ConservativeHome's Platform

What will the Conservative Parliamentary Party be like after the next general election?

Philip Cowley is Professor of Parliamentary Government at the University of Nottingham, and runs the website www.revolts.co.uk, which monitors backbench behaviour. This Platform piece is a version of a paper that he presented at The Centre for British Politics' recent conference on Cameron's Conservatives.  It is the third of a number of papers we are publishing from the conference.

Should the Conservatives manage to win the next general election – or even if they become the largest single party in a hung parliament – then the most striking thing about the new parliamentary party in the Commons will be how different it will be.  Even without any more retirements those that we already know about, there will be around 180 incumbent Conservative MPs fighting the next election.  To reach the 260 MPs required for minority status as the largest party, the party therefore needs at least 80 brand new MPs.  Under such circumstances, some 31% of the Parliamentary Party will be new.  Achieve the bare minimum for a majority, and some 48% of the parliamentary party will be newly elected.  Similarly, there will be relatively few MPs with experience of sitting on the governent benches.  As the largest single party in a hung parliament, just 31% will have been MPs prior to 1997; achieve a bare majority and those with experience on the government benches would amount to just 25%.

These figures are all a) rough estimates, and b) minima.  More retirements in the run-up to the election will diminish yet further the pool of experienced MPs from which the Conservatives can draw.  And in the event of the Conservatives achieving more than the bare minimum required for an overall majority, then the percentage with experience will be smaller still.  It is entirely plausible that a majority Conservative government will see over half its MPs freshly minted.

It’s already well known that many of these new MPs will be visibly different from the incumbents, with more women MPs and MPs from ethnic minorities.  The majority of the parliamentary party, though, will remain white and male, and this will be especially true at the higher levels of the government.  In one respect, however, the parliamentary party will remain very similar to previous groups of Conservative parliamentarians.  For all the talk of trying to create a parliamentary party in the image of those represented, the absence of working class MPs on the Conservative side of the House will continue.  In 2005, the Conservatives gained 25% of the DE vote and 33% of the C2 vote.  Almost no efforts have been made to ensure that this segment of the population – and of the Conservatives’ own supporters – receives representation on the Conservative benches.

Mark Field MP: Tales from the front line

Mark Field is MP for Cities of London and Westminster and reflects here on how his constituency is being affected by the current economic woes.

Few in the financial services industry will mourn the end of 2008, which will rank as its most tumultuous year certainly since 1974, or perhaps even 1931. Few wise men (or women) would dare predict how the year ahead will shape up.

One thing seems for sure, however. The gloss on the Prime Minister’s much-vaunted global recapitalisation of the banks is already wearing off.

As much as Gordon Brown has relished his portrayal as a grand Keynesian economic genius whose lead the United States and Europe follow, the political weather may be about to turn stormy for our Prime Minister. In his international showboating, he has sought to take the credit for the government’s display of apparently bold and swift action to save the nation’s economy. Household name banks have been provided with an injection of cash so colossal that the UK’s already spiralling levels of debt seem like small change, allowing the Prime Minister to continue the conceit that he has been a steady hand on the economic tiller for the past debt-laden decade. No doubt he will try to elaborate a similar fantasy when the wheels come off the recapitalisation plan. The banks will offer a ready scapegoat.

For now as fear stalks the land, people are understandably desperate to believe the government has the answers. Indeed back in November I wrote here that the broader economic crisis had not yet bitten and people viewed the implosion of the financial sector as a problem that had been contained. But sentiment is changing swiftly and in painting himself as an all-powerful global saviour, Gordon Brown will surely find it ever harder to escape blame when the fear turns to pain and then to anger. Now that the season of goodwill is behind us, harsh reality will assert itself. It will not be a pretty sight.

Eamonn Butler: Alan Walters provided an intellectual underpinning for Margaret Thatcher's economic policies

Sir Alan Walters, economic adviser to Margaret Thatcher and leading monetarist, has died at the age of 82.  Eamonn Butler, Director of the Adam Smith Institute - a pro-freedom policy think-tank based in London, pays tribute to him below.

Walters was a testament to Thatcherite self-help. His education was disrupted by army service, but he pressed on and obtained an external degree from the University of London. He became Professor of Econometrics and Statistics at the University of Birmingham, and then Cassel Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics. He was economic adviser to the World Bank in Washington DC, and a Professor of Economics at Johns Hopkins University, before being recalled by Margaret Thatcher in 1981 to serve as her economic adviser.

At Birmingham in the 1960s, Walters emerged as a strong proponent of monetarism – the view that the money supply must be strictly controlled if inflation was to be held in check. It was a decidedly unfashionable view. The postwar ‘Keynesian Consensus’ thought monetary policy was a weak tool, and boosting output more important than inflation. But as government spending expanded, inflation grew alarmingly. Then unemployment began to rise too – creating ‘stagflation’, something the Keynesians found hard to explain.

Like the American monetarist Milton Friedman, Walters knew there was no trade-off between inflation and unemployment. Inflation makes it impossible to see what prices are really doing – the ‘signal’ of real price movements gets lost in the ‘noise’ of general price rises. So people can’t make rational plans, resources are wasted, and unemployment rises.

Through papers for the Institute of Economic Affairs and others, Walters insisted that money was actually a hugely powerful instrument. There had to be strict limits on how much money governments created. You could not just spend your way out of a recession.

Michael Fabricant MP: I have long defended the BBC but the World Service's coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict means I can no longer do so

Michael Fabricant is MP for Lichfield.

I have lost confidence in the BBC World Service in their ability to present news in an unbiased manner. And I will be making a formal complaint to the Chairman of the BBC Trust.

Yes. Perhaps I am one of the few remaining MPs who has consistently defended the BBC for their standards of journalism and impartiality.  And when occasionally I have been angered by the output of their domestic services, I have consoled myself with the high quality of BBC World Service reportage. No longer.

Being abroad for me always involves my taking a short wave radio in my back-pack. India, where I am now, remains on the ever reducing list of areas where the BBC is available on the radio. And I have been listening for several hours each day.

I have been horrified and angered by the coverage of the Israel-Gaza conflict.  While paying scant regard to the provocation of 10,000 rockets fired at Israeli civilians from Gaza over the last seven years, the BBC has chosen to broadcast 'human interest' stories reminiscent of salacious photos in the cheaper red top newspapers.

Thus I heard a heart rending report from a Palestinian in Cyprus how he imagined - yes: IMAGINED! - Gaza's streets would be running with the blood of dead Arab children.

Roger Helmer MEP: Let's bash the motorist - again

Roger Helmer is an MEP for the East Midlands and Chairman of The Freedom Association.

Two for the price of one - This week brought news of new health tests for drivers, and of proposals (from the "Commission for Integrated Transport" and the "Motorists' Forum", whoever they are) for "voluntary" Speed Limiters to be fitted to cars. I assume they will be "voluntary" in the same way that the introduction of Income Tax was said to be "temporary".

Who pays for this proliferation of pointless quangos, by the way? Oh yes, don't remind me. It's us. Yet I'm a motorist, and the Motorists' Forum has never asked for my advice, or whether I wanted them to represent my interests!

Of course some elderly motorists are dangerous, and already doctors and concerned younger relatives take steps to ensure that they stop driving. But one can see the way these proposed new tests will go. They will be compulsory. They will cost (we are told) up to £80. They will take no account of the fact that while older drivers may have slower reactions, they are also typically much more experienced and much more careful. Nor will they trade-off the balance of risk against the social utility of driving. For many older people, especially in rural areas, a driving ban is practically a death sentence. If I thought for a moment that the approach would be reasonable and proportionate, I might be more relaxed about it. But once more we feel the dead hand of State bureaucracy fingering our driving licences.

Then Speed Limiters, which will actually take over control of your car and brake as you pass the thirty sign. They claim that this will save "29% of injuries". Lies, lies, lies. The fact is that excessive speed is the primary cause of only around 13% of accidents. But of those, around half were actually within the speed limit at the time (there are plenty of occasions on the road when even a speed within the limit can be dangerous in the particular circumstances). So the percentage of accidents saved cannot exceed single figures. Meantime they wholly fail to take into account the additional accidents which will be caused (as several road safety organisations have pointed out) by sudden unexpected braking, by the driver losing control of the vehicle, or indeed by the sheer mind-numbing tedium of having a black box do half the driving for you. On balance, I see no safety bonus at all.

But of course the Zeitgeist requires us also to consider the effect on Global Warming. These speed limiters will save petrol, and save the planet! Again, lies, lies lies (even if you accept climate alarmism, which is a whole 'nother question). The advocates of speed limits confuse laboratory conditions with the real world. Yes it is true that other things being equal (as they so rarely are) a car travelling at a steady 70 mph will use less fuel that the same car at 80 mph. It is also true that in my car, I find that if I do a lot of motorway driving and return an average speed of (say) 55 mph, I get fuel consumption of over 40 mpg, whereas if I do a lot of town and local driving and return an average speed of (say) 30 mph, I may get less than 30 mpg. It is congestion and bad roads that waste petrol, not speed.

As usual, the do-gooders are aiming at the wrong target. Just as the drink-drive laws penalise the responsible driver who had a glass of wine with his supper, but leave untouched the alcoholics, the lager-louts and the joy-riders, so this measure will inconvenience the responsible majority, while the irresponsible minority will press the over-ride button. These are just two more examples of the way in which the State seeks to control the life of the individual in ever more detail. It's about time to say we've had enough.

Kieron O'Hara: Back to Basics? David Cameron on Personal Responsibility

Kieron O'Hara is a senior research fellow in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. This Platform piece is a version of a paper that Dr O'Hara presented at The Centre for British Politics' recent conference on Cameron's Conservatives.  It is the second of a number of papers we are publishing from the conference.

David Cameron has shown remarkable flair in driving the political agenda. As the Conservatives had little hope of making a splash in the Glasgow East by-election in July 2008, one might have thought that his speech kicking off their campaign would be an irrelevance. Far from it: Cameron’s remarks were widely reported and discussed.

Most of the speech, on ‘broken Britain’, focused on well-known aspects of Conservative family, crime and welfare policy. But the last few minutes dwelt on a new theme – personal responsibility. This passage was often misreported, sometimes for satirical effect, as an attack on fat people; actually, Cameron spelt out the connection between personal choice and risk. “We talk about people being ‘at risk of obesity’ instead of talking about people who eat too much and take too little exercise. … Social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make.” Politicians, and wider society, had avoided expressing this truism for fear of causing offence.

The response was remarkable. Nick Clegg demanded an apology, while Cameron’s greatest critic Simon Heffer applauded. ConservativeHome.com’s immediate reaction was extremely positive. Most of the press agreed that it was a bold new step. A YouGov poll taken a few days later showed overwhelming public support. The Conservatives themselves did not improve their share of the vote in Glasgow East, but finished a creditable third.

The speech was a departure from previous rhetoric. Cameron generally talks in social rather than personal terms, focusing on parental responsibilities and corporate social responsibility in allowing flexible family-friendly work practices. This contradicted some things in early speeches. In 2006, during the ‘brand decontamination’ phase, he had claimed that “we’re always telling people to be more responsible,” while in 2008, this had shifted to “we [refuse] to make judgments about what is good and bad behaviour.” His early discussions of youth crime tried to shift the focus from the youths themselves to poor parenting. His speeches of 2007 moved back to more familiar Conservative territory, but the main themes were still social, a “social covenant” and a “framework of incentives to encourage civility.”

Dr Nick Randall: The challenge for Conservatives in the North

Dr Nick Randall is a Senior Lecturer in British Politics at the University of Newcastle.  This Platform piece is a version of a paper that Dr Randall presented at The Centre for British Politics' recent conference on Cameron's Conservatives.  It is the first of a number of papers we hope to publish from the conference.

Northern England hasn’t always been hostile territory for the Conservatives. Over 45% of northern constituencies returned Conservative MPs in 1955 and 1959. Under Margaret Thatcher the party secured 42% of northern seats in 1983. Even in 1992 the party won a third of the north’s seats.  Yet just 17 northern Conservative MPs withstood the party’s rout in 1997 and by 2005 the 19 northern seats won suggested an improvement that was barely perceptible.

That the party’s northern decline has been shallower than in Scotland or Wales - nor on the scale encountered by Labour in the south of England prior to 1997 - is of limited consolation. A quarter of the seats the party needs to secure a workable majority are in the north. At worst, a stalled northern revival could deprive the party of a majority at the next election. At best, underperformance in the north will require compensating gains elsewhere but in so doing would cast doubt upon David Cameron’s ambition “to govern for the whole country, not just a part of it” and question the extent of the party’s modernisation and ‘detoxification’. Powerful incentives therefore exist to engineer a northern revival.

Some might see the socio-economics of the north as an obstacle to that objective. A north-south socio-economic divide persists. The north has more public sector jobs, higher trade union membership and lower levels of entrepreneurship than the south. However, such a divide is fuzzy - unemployment is higher in the West Midlands and London and public expenditure per head is considerably higher in London than the north. Furthermore, the north has its archipelagos of wealth. That Sheffield, for example, contains one of the richest constituencies outside London (Hallam) as well as one of the most deprived (Brightside) demonstrates the socio-economic heterogeneity of the north. 

This mirrors the Conservative task. The Conservatives must win a socio-economically diverse range of northern constituencies. Not only will the party need to win affluent seats like Cheadle and Leeds North West they will also need victories in less affluent seats as Bradford West. Recent electoral history reminds us that, in the context of an increasingly de-aligned electorate, that they can do so.  If Margaret Thatcher could win over affluent working class voters in the south, in principle David Cameron can do the same in the north.

Harry Benson: Labour’s family policy – new beginnings or same old hang-ups?

Harry Benson runs Bristol Community Family Trust, a local charity that is pioneering short relationship courses that teach couples how to stay together, and was deputy chair of the family policy group that produced Fractured Families and Breakthrough Britain.

On Thursday I went to the high profile DCSF “relationship summit” introduced by Ed Balls, Beverley Hughes and PM’s wife Sarah Brown. The one day conference was a response to the “Kids in the middle” campaign, about the need to support children and parents experiencing problems, separation and family breakdown.

DCSF have launched an accompanying paper Families in Britain: an evidence paper, which the Daily Mail was quick to pounce on as “Labour finally admits married parents are better for children”. Not surprisingly, much of the content and conclusions of both paper and conference mirrors the analysis and conclusions reached by the various CSJ family reports, produced by Dr Samantha Callan who attended the day with me. However there are also fundamental differences.

The relationship summit made lots of good noises. And whatever preconceived notion I might have had from his media exposure, Ed Balls spoke extremely well about his personal experience of family life and about the importance of both prevention and support.

David Cameron MP: The state must not disown asylum seekers

At yesterday's press conference Tim Montgomerie asked David Cameron for his reaction to the Centre for Social Justice's report on asylum seekers.  The Conservative leader promised to answer via a post on ConservativeHome.  Here it is...

Thank you for the opportunity to respond to Tim’s question more fully. ConservativeHome is a great source of news and commentary for Conservatives and I welcome the robust debate it brings.

Let’s be clear straight away that there is a difference between economic migrants and asylum seekers. Too often politicians and journalists casually conflate these two very different things. Asylum seekers account for just 4% of our total immigration figures, and they are usually motivated by social issues rather than economic incentives.

The report identifies the key fact that the current system is failing everyone involved because of the delays in coming to a final decision. As things are, just 3% leave the country within three months of the determination of their case and 23% of those initial decisions end up getting reversed after lengthy appeals processes. Many end up working illegally to survive, and some are left in limbo for several years.

Our priority in Government would be to minimise these delays, to the advantage of both the taxpayer and the genuine refugee. If you can get the vast majority of cases decided in six months then the issue of being temporarily allowed to work or receive benefits becomes much less important.

I naturally want people to work and contribute to our society if they can, and I’m uncomfortable with the state completely disowning asylum seekers to the extent that in a developed country like ours 26,000 of them are reliant on Red Cross parcels. After all, these statistics represent real people who understandably want to live their lives in safety and comfort.

Like the CSJ I want both an efficient and humane asylum policy, and this report is a typically compassionate and innovative contribution to the debate. The Government’s approach is neither firm nor fair, and ineffective as a result.

Dan Novak: It is time to end the Nanny State and let Brits be Brits

Canadian-born Dan Novak trades interest rates and currencies in the City.

I recently read one of those stories that offers up so many lessons that it is difficult not to be enlightened by it.  In one comedic report, it summed up New Labour's obsession with regulation and control, and its fear of creativity and the unorthodox.

Liam Byrne likes his day just so.  Espresso at 3pm, thoughts in grid form - "Moving something from a grid slot is a very, very big deal" - and explanations kept to 60 seconds (no word on whether he wants his explanations in puppet form or by way of football analogies).  In the (2006, when he was a junior minister) paper, entitled "Working with Liam Byrne", he spends 11 pages detailing how he is to be treated, as if he were a basic material, like a thick plank of wood.  This might be forgivable if he were an eccentric genius, but he is not that or even a regular genius.  He is an average man of average effect who is desperate to lord above other men.  Seeing that he could not do this over his own cabinet, lest the Opposition, he plays Little Caesar to the only people he can: his civil servants, who were assigned to him.

This story would merely be laughable if it did not epitomise the ethos of New Labour.  This is a government mesmerized by tax, regulation, detention, and above all, control.  And right now, both the Government and Britain is trapped in a downward spiral of doublethink.  New Labour knows that there is no regulation-and-repression related problem that cannot be solved with more regulation and repression.  If tax receipts are higher, it is a sign that higher taxes are working and should be extended.  If they get Laffered and take in less tax, it is merely a sign that their tax hikes have not gone far enough.  Keynes, never my favourite economist but easily the most quotable, summed this up nicely when he said "When someone convinces me I am wrong, I change my mind.  What do you do, sir?"  Most people would also answer that they change their mind.  New Labour just stands there with a stupid look on their face, and, when unable to come up with an answer, sends Andrew Marr to come up with something that sounds like one.

This is not just an affront to logic; it is an affront to Britain.  Scan any list of the greatest Britons and you will not find many Liam Byrnes.  What you will find is a collection of oddballs bordering on freaks.  Isambard Kingdom Brunel might best be remembered for his bridges and the Great Western Railway, but was rarely seen without a smoking apparatus, invented the Bar (not the establishment, but the piece of furniture used in such establishments), and was known to inhale gold sovereign coins.  Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was a philanderer of small stature who repeatedly disobeyed direct orders in order to deal Britain's enemies a string of naval upsets rivalled only by Francis Drake.  Closer to our time, Francis Crick revolutionised genetics when he tripped out on LSD and conceptualized the double helix.

Martin Callanan MEP: Now is not the time to be limiting our working time

Martin Callanan is Conservative MEP for North East England.

Many thousands of people who had jobs at the start of 2008 will be facing up to the prospect of being without work in 2009. In a time of serious and deepening recession we should be doing all we can to help those who want to work to do so. However, in the European Parliament that philosophy is quite thin on the ground, even though some MEPs will themselves be out of a job after the European election in June.

This week the parliament, sitting in Strasbourg, will once again be debating the Working Time Directive opt-out, which allows employees who want to work more than the statutory 48-hour weekly maximum the chance to do so. Since the opt-out was introduced ten years ago it has been constantly under attack from socialists.

The Labour Government, seeking to portray itself in a business-friendly light, was committed from the outset to maintaining the opt-out. Ironically, the foremost opponents in the European Parliament of the Government’s position have been Labour MEPs. Back in 2005, Tony Blair held a meeting with Tory MEPs in his role as holder of the Council presidency, during which he implored us to support his Government’s policy because he couldn’t count on his own party’s representatives to do so.

For several years the Council has been deadlocked over this issue, despite the European Parliament voting in 2005 to abolish the opt-out. Britain has led a blocking minority of countries opposed to ending the opt-out. The impasse was resolved in the summer but it came at a high price. France, the current holder of the presidency and a leading voice in favour of scrapping the opt-out, agreed to preserve the opt-out if Britain would remove its objections to the Agency Workers Directive.

Andrew Mitchell: A silver lining in the climate talks cloud?

Andrew Mitchell MP, Shadow International Development Secretary, reflects on his visit to the UN climate change talks in Poznan and what the outcome of the talks means for the world's poorest people.

The world's very poorest people are already being hit hard by the effects of climate change.  For millions of poor people, the effects of global warming are not just an abstract concern but a daily peril.  Farmers in Uganda who used to plant their crops by the seasons can no longer predict when the rain will come.  Families in the mountains of Nepal face floods on an increasing and ever more devastating basis. Communities in Bangladesh – and, in fact, whole island nations like the Maldives and Tuvalu – risk seeing their homes literally submerged for good as temperatures and therefore sea levels rise. Desertification in Sudan has, many argue, contributed to the tensions in Darfur.  Put bluntly, climate change threatens to drown, starve or kill many people in developing countries in the years ahead.

Most developing countries have hardly contributed to climate change and won't be doing so for the foreseeable future.  Alongside the Chinas and the Indias – whose growth is pulling millions of people out of poverty but also pouring millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year – are the Zambias, the Malis and the Nigers, whose economies are rooted in subsistence farming or small-scale agriculture.  Countries like these have the right to expect support from those that have polluted the most

So while progress is essential on agreeing emission reductions targets for industrialised and industrialising nations, world leaders also needed to get closer at this week's UN climate change conference to an effective and equitable deal for those on the other side of the problem.  A new UN Adaptation Fund was approved in principle in Bali a year ago.  The Fund was designed to help developing countries prepare for the current and future effects of climate change and, provided leaders could nail down agreement over the details, be up and running fairly quickly.  It would then provide the starting point for a bigger fund in a post-Kyoto treaty.

The challenge this week in Poznan was to turn aspiration into reality.  And as the conference drew to a close, management of the Adaptation Fund was, indeed, eventually agreed – meaning that money can now be disbursed to poor countries who urgently need it as early as next year.  But real progress will now be essential over the next 12 months on fleshing out the details of a bigger fund for the longer term.  Solid agreement will be required on the true scale of the need, how much it will cost, where funds should come from and how they should be spent.

The Case for a Conservative Policy on Airships

Nicholas J. Rogers runs Rogers Airship Company, a business specialising in operating indoor airships for advertising purposes, and is a Conservative candidate for Lambeth Borough Council.

There was a time when the airship was seen by the world as the natural and undisputed future of transcontinental travel. The Zeppelin Company in Germany led the field in the development of airship technology, building a succession of successful, ocean-hopping rigid airships such as the famous Graf Zeppelin.

These aircraft were operated as a means of transporting passengers efficiently over long distances – a capability not offered by the aeroplanes of the era. The received wisdom was that over short distances, the aeroplane would suffice but that for journeys between continents the only way to travel was by airship – quicker and cheaper than ocean liners, and just as luxurious.

We all know how the airship dream of the 1920s and 30s ended – the horrific pictures of the Hindenburg disaster, caused by hydrogen lifting gas, became photographic icons of the 20th Century. Since that time, the airship has struggled to regain any sort of prominence and their use has been relegated to that of flying billboard or aerial sightseeing platform.

The fall of the airship is one of the only incidences in mankind’s history where a highly-developed technology has been expunged without anything taking its place (Concorde is another example), for although the aeroplane appears to be the master of the skies, there are many tasks which airships can perform that simply cannot be done by other aircraft.

Antonia Cox: What the aircraft carrier delays tell us about Labour’s defence failures

Antonia Cox is a leader writer at the London Evening Standard, author of the Policy Exchange defence publication The Best Kit, and on the Conservative Candidates List.

The biggest ships the Royal Navy has ever ordered will enter service at least a year or two late. Despite MoD promises of “minimal implications to jobs”, the announcement by Defence Secretary John Hutton yesterday must have been a painful one for Gordon Brown. Back in July, the Scottish media were told of a “dream come true”; £3 billion order for the two aircraft carriers. This would secure or support 10,000 jobs in the Clyde yards, where the Prime Minister’s father once ministered to the poor, along with 1,600 at Rosyth, next door to the Prime Minister’s own constituency. Now, the estimated £1.5 billion hole in the MOD budget means the announcement -  which also included some bad news for other projects - could be followed by further delays or cutbacks. The shipyard unions will not be happy with Mr Brown.

More importantly, the news highlights both Labour’s failures in defence and also the scope for the Conservatives to offer a much better thought out defence policy that would support our armed forces as they deserve, despite intense spending pressures.

Labour cannot deny the aircraft carriers are essential. In a world of changing threats to British interests, the ability to conduct expeditionary warfare is vital. Terrorists and threats to the shipping that still carries much of our trade can come from anywhere, not necessarily places where there are allies nearby to offer airbases or passage through air space. Anyone who heard how the Somali pirate attacks drove up the oil price can see that.

Is the rise of American-modelled libertarianism in the UK a consequence of an escalating EU?

Amy Selman is a former researcher to David Davis MP and was external relations co-ordinator at the Leadership Insititute in Washington between 2007 and 2008.

Working in Washington DC during the presidential primary campaigns, I was intrigued by the strong libertarian movement in American politics, and by their ability to shape the debate. In comparison, our acceptance of the strangling bureaucracy of the UK – imposed by local government, Whitehall and the Brussels – seemed spineless. Yet since returning, I’ve observed that the consensus in this country also seems to be that the individual can no longer have his voice ignored. The ‘grassroots’ are starting to fight back.

There is more than a grain of truth in the statement that people are increasingly noticing the heavy-handedness of this Government. The newspapers are full of stories of excessive interference – from councils inserting ‘spy cameras’ in their resident’s dustbins to the misuse of human rights legislation. To list the many attacks on our civil liberties – from detention without charge, ID cards and a DNA database containing innocent people - would not add anything new to the debate dominating this week.

The arrest of Damian Green MP has prompted simmering resentment to resurface. It is not only our politicians who are horrified by the way New Labour has run Whitehall, sidelined Parliament, and micro-managed local government. As the mass of coverage in the tabloid, broadsheet, and new media shows, this is a resentment shared by those in Wigan as well as Westminster.

Matthew Elliott reviews Jesse Norman's Compassionate Economics

Matthew Elliott is Chief Executive and Co-Founder of the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Compassionate Economics: The social foundations of economic prosperity by Jesse Norman (Policy Exchange/University of Buckingham Press, 2008)  is available on Amazon.co.uk or can be downloaded free of charge through www.compassionateeconomics.com.

Jesse himself outlined the book's main themes on ConHome's Platform last week.

Over the summer, when the Conservatives had a steady double-digit poll lead and Labour was flirting with regicide, public affairs companies across London started printing glossy brochures forecasting what a Cameron Government would do. Most of these brochures were a load of tosh, with “exclusive insights” cribbed from ConservativeHome and “in-depth analysis” which could have read directly at the Spectator’s Coffee House blog. Now we are officially in recession, people wishing to spend their money more wisely and gain a real insight into David Cameron’s Conservatives should read Compassionate Economics by Jesse Norman.

The main objective of the book is to reclaim economics as a discipline which recognises the wider social context in which people operate. Traditionally, economists recognised this. As well as writing the Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith also wrote The Theory of Moral Sentiments, which highlighted “pity and compassion” as key drivers of individuals. As Friedrich Hayek – himself a lawyer and political philosopher as well as a Nobel Prize winning economist – once remarked, nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist. This is why Jesse Norman turns his fire on modern, mathematics-obsessed economists.

The third chapter of Compassionate Economics opens with a wonderful quote from Kenneth E. Boulding: “Mathematics brought rigour to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.” Traditionally, economists used the notion that people were perfectly rational utility-maximisers operating under perfect information as simply an assumption with useful predictive powers. The problems started, according to Jesse Norman, when it was transformed from an assumption into a description of how people operate in the real world.

Caroline Spelman MP: The Conservative Party machine is ready for the General Election

Caroline Spelman MP is Chairman of the Conservative Party.  In this article she responds to ConservativeHome's concerns at CCHQ's financial strategy.

In the current economic climate, any responsible organisation, particularly one that asks the public for donations, has a duty to look at where it can tighten its spending belt.

Undeniably that's always going to be painful for the people who are caught up in the process and it would be entirely wrong of anyone to suppose that the changes we are making at CCHQ are a personal reflection on any individual.  In fact, it is the dedication, commitment and diligence of our staff that makes these changes so difficult, but the truth is that these changes have to be made.

They are about making sure the resources entrusted to us by all those people who are desperate for a change in government are used to maximum effect when it comes to winning the next general election.

As such, they form part of a series of measures implemented by David Cameron since he became leader, to put in place the structure to ensure that CCHQ is fully focussed on fighting and winning the next election.

If we want to form the next Government, we need to lead by example and unlike Labour our first priority has been to get our finances in order.

When David Cameron became leader, the party’s debt was £20 million. That debt has now been reduced to £8 million and the party is actually running responsible budget surpluses - £4.2 million in 2006 and £1.6 million in 2007.

Jeffrey Peel: Changing Northern Ireland’s political landscape

Jeffrey is Vice Chairman and Spokesperson for the Conservatives in Northern Ireland. 

Saturday 6th December, 2008 was the day when a leader of the Conservative Party changed Northern Ireland politics forever.  Evidence can be found in places other than David Cameron’s speech to the UUP conference on Saturday – a speech that made clear that Northern Ireland is no longer a no-go area for Conservatives or real politics.  There is other, more tangible, evidence - a blog post on Slugger O’Toole by a lady from West Belfast called Kathleen.  She attended a Cameron Direct event immediately before David made his way to the UUP Conference.

Kathleen has previously voted SDLP or Sinn Fein but, having listened to Cameron, she’d be prepared to vote Conservative, given what she’d heard. 

And others in the Cameron Direct audience were moved too.  Young people were in the majority in the room of around one hundred people who were fortunate enough to get places at the over-subscribed event.  And the questions focused on real issues that mattered to people – healthcare, fuel poverty, the economy, alternative energy.  Not one question was asked about devolution of policing or the Irish language or the border – issues upon which the DUP and Sinn Fein fixate. 

What Kathleen heard was a Conservative leader make clear that Conservatives defined Unionism in a way that resonated with her.  She was moved by Cameron’s commitment to ending social exclusion – and doing something about the social decay evident in places like West Belfast.  She made clear that if Conservatives came into her constituency and made the same points that Cameron had made, they’d get her vote. 

William Mason: A recipe for saving £15bn of taxpayers' money

Freedom for Public Services by William Mason and Jonathan McMahon is published by the Centre for Policy Studies. The full report can be downloaded here.

I worked for Sir David Arculus when he chaired the Better Regulation Task Force, which in 2003 published Regulation – Less is More. This was adopted by Tony Blair, as the radical proposals we offered for cutting back the administrative costs of regulation appealed to his desire to do good. 

I moved on from the BRTF shortly after the end of David’s term of office, pleased with what we had achieved but knowing that there were still mountains to climb. In particular, I felt that taking the salami-slicing approach to regulatory reform was never going free us from destructive bureaucracy and poor regulation.  Rather, I concluded that radical structural reform is necessary, particularly with regard to regulation of our public services. 

In our report for the Centre for Policy Studies, Jonathan McMahon and I have set out how huge layers of bureaucracy and regulation can be swept away.  We challenge a notion of central control that is deeply embedded within the consciousness of too many involved in politics and working in Whitehall. In particular, we do not accept the idea that for the public to have the standards they want, policing, medicine, education and social care need to be run centrally from Whitehall.  We do not accept that we need tens of thousands of bureaucratic functionaries to check that standards are appropriately set and met.

In writing our report, we have spoken to many senior and junior professionals within the public services.  We were depressed at the tales of enveloping bureaucracy inhibiting dedicated people from doing their best for fellow citizens but heartened at the reception we received and encouraged by the fact they wanted to help us set out a vision of a better future.  We were struck by how many senior and junior public servants were convinced that, if they were given freedom to manage, they could use the same resources so much more creatively to deliver better results for our citizens.

Rachel Joyce: We can cut costs and protect vital public services

Dr Rachel Joyce is our PPC in Harrow West. She has been an NHS doctor for twenty years and has worked as a director of a PCT. She also has two children who are in the state schooling system.

I fully support the notion that we should “live within our means” and George Osborne is right that we should not be looking to increase public sector debt any further. We are uniquely poorly equipped for this recession, and according to the OECD, likely to therefore fare worse than other G7 countries. This means we need more prudence in the management of the public purse.

The Labour party cannot manage anything effectively – their top-down, gimmick-ridden and target oriented policies by their very nature waste resources, whether it be manpower or financial resources. Their large projects such as the NHS IT system, identity cards or defence procurement offer the usual Labour triple whammy of loss of personal and professional freedom, overall failure to achieve the original objective and runaway costs. I agree with Andrew Haldenby’s article that reform of public services is essential to ending the boom and bust of public services. 

The one thing however that Labour can do effectively - is spin. They will be putting forward the charge of “Tory cuts” and unless we are able to tackle this head-on, this will damage us.

Most of my colleagues in the NHS and other public services are dedicated staff who have witnessed in their time important or vital services cut or not funded – often due to an apparent shortage of money. We have seen local hospitals and GP surgeries close, class sizes that are too large, teacher shortages, and police that don’t have time to record, let alone investigate many crimes. They fear public sector cuts and what they may mean for vital services.

These same public sector colleagues and the public would also be the first to agree there is significant waste in public services – not just of money, but also of professionals’ time. In the NHS the main problem is bureaucracy, mostly caused by targets. These same people would like to vote for a political party that will allow professionals to get on with the job, serving the public rather than the politicians. They would like to live in a country that is responsible, and lives within its means. But they need some reassurance before they give us the public purse.