ConservativeHome: Sunday 7th May 2006

BLOGS

ToryDiary: Who's afraid of Gordon Brown? and William Norton's Elections Movies Review

DEAR MR BLAIR, PLEASE QUIT

Click the graphic to enlarge the rebels' letter >>>

"Labour MPs are to give Tony Blair a deadline of less than three months to finalise plans for his departure from Downing Street. They are ready to publish a letter — seen by The Sunday Times — signed by at least 50 backbenchers and former ministers. They urge Labour’s ruling body to step in if the prime minister refuses to reveal a timetable by the end of July for when he will step aside." - Sunday Times

DOES BROWN WANT BLAIR OUT NOW?

"When John Major replaced Margaret Thatcher he emphasised how different he was from her. It was as though Britain had already had a change of government without the need to change the party. That won him another term. The same message will work for Brown, too. As Brown and Blair meet this weekend to discuss their futures, the chancellor ought to hope that the prime minister will stay a bit longer to absorb fully the blame for the catastrophes of this year. But the backbenchers convene on Monday. The election results and the reshuffle may unleash a party rebellion and hasten the change in Downing Street. If so, it will have nothing to do with Brown. Really." - Michael Portillo, Sunday Times

"The Chancellor, through a co-ordinated network of allies and outriders, has declared that the new Cabinet line-up is unimpressive and divisive. His message is coded but clear: Mr Blair can pacify the governing Labour party with only one move – setting a date for his departure from 10 Downing Street." - The Business

Andrew Smith MP (Independent on Sunday) wants Blair to go very soon; another former minister, Denis MacShane (Observer) disagrees:

"Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make into Labour MPs. At times over the past 48 hours, Labour MPs must have been mad to throw themselves in front of any camera with appeals for the most successful head of government in the West to stand down. It used to be said of the Tories that their secret weapon was loyalty. Labour is showing all the symptoms of reverting to the serial hates that destroyed Wilson and Callaghan."

DID BUSH KNIFE STRAW?

"Jack Straw's fate was sealed in a phone call from the White House to Tony Blair last month, according to the former foreign secretary's friends. They say President George Bush was furious that Mr Straw said it was "nuts" to use nuclear weapons against Iran, an option reported to be under active consideration in Washington." - Independent on Sunday

TORIES DIDN'T QUITE REACH 40%

"David Cameron’s Tories took a small but important step on the road to Downing Street last week with their most convincing local election performance in more than a decade. But they did not quite reach the key 40% share of vote. An exclusive Sunday Times analysis of voting both this year and at previous local elections in more than 1,900 wards across the country shows that the Conservatives had a national equivalent share of the vote of 39%." - Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher, Sunday Times

GEOFFREY HOWE LEADS ANOTHER REBELLION AGAINST A TORY LEADER

"The most senior grandees in the Conservative Party have warned David Cameron that they will fight him tooth and nail on "modernising" plans to create an elected House of Lords. In an unprecedented rebellion, almost 100 peers, including Baroness Thatcher, Lord Howe, the former foreign secretary, and Lord Lawson, the former chancellor, staged a showdown with the Tory leadership last week to voice opposition to the party's Lords reform plans." - Sunday Telegraph

TORY FISHING POLICY

"Mr Cameron has quietly dumped what for eight years was arguably the Tories' most distinctive single policy on Europe - the pledge, endorsed by all his three predecessors as party leader, that a future Tory government would extricate Britain from the disastrous Common Fisheries Policy and reclaim national control of Britain's fishing waters... But Mr Cameron has handed over the task of devising a new policy to John Selwyn Gummer, the most unpopular fisheries minister we have ever had. This was precisely because, as a fervent Europhile, Mr Gummer meekly accepted whatever Brussels proposed, however damaging to both fish stocks and British interests. The likelihood is that Mr Gummer will now sign up the Tories to accepting more of the same. It is unfortunately a measure of Mr Cameron's leadership that he should not have had the courage to admit openly to Britain's surviving fishermen that he has scrapped the only policy in which they could see a glimmer of hope or common sense. How wonderfully logical, too, that he should wish to see his party once again endorsing a policy that has created one of the major environmental catastrophes of our time." - Christopher Booker, Sunday Telegraph

Related ToryDiary link: EPP exit won't satisfy Tory members' appetite for Euroscepticism

YEO WANTS REAL GREENERY

"A former Tory environment minister has added to growing pressure on David Cameron to match his green rhetoric with bold policies... Yeo told The Observer that a crucial test for Cameron was whether he would slap high taxes on domestic air travel and invest the revenue in high-speed trains." - Observer

Related YourPlatform link: Why the growth in air travel has to be stopped

UKIPOCRISY

"The leader of the anti-immigration UK Independence party (UKIP) has imported cheap east European labourers to renovate his West Country mansion. Roger Knapman, an MEP and UKIP’s leader since 2002, hired Polish workers through his son, who runs a company that specialises in bringing foreign labour to Britain." - Sunday Times

MARK OATEN

"After keeping silent since a rent boy scandal forced him to quit frontline politics, Mark Oaten writes about disgrace, forgiveness and his personal demons" - Sunday Times

EUROZONE WOES

"Membership of the euro and its one-size-fits-all interest rates mean that Spain is undergoing an unsustainable consumer boom to be followed by a savage bust, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) will predict. Spain has been one of the few success stories of western Europe in the past 20 years. The warning comes as leading euro-zone economies will this week announce their first-quarter growth numbers and once again drastically underperform the world’s fastest-growing economies. The euro zone is expected to have grown by 0.6%, the equivalent of an annualised 2.4%, exactly half the rate of America’s 4.8% annualised first-quarter expansion. A year-on-year rate of 2% is expected for the euro zone." - The Business

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