politicians. There's Fresh. New. Change. Britain. Hope. Future. Tomorrow. Time.

My favourite of recent times was Margaret Thatcher's 1987 slogan, 'The Next Moves Forward'. I hated 'New Labour, New Danger'... but it proved to be right.

The old and simplest ones are probably still the best. 'Time for a change' remains the most potent.

How many billions are we about to give away to developing nations to spend on climate change?

Andrew Bolt is asking the question in Australia.

The National Post is asking the question in Canada.

Commonwealth leaders have signed up to a $10bn annual fund to help developing nations address climate change.

It's not clear who will be paying what share.

It's not clear if this will be instead of aid spending that is currently combating hunger and disease or if it is new money?

And, given recent history, it's also possible that the promise of money is dishonest.

We can add this to Matt Sinclair's worry that action on climate change (without wider benefits) is going to be very expensive... especially for the poor in Britain.

Exit polls say Swiss have voted to ban the building of minarets in Switzerland

So say exit polls in what will be the biggest sign yet of Europe's fears at 'Islamification'.  Minarets have been likened to missiles in a distasteful and inflammatory poster campaign:

ITN produced this background report earlier before the vote was known:

Gary McKinnon should stand trial in the USA for the serious crimes he is alleged to have committed

David Burrowes, Conservative MP for Enfield Southgate, is a good friend from university days and he has been a tireless champion of his constituent, the computer hacker Gary McKinnon, who has Asperger's syndrome. The Home Secretary, Alan Johnson, has today decided that McKinnon's extradition to the US should go ahead. The US authorities want to try Mr McKinnon for hacking into military computer systems, apparently in search of information on UFOs. David Burrowes issued this statement in response:

"It is extremely disappointing that the repeated calls for compassion and justice for Gary have been ignored by the Home Secretary. Despite substantial medical grounds giving Alan Johnson the opportunity to stop the extradition he has washed his hands of Gary. I will continue to challenge the decision in Parliament and Gary's lawyers will be seeking a judicial review of a seemingly unreasonable and unfair decision".

From previous discussions of this topic I know that most ConHome readers are on the side of David Burrowes and Mr McKinnon. Although I respect David's compassion and seriousness of purpose I point you to an excellent post by Labour MP Tom Harris on the subject today.  As Tom writes: "[Computer hacking] causes millions of pounds of damage every year. People who hack into other people’s computers should be charged and tried. If convicted, the sentences should be severe."

And to the idea that "Asperger’s sufferers shouldn’t be extradited", Tom continues: "Would this argument be made in favour of an Asperger’s Syndrome sufferer who had committed a less “acceptable” crime, like murder or child abuse?"

We do need more balanced extradition arrangements between Britain and America but we should also extradite Mr McKinnon for the alleged crimes he has committed.

The Chief Reporter of The Times (otherwise known as Ally's cat)

Earlier in the week I noted the anti-Tory tendencies of The Times' 'Chief Reporter', Tom Baldwin. He has a silly story in today's newspaper that is worthy of the Mirror.

After my blog appeared on Monday I received a number of messages from journalists and Conservative politicians about the ways in which Baldwin ran anti-Tory stories throughout the Blair years. Apparently he was known as Ally's cat in recognition of his dutiful service to Alastair Campbell. That The Times continues to give him free rein is very disappointing.

Thought for the Day should either be scrapped or deregulated

The BBC has rejected requests from atheists that the Radio 4 Today programme's Thought for the Day slot be either abandoned or opened up to non-believers.

As a Christian I think the BBC has made the wrong decision.

What Thought for the Day represents isn't authentic belief but sanitised belief. Contributors to TftD tell me that the editors at the BBC heavily restrict what can be said. We're not getting the real voice of Christianity (or Judaism or Islam) but the BBC's definition of acceptable Christianity. What results is mawkish mush. There's endless handwringing about global warming, inequality and bankers. There's nothing on the Resurrection or other biblical teachings. It's a bit like asking a Conservative to give a political comment but banning them from talking about any of the party's core beliefs.

I'd much rather other voices - atheist included - could be heard at 7.50am every morning but that they be authentic and unedited. At the moment I tend to switch off when that day's contributor tells me that 'he's been driving up and down bendy country lanes and life's a bit like that, isn't it?'.

PS The Archbishop of Canterbury's latest intervention - in favour of the Tobin Tax and against economic-growth-at-any-cost (a straw man if ever there was one) - fits the Thought for the Day frame perfectly. Dr Williams' political beliefs are shared by many Christians but they are not intrinsically biblical.

Beware of The Times' Tom Baldwin

Tom Baldwin is back in London, writing political stories for The Times. Before a stint as a reporter for the same newspaper in America he became notorious for writing stories that bore Downing Street's imprint. His close connections to Alastair Campbell are still evident in the number of stories he has helped write in recent weeks about Blair's chances of becoming EU President. Pasted below are the headlines above other stories he has recently written. I don't suggest that he's not capable of writing anti-Labour stories but his heart and head appear dedicated to causing trouble for the Conservatives. If you ever see his name below a headline I urge you to take the story with a very large helping of salt...

Twenty of the best of #SaySorryBrown

Earlier today I started the #SaySorryBrown hashtag on Twitter and it has been trending as a worldwide top ten topic for over five hours.

Our PM is quick - like many lefties - at apologising for other people's sins but rubbish at apologising for his own.

I doubt many minds have been changed but a scroll through the enormous number of Tweets (a lot of them wouldn't make family viewing) has been a powerful reminder of Labour's many, many, many errors.

Here are just twenty of them:

@feyeleanor #saysorrybrown for surrendering the common law and signing away the Queen's sovereignty without an electoral mandate of any kind

@jilly_james #saysorrybrown for your shameful treatment of the Gurkhas

@guidofawkes #saysorrybrown for the highest rate of youth unemployment

@davidtbreaker #saysorrybrown for letting the BNP grow through your bad immigration policy http://bit.ly/2wSglO

@marcuscleaver #saysorryBrown for failing to equip our soldiers properly

@james_callaghan #saysorrybrown for 111 tax rises when your party promised us none!

@djskelton #saysorrybrown for presiding over declining social mobility, worsening poverty and widening inequality

@weedunks #saysorryBrown for claiming Britain was 'best placed' to deal with the recession

@EricPickles Mrs P says I should have said robbing people's pension fund - she is (as ever) correct #saysorrybrown

@deafbhoy #saysorrybrown for more climbdowns than Sir Edmund Hilary

@stevenradams #SaySorryBrown for passing laws like press releases and pretending that everything is fixed afterwards

@LouiseBagshawe #SaySorryBrown for accusing David Cameron of using his family as "props"

@jacr13 #saysorrybrown for Britains debt problem affecting our future generations for years to come

@tomdaylight It would be nice if instead of apologising for Britain's history, Labour celebrated it once in a while #saysorrybrown

@maxatkinson #SaySorryBrown For wrecking my pension plans & deterring millions of others from saving http://bit.ly/c1O14

@tonysharp For not asking the British people for permission to ratify the Lisbon Treaty #saysorrybrown

@Donal_Blaney For creating a climate of smears and innuendo at 10 Downing Street #SaySorryBrown

@GMHuman For abandoning chance to improve Royal Mail by listening to Union paylords #saysorrybrown

@Gillibrand Killing off the RAF http://bit.ly/3PyrYB #SaySorryBrown

@ToryHome For squandering a strong economy and reducing our country to a basket case #SaySorryBrown

The EUSSR and other inappropriate comparisons

Alex Massie takes Janet Daley to task for comparing the EU with the Soviet Union (the evil of which Greg Hands writes about the today).

The 'EUSSR' thing is just one of the wholly inappropriate comparisons that often come up in debates.

Other classics are Bush equals Hitler, Israel equals Nazi Germany and Britain-under-Brown equals Zimbabwe-under-Mugabe.  And last week, of course, we had David Wilshire comparing anger at MPs with the persecution of the Jews in WWII.

Every comparison devalues debate and, more importantly, cheapens the suffering of the people who did live under the USSR, Nazi Germany and Robert Mugabe.

A thought for Remembrance Sunday

"For it has been said so truthfully that it is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us the freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the agitator, who has given us the freedom to protest. It is the soldier who salutes the flag, serves beneath the flag, whose coffin is draped by the flag, who gives that protester the freedom to abuse and burn that flag."

(Zell Miller, 2004).

The BNP have stolen BarackObama.com

It's an extraordinary rip-off. The racist BNP has copied so many features for its new website from the website of America's first black President. Look at the colour scheme, the positioning of the horizontal menu bars, the donate button, the YouTube video in the right hand column...

Please digg the story up and Tweet, Tweet.

PS The disgraceful use of Winston Churchill by the BNP has been attacked by the great Prime Minister's grandson, Nicholas Soames MP.

Newsnight brings balance to its Politics Pen

Welll done Newsnight. Its old four person Politics Pen was - I complained - hugely imbalanced.

No apology was ever made but out go Deborah Mattison and Greg Dyke and in comes the Wall Street Journal's Patience Wheatcroft and a tax professor I've never heard of.  They now sit alongside Matthew Taylor and Digby Jones. Much more balanced.

Iain Martin launches 'FT Watch'

Over at his new Wall Street Journal perch, Iain Martin has launched an 'FT Watch'.

Iain is concerned that the FT is giving the Conservatives unfair treatment.

Iain has produced two instalments so far: The first looked at "a pretty thin story" re “huge nervousness” among business about a possible change to the planning regime under the Tories. "Huge nervousness" indeed! The second concerns the FT's story about a "backlash" against George Osborne on City bonuses. Iain concludes: "If you are going to say that “the City” is attacking the Tories and then fail to include a single quote from a senior figure in the City who could be said to speak for it, you’re inviting ridicule."

Iain can of course be dismissed as working for the Wall Street Journal - a big rival of the FT - but he may be on to something. We must never forget that the 'pink one' has backed Labour at the last FOUR General Elections, including Neil Kinnock in 1992. Dan Hannan has blogged on how the FT is Britain's most Europhile newspaper.

And look at it today: Egging up a letter attacking George Osborne... from Alastair Campbell!

Something for all patriots...

Today is St Crispin’s Day.

Added at 12.30pm for Archbishop Cranmer:

I prefer Branagh actually!

YouTubers hit back against the climate change scare-mongers

Remember the government's 'scare-the-kids' video about climate change?

There are two YouTube responses:

The BNP can't be beaten in sixty minutes

Some quick fire observations:

Nick Griffin did badly. He was evasive on the holocaust in particular but there was no killer blow.

Sayeeda Warsi did well. Bonnie Greer did very well.

I don't however think the BNP will be unhappy at the end of it all. They raised their issues - immigration, in particular.  At times Nick Griffin looked bullied. That'll play into his 'we are victims' tactic.

Forgeting the theatre of tonight the BNP will persist so long as the mainstream parties aren't strong enough on immigration, patriotism and social justice.

The BNP can't be defeated in sixty minutes but tonight showed that Griffin can be beaten in the end.

The BNP's best friends

Don't groups like Unite Against Fascism get it?

The BNP thrive on being painted as the victims of protestors who throw eggs, hurl abuse and confront the police.

UAF are a huge gift to the BNP.  There's more on this on the NothingBritish website.

I've come to believe that putting the BNP on Question Time was a mistake.  An elected party like the BNP cannot be ignored by the mainstream media but hard-hitting one-to-one interviews would be better places to have started the examination of this party's extremist agenda.  Tonight's Question Time is going to be a circus and the BNP will be delighted if the hate hurled at them - outside Television Centre and inside the studio - suggests that they are the reasonable ones and the protestors are the extremists.

The UAF is a small part of the weakness of the wider Left-wing response to the BNP.  They are less interested in beating the BNP and more interested in posing as anti-extremists.

5.15pm: Photographs of the protestors taken by NothingBritish's James Bethell:

Frank Field attacks Thomas Legg's "justice of a roulette wheel"

Frank Field - a truly Rt Honourable gentleman - has blogged his anger at his treatment at the hands of Sir Thomas Legg:

"From honourable member to rogue.  That, thanks to retrospective and unprecedented changes Sir Thomas Legg has made to the rules on MPs' expenses, is how I feel.

You may remember that last year I was part of the small band of MPs who voted to make details of our expenses public. It was a mystery to me why the then Speaker and his allies opposed being open to taxpayers. They were later defeated in the courts.

As soon as the details of our expenses were given to MPs I put mine on my website.  The Daily Telegraph who bought all of this information published a ‘rogues and saints' gallery.  Having considered the evidence, they placed me in the latter category...

Late on Monday I received along with other MPs a letter from Sir Thomas Legg. He recommends I repay just over £7,000: £1,000 housekeeping costs for each year; £1,800 of other household bills, and £230 which I should have claimed from other allowances...

My concern is that nowhere has Sir Thomas explained why he has changed the rules which have resulted in his recalculations.  No matter what the cost of maintaining a second home in my constituency has been, a £3k cut-off point was retrospectively imposed.

Imagine that you have been driving, perfectly legally, through a 30 mile an hour zone at a speed of 25 mph. Imagine then your reaction when, five years later, you receive multiple fines as a decision has been taken to change, retrospectively, the speed limit to 20."

Read the full piece.

Anger among MPs over Legg is close to boiling point. Frank Field could be the MP to lead a backbench insurrection. It has to be backbench - the Tory and Labour leaderships are insisting that Legg is obeyed. David Cameron has said Tory MPs who refuse to do so will not stand as Tory candidates.

But will they have to pay anyway?  As James Forsyth noted on Friday evening, it is far from clear what will happen to MPs that do not repay but retire.

Brown's resignation speech

Made at Speechbreaker.

ConservativeHome's Manchester United event

On the Sunday afternoon and evening before the Tory Conference got formally underway ConservativeHome held an event at Old Trafford with 120 readers, candidates, journalists and clients. The Independent covered it all here.

One person who didn't come was David Cameron. I'm not sure our green leader would have been impressed by the massive sun lamps that adorned the Man Utd pitch. Not a great contribution to global warming!

Our two guests on honour were Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt MP and former Man Utd player and manager, Wilf McGuinness. We learnt that Sir Alex Ferguson may be a red but he doesn't speak for all at United. Wilf admitted to being something of an admirer of Lady Thatcher and photographed below is Jeremy presenting Wilf with a bottle of whisky signed by the former PM:

Some more photographs below (largely of the smaller party that undertook the pre-event stadium tour). My sincere thanks to the European Azerbaijan Society who sponsored the event.

I'm "well to the right" apparently

The cover feature of the FT's Saturday magazine is a profile of members of the new Tory establishment.  It's a very good read.

One of the descriptions attached to my own profile is the conclusion that I am "well to the right" of the Cameroons. I don't mind particularly - not least because the same label is attached to The Spectator's Fraser Nelson and the Centre for Social Justice's Philippa Stroud. Fine company.

Three qualifications, though:

• I'm not sure that "right" is the most helpful of describers. The more interesting debates are between centralisers and localisers, managers and transformers, doves and hawks, social liberals and social conservatives.
• The FT is probably the most Europhile newspaper on 'Fleet Street'.  If it defines Eurosceptic as "right-wing" I should imagine at least 80% of the British people are "well to the right".
• I'd also like to think I'm not a cardboard cut out right-winger.  I have been arguing for the social justice agenda for much of the last ten years.  I support David Cameron's pledge to spend 0.7% of national income on overseas aid.  I support an earned amnesty for illegal immigrants.  I have supported civil partnerships for same sex couples for a number of years.  I believe in liberal interventionism.  I'll stop there.

There are two Sam Coates

There is a Sam Coates who works for The Times and there is a Sam(uel) Coates who works for CCHQ and has just overseen the launch of myConservatives.com.  I mention this because The Guardian has just got them confused.

There are two as this photo proves!

I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate Sam Coates, Rishi Saha and Craig Elder for MyConservatives.com. I think it could be transformational as more and more of the product is rolled out in the months ahead. There will be teething problems but they can be very proud of what they have created.

Tim Montgomerie

Keeping extremism out of the classroom

Over at NothingBritish.com, James Bethell is deeply unimpressed by Ed Balls' attempts to ban BNP teachers from the classroom:

"We think that Ball’s intemperate rhetoric at a party political function dangerously helps the BNP rally its own recruits with a narrative about an over-mighty state only too happy to prosecute racists, “so long as their white”. Ed Balls is out-of-date and undemocratic to imply by association that everyone connected with the BNP is a racist. That group includes 947,000 voters, many of whom come from Labour’s heartland."

James believes that there are probably enough existing powers to deal with the problem:

"Teachers must respect the honour of their profession, and the authorities must not be complacent. That is why the teaching profession is already protected by a number of restrictions, including a requirement for schools to have equal opportunity policies, a duty to promote racial equality, a statutory duty to promote community cohesion, a duty on governing bodies, head teachers and local authorities to forbid the teaching of partisan political activities and disciplinary powers of the GTCE. Where problems have arisen, theses are implemented with vigour. For example, Adam Walker, a BNP activist, is currently faces a General Teaching Council tribunal  for allegedly using a school computer for inappropriate reasons. Despite Balls’s cynical implication, there is no new evidence that there is a BNP problem in our class-rooms."

The Conservatives share a determination to keep the BNP's ideology out of the classroom but also want other extremist indoctrination restricted too.  Hizb ut Tahrir, for example.  Britain's membership of the ECHR restricts the ability to act decisively and James Bethell is probably right to say that strict enforcement of existing guidelines may be ther best way of protecting schoolchildren.

"What kind of government is it that thinks it’s right to provide lessons to 13 year old girls on how to place a condom on a banana and not realise that the subliminal message is 'now go and try that yourself'?"

From Nadine Dorries MP's blog.

Discuss.

Harriet Harman launches heated attack on The Sun for abandoning Labour... and acts nasty against George Osborne

The BBC has a report:

"Let's face it, the nearest their political analysis gets to women's rights is Page 3's news in briefs. We are all angry about the Sun this morning but I say to you: don't get bitter, get better. Don't get outraged, get out there. Don't get mad, get mobilised. Yes, we may be the underdog but we will not be bullied. This underdog is biting back."

She said The Sun knew "nothing about equality".

1.30pm: Paul Waugh has spotted the Deputy Labour Leader's slur on George Osborne.  Ms Harman said that the Shadow Chancellor wanted to replace a SureStart in every community with a lapdancing club.  How much lower can you go, Harriet?