thetorydiary

Tories project £5,500 per second debt clock on to Battersea Power Station

Marriage is special says Cameron, but promises support for every family

Labour believes that Tory support for marriage is an electoral weak point. Harriet Harman was hysterical on the subject at the weekend.

David Cameron addressed the subject yesterday in a speech to Gingerbread, the leading pressure group representing single parents in the UK.

Repeating a phrase first used by David Willetts he insisted that the Conservative Party would never be at war with lone mothers:

"The discussion about families is often reduced to a black and white debate. You’re either for one model of the family or another. You’re either an evangelist for the 1950s nuclear family or you think that traditional structures are redundant in the modern world. I say that families come together in many different ways and we should be there for all of them.

Indeed I stood up at our party conference a few years ago and said that as far as I am concerned commitment matters whether it’s between a man and a woman, a man and a man or a woman and a woman. To me, a strong family is defined most of all by the love that’s in it.  I don’t think this is incompatible with our support for committed relationships.

Most people don’t start a relationship with the hope it will end. So I believe we need to do more to help where we can. That’s why my Party will back marriage in the tax system and end the couple penalty that pays people to live apart rather than together.

But – and let me be very clear about this – the flip side of this coin isn’t disapproval of those who don’t stay together. I get the real world.  Sometimes, however hard you try, a relationship is not going to work. That can be very sad – but it would be cruel and callous to compound that sadness by treating single parent families in any way differently.

So I want to be completely clear: lone parents will not be on their own with the Conservatives. There is not – and never will be – a war on single parents. In fact far from taking the Conservative Party back into some comfort zone, I have expressly explained that we will give practical, meaningful support to every family in this country in a range of different ways, including through positive state action...

…indeed my claim that we will be the most family friendly party is because we are prepared to combine state action with social action and action on tax and benefits, with helping both at work and at home.

Just to give you a couple of examples, we’re going to increase the number of health visitors, so that parents have the support of a professional in the home – particularly during those first few months with a new baby. And we’ll improve Sure Start so that it better involves community groups and charities and sharpens its focus on the most vulnerable."

PDF of the whole speech.

The tide of defections is all in the Tories' favour

Plaid AM Mohammad Asghar has defected to the Conservatives.

This is the first Member of the Welsh Assembly to cross the floor since the start of devolution.

More soon.

11.50am: This is how Mr Ashgar is described on the Assembly website:

"Mohammad Asghar, known as ‘Oscar’, became the first Assembly Member from an ethnic minority when he was elected to the Assembly in May 2007. He has stood for Plaid Cymru in previous elections, including the last General Election. Oscar’s political interests include economic development and he feels strongly about combating social exclusion. He is the Plaid Cymru Assembly spokesman on skills and training and is a member of the Finance Committee and Legislation Committee No. 1."

These are good times for the Welsh Conservatives.  Earlier this year they topped the poll in the European elections.

This is the second defection in the last 24 hours for the party UK-wide. A Croydon councillor joined the Conservatives yesterday. Labour's advisers on public service reform are joining the Conservatives. Whatever the modest reduction in the Tory opinion poll position, the tide of defections is all in the Tories' favour.

Tim Montgomerie

The Times: David Cameron has yet to make a compelling case for a Conservative government

Key quotes from this morning's Times leader:

"Clearly David Cameron is not making a convincing case. The central charge against him is that, while he is approachable and likeable, his aims and values as a future prime minister of this country are still unclear. David Cameron has yet to answer a basic question: what does he stand for?

...Mr Cameron’s case is not yet persuasive. His speeches are replete with favourable references to charities but precious little about the practical business issue of job creation. He has been fond lately of set-piece speeches of dubious intellectual and strategic wisdom on the iniquity of the big state and health and safety legislation. He would be better advised to get out into the country to visit as many people and places as possible, splitting his time between persuading and listening. Mr Cameron is, instead, projecting the aura of a man who wants power rather more than he knows what to do with it.

...David Cameron has not yet done enough to dispel the suspicion that his programme of modernisation is a pose designed to secure office.

...It is all very well to complain about the Labour record but we still await a clear, unambiguous and compelling case for a Conservative government."

I'm still of the strong view that current opinion polls should not alarm us but the Tory leadership needs to wake up to the arguments presented by The Times. Cameron is at his best when the odds are against him...

• This was true when David Davis was the hot favourite to become Tory leader and David Cameron gave that compelling speech to the Blackpool Party Conference...
• This was true in the autumn of 2007 when Brown was preparing to call a honeymoon election but David Cameron announced that transformational inheritance tax cut...
• This was true at the height of the expenses crisis when David Cameron captured the public mood and insisted on tough action against guilty MPs.

David Cameron is at his worst when he is well ahead in opinion surveys. He stops taking risks and nurses his advantage. It has been said that he treats his opinion poll lead as a Ming Vase that needs the most cautious stewardship.

We are not seeing the best of David Cameron at the moment. He is neglecting the base of the Conservative Party. He is not setting a clear direction on deficit reduction. We are hearing him deliver too many forgettable speeches. After a Christmas break - and he looks in need of a holiday - we need to see a change of gear.

Tim Montgomerie

Liam Fox attacks NATO allies for shirking cost of common defence

Bloomberg's Kitty Donaldson reports that Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox will attack NATO today for failing to share the collective burden of defence:

“For NATO to work properly as a security alliance in the post Cold War world, NATO members must have the willingness to take equal risks with regards to supplying troops and equipment” and also “the willingness to financially fund and sustain these operations,” Fox will say. “Why should the few carry the many; common security implies common commitment,” Fox will say, according to the text. “It is quite wrong for everyone in the street to get the same insurance policy when only a few pay the premiums.”

Also on the attack, in the Daily Mail, is Tory MP Adam Holloway. The former Grenadier Guards officer attacks the MoD top brass for failing to stand up to Labour on the resourcing of the armed forces:

"In the middle of the fiercest battles in Iraq, our soldiers stood their ground and fought bravely. Some gave everything to do their duty; they may have lacked resources, but they never lacked courage. The same cannot be said for many of those at the top of the MoD whose responsibility was to make the right decisions in Iraq and not the convenient ones. They failed to provide the Government with hard facts and choices and to confront it with the strategic implications of under-resourcing the Army. Our soldiers were expected to give their lives if necessary, but those at the very top shrank from committing ‘career suicide’ by standing up to politicians and telling them the uncomfortable truth."

Tim Montgomerie

Tory lead 8% in new Populus poll which shows voters unenthused by Labour's class warfare

Tomorrow's Times carries a new Populus poll. The numbers are:

Comparisons are with the equivalent poll in early November.

According to UK Polling Report's swing calculator, this would leave the Conservatives 21 seats short of an overall majority in the Commons.

The poll, conducted over the weekend, also included a question about David Cameron's background in the light of Gordon Brown's attack last week:

Asked whether in view of his Eton education and his “privileged upbringing”, they thought his policies were aimed at “helping rich people, rather than the whole country”, just 34 per cent agreed, and 58 per cent disagreed.

Men and women disagreed almost equally, and unskilled manual workers disagreed by 51 to 39 per cent. The only groups that agreed were Labour voters (by 59 to 37 per cent) and 18 to 24-years-olds ( by 47 to 40 per cent).

Non-Labour voters disagreed by 65 to 29 per cent. There is no evidence that a class war attack will win back Labour defectors: opposition is even higher (78 against 22 per cent) among those who voted Labour in 2005 but now say they would back the Tories.

More detail from Peter Riddell in The Times.

Jonathan Isaby

Gordon Brown steals David Cameron's language - but fails to convince on his efficiency drive

Gordon Brown this morning gave a speech in which he appeared to be taking on board much of what Conservatives have been saying for a long time about the benefits of transparency in the Post-Bureacratic Age.

He talked about publishing the salaries of those earning over £150,000 in the public sector and giving parents, patients etc more information online about the services they are using.

He even stole a line directly from David Cameron's victory speech on winning the Tory leadership four years ago.

Cameron said on December 6th 2005:

"There is such a thing as society, it's just not the same thing as the state. "

Brown said today:

"I have always said that there is such a thing as society and always said also that this is not the same thing as the state"

Yet while he may be trying to play catch-up with David Cameron in certain ways, the savings that Brown announced this morning have been given a frosty reception by Shadow Chief Secretary, Philip Hammond, who reacted thus:

George Osborne draws up a five year roadmap for British business as Right warns him against tax rises

Two days ahead of the Pre-Budget Report, today's ConHome is very tax-focused.

On CentreRight, Matt Sinclair of The TaxPayers' Alliance warns that higher VAT will undermine the Tory claim to be a pro-poor party. VAT, Sinclair writes, "costs the poorest twice as much - as a portion of their income." The TPA wants a combination of deep spending cuts, public sector reform and pro-growth policies to cut the deficit.

Essential to growing the economy is lower corporation tax, writes Lord Forsyth on Platform. Forsyth, who was chosen by George Osborne to write a landmark report for him on tax in 2005, says that lower corporation tax - he recommends 20p in the pound - and the repeal of the 50p tax band are essential to get the British economy going again.  Britain, he says, is ranked 83rd in the world taxation league table after the Brown-Blair decade of more than one hundred tax increases.

73% of Tory members fear that George Osborne will have to impose larger-than-necessary tax increases because he has only outlined very modest spending reductions so far. The Shadow Chancellor is not being helped by the tendency of his frontbenchers to rush to spend any savings they identify. Last week I suggested he impose a requirement that two-thirds of departmental savings identified by 'spending spokesmen' be earmarked for deficit reduction.

In an interview with the Financial Times George Osborne gives no indication that he is yet ready to bite the bullet on much deeper spending cuts but his pro-business attitude is encouraging. He says he wants Britain to have “the most attractive and competitive corporate tax regime of any major economy in five years’ time”. He is already pledged to fund a 25p corporation tax rate by a process of simplification and Tory Treasurer Michael Spencer last week appeared to reveal Tory hopes to get the rate down to 20p by the end of a parliament.

Mr Osborne tells the FT that he and David Cameron have been talking to global entrepreneurs about how to attract business to the UK and are considering a range of measures that include a much friendlier regime for intellectual property and multinationals.

Aware of the damage done to him by the suggestion that he is a "40% Shadow Chancellor" (because he also serves as General Election Co-ordinator) he tells the FT that Philip Hammond, his powerful Deputy, is undertaking more of the "attack dog" role against Labour's economic record.

Tim Montgomerie

David Cameron brands Brown's class warfare "petty, spiteful and stupid"

The class war which Gordon Brown et al are waging went into overdrive last week, with Brown suggesting at PMQs that Conservative tax policy had been "dreamed up on the playing fields of Eton".

David Cameron, in a pre-recorded interview for BBC 1's Politics Show from Afghanistan, today hits back at Labour, branding the tactic "petty, spiteful and stupid":

"There isn’t any secret about where I went to school.  I think most people know that, I’m not in the slightest bit embarrassed about it.  I never hide my background or where I’m from or anything about my life like that.  My view is very simple, is that what people are interested in is not where you come from but where you’re going to, what you’ve got to offer, what you’ve got to offer the country.

"Now if Gordon Brown and Mandelson and the rest, if they want to fight a class war, fine, go for it.  It doesn’t work.  It’s a petty, spiteful, stupid thing to do but if that’s what they want to do, you know, go ahead. 

"Frankly I think the country is more interested in, who are these people, are they any good, have they got the right ideas, will they take the country forward, have they got the energy and vigour and dynamism that we so badly need?  And the answer to those questions I believe is yes."

Here's the clip from the interview:

Meanwhile, Shadow Business Secretary Kenneth Clarke uses this piece in the Mail on Sunday to suggest that Labour's use of "the politics of envy as a last resort" was "a major strategic blunder which Gordon, Peter Mandelson and the others will soon come to regret":

A quick summary of the Cameron years

Today is the fourth anniversary of David Cameron becoming the leader of the Conservative Party. What has happened over those four years? A quick summary...

1. Labour and the Liberal Democrats (twice) have changed leaders.
2. The worst recession in the G20 has ended Labour's reputation for economic competence.  "Terminado" as (I think) they say in Spain.
3. George Osborne has emerged as the second most important member of the Conservative Party. Cameron's campaign manager against David Davis, George Osborne is the Chancellor-in-waiting at a time of massive economic challenge and also co-ordinator of general election strategy. They plan to run government together, from a joint Downing Street HQ.
4. 'Friends of Dave' run the leader's office and control CCHQ. Cameron has a total grip on the Tory machine.
5. But beyond the inner machine he has re-created the Tory big tent, inviting Ken Clarke, William Hague and IDS back to leading roles. Although not one of life's haters, no MP who has fallen out with Cameron has yet been rehabilitated. Think of Brady, Davis, Field, Jenkin and Mercer.
6. David Cameron has consistently pursued his modernisation of the Conservative Party. The Party is greener, gentler, more gay-friendly, much more civil libertarian, transformed in its attitude to the NHS and will have sixty to seventy female MPs if it becomes Britain's next government. 
7. Cameron is an authentic, full-spectrum conservative (supporting the Union, marriage, deficit reduction and conservation of the natural environment and historic liberties).
8. He has made three big mistakes as leader: (1) pursuing an unbalanced über-modernisation until the summer of 2007 when rebalancing was necessary (picking a fight with the grassroots on grammar schools was the lowest point of that period); (2) making a promise on the Lisbon referendum that could and should have been better worded; and (3) sticking to Labour spending plans long after it was obvious that they were unaffordable.
9. He has developed three big positive reasons to vote Conservative (1) radical schools reform that will be overseen by Michael Gove; (2) a reform of welfare and family policy that hopefully will be part of Iain Duncan Smith's proposed role; and (3) a programme of corporate tax reform that George Osborne will unpack in office.
10. Despite a recent softening in the Conservative vote the party remains on course for victory at the next General Election. The party has a better election machine, more activists, more money and the emergence of anti-Labour tactical voting should mean that any Tory majority is bigger than seat projection models suggest. It needs, in the time that remains, to avoid too much politicking. Some policies (like the effective scrapping of the FSA) appear to be tactically-driven.
11. If there is a Tory majority the parliamentary Conservative Party will be transformed. At least half will be new MPs. Most of them cut their political teeth under Margaret Thatcher and strongly follow her instincts although, as newbies, will be very loyal to the Cameron project in its early period of office.
12. A Conservative government could be a very unpopular government very quickly. Tory deficit-reduction plans remain very vague and 73% of grassroots Tories fear that there will be too much reliance on tax increases. David Cameron has not converted his party to the climate change issue. The issue of global warming - alongside Europe - has the potential to cause most internal party tension in the years ahead.
13. If the next few fiscally-painful years can be negotiated successfully there is a real possibility of political realignment in Britain. Twinning traditionally popular Tory messages on tax, crime, Europe and immigration with authentically conservative messages on social justice, civil libertarianism and conservation could be a very potent electoral cocktail... that might just be emulated by centre right parties across the world. Let's hope so.

Have I missed anything important?

Tim Montgomerie

7pm: Over on CentreRight, Louise Bagshawe adds a 14th observation; winning lots of elections!

Tory peer facing possible police investigation over housing claims

Tomorrow's Sunday Times carries the following story about Lord Taylor of Warwick:

"A Tory peer has been caught using someone else’s home address to claim tens of thousands of pounds in expenses. Lord Taylor of Warwick, a 57-year-old former barrister, told the House of Lords that his main home was a terrace house in Oxford which he neither owned nor lived in.

"The property’s owner, Tristram Wyatt, a university academic, said he was unaware that his address had been used as the peer’s main home. Wyatt’s companion is the peer’s step-nephew, Robert Taylor, who admitted to The Sunday Times that his uncle has never lived at the house. “He doesn’t live here, he hasn’t lived here,” he said."

More here.

Jonathan Isaby

ICM confirms trimming of Tory lead...

One other poll is expected this evening.

7.10pm: It's a YouGov poll:

The next key event in shaping voters' opinion will be Wednesday's pre-Budget report. Will Darling announce tough spending measures? Will he announce a windfall tax on bank profits? Will the public believe his promises? Can George Osborne match his outstanding performance from last year?

Tim Montgomerie

David Cameron promises to double allowance for soldiers returning from Afghanistan

David Cameron and Liam Fox flew out to Afghanistan yesterday to meet troops and see for themselves what is happening on the ground right now in Helmand province.

We carried this BBC footage of the visit on the site last night.

But today the headline announcement coming from Mr Cameron is that an incoming Conservative Government would double from  £2,400 to £4,800 the allowance to soldiers returning from a six-month tour in Afghanistan.

He is also re-iterating previously announced plans to appoint a national security adviser, set up a war cabinet, and make Ministry of Defence service personnel wear uniforms not suits.

After meeting troops at the Lashkar Gah base yesterday, the Tory leader said that he was "not interested in cutting and running" from Afghanistan:

"I am not interested in trying to set out some sort of timetable and convince people in that way. What I am interested in doing is helping you, whether in opposition or in government, to succeed in what we are doing here and then to come home. The faster we succeed, the faster we can come home."

"I think following President Obama's speech and the increase in US forces and the increase in British forces, we have a chance now. It is probably our last chance to get it right but we do have a chance."

Today he is scheduled to meet President Karzai.

Update: In a Today Programme interview, Mr Cameron underlined that it was "pretty unlikely" that any British troops would come home from Afghanistan next year, saying, "I don't want to raise false hopes". If and when the audio appears on the BBC website, I will link to it. It's the 08.10 interview.

Jonathan Isaby

Boris may have to choose between car-free London (for a few days) and a £300m EU fine

The London Evening Standard reports that Boris Johnson may have to ban cars from central London for an unspecified number of days in order to ensure Britain's capital city hits mandatory EU requirements on clean air.

If the targets are missed London could be hit by a fine of £300m - costing the average London council taxpayer £15 more for one year.

I find it hard to believe that other European cities (Athens springs to mind) are meeting clean air targets... and does Greece pay its fines to the EU?

Tim Montgomerie

It's game, set and croquet match to Eric Pickles in his clash with John Prescott

Eric Pickles and former John Prescott debated Labour's attempt to fight class war against the Conservatives this morning. Eric was on very good form.

Remembering those famous Mail on Sunday images of John Prescott playing croquet on the lawn of a country mansion, the Tory Chairman said it was like a scene from the final stages of George Orwell's Animal Farm. Great, great line.

Mr Pickles reminded Today listeners that two-fifths of the Labour Cabinet went to fee-paying schools. It shouldn't be an issue, he said, and the fact that Gordon Brown was attempting to make it an issue was a sign that New Labour was truly dead. Mr Pickles urged Labour to stop the personal attacks and stop judging people by where they were born and how their parents chose to educate them.

John Prescott blustered back - managing to confuse Lords Ashdown and Ashcroft but it was game, set and match to Eric Pickles.

> Listen again to the interview, broadcast at 7.50am

Tim Montgomerie

PS There are two worth-reading articles on this subject in this morning's newspapers. In The Guardian Fraser Nelson notes that his News of the World mailbag has "never" included people worried about David Cameron's upbringing. And in the Daily Mail that old leftie Mark Seddon says Labour's failure of the poor means it has no moral authority to wage class war:

"My real concern — and it is a concern, I suspect, that the public clearly understands — is that Gordon Brown should not be making cheap political capital out of a concocted class war when so many of the working class in Britain feel betrayed by his party. The point is that real inequalities of class have almost become a taboo subject for our political elite. To ignore the problems faced by the poorer sections of society — the schools that fail their children, the sink estates where crime is endemic and jobs are non-existent — seems safer for today’s Labour Party than confronting them. But unless Gordon Brown has the courage to tackle these problems honestly, and to stop taking the votes of the working class for granted, growing numbers of them will either not bother with the ballot box or, worse, be seduced by the obnoxious entreaties of the British National Party. Britain’s working class has been neglected for decades. Only this week the Joseph Rowntree Foundation revealed that poverty levels in Britain are no better than they were in 2000."

Yesterday on CentreRight, Jill Kirby summarised how poverty has grown under Labour.

George Osborne needs to impose a "66% of savings must be saved" rule on spending ministries

Michael Gove has just announced a very sensible way of encouraging more science graduates to enter secondary and primary education:

"We will do as President Obama is doing and create new incentives for new teachers. We will offer every graduate with a first or upper second in maths or a rigorous science subject from a good university the chance to have their student loan paid off in its entirety if they opt to go into teaching.

For every year top science graduates spend in the classroom the state will bear the cost of paying off their loan obligations. If scientists make a long-term commitment to teaching then the entire burden of the loan will be lifted from their shoulders.

I expect that the majority of scientists tempted to take up this offer will want to go into secondary teaching, but the offer isn’t restricted to those who go into secondary schools.We need great minds at every level in every school. We have undervalued primary school teaching in this country for far too long, and underplayed the importance of deep subject knowledge in the primary curriculum. We have paid for that with generation after generation of young people arriving at secondary school significantly behind the level of achievement enjoyed by children in other nations. I want to see that change. 

We will pay for the cost of this initiative - which could amount to as much as £40,000 per individual teacher - by abolishing a specific layer of bureaucracy in the Training and Development Agency for Teachers.I think it is right where we can identify savings to prioritise investment in those areas which really drive educational achievement and no priority for investment is more important in my eyes, or yields such dividends for the future, as investment in teachers and teaching."

I hope our initiative will create a new generation of superb science and maths teachers, I anticipate that these teachers will make a long term commitment to the profession, diminishing the churn that characterises the system now. And I believe we will have taken another significant step towards replicating the virtues of, indeed potentially overtaking, the world leaders in education such as Finland and Singapore."

I agree with Michael Gove's established concern that we need more children educated in science and this is one good way of encouraging this.

I do worry, however, about the tendency of frontbenchers to find good ways of spending savings. Given the state of the public finances it might be wise for George Osborne to impose some sort of rule on them. To incentivise a search for efficiencies they should be able to keep, say, one-third of savings across their departments but two-thirds need to go towards repaying Gordon Brown's debts.

Tim Montgomerie

Chris Grayling outlines multi-pronged strategy to keep Britain safe from terror

The Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling addressed the Heritage Foundation yesterday, during a visit to Washington DC. In his speech he highlighted the importance of US-UK co-operation on intelligence, winning in Af-Pak, tackling hate preaching and ending the ghetto-isation of multiculturalism. Less comfortable, I imagine, for his Heritage audience was his strong support for closing Guantanamo Bay and the ending of other Bush-era security policies. Mr Grayling said a Conservative government would not compromise historic liberties in fighting the war on terror.

Key extracts from Mr Grayling's speech are below and the full text is here:

Co-operation with Washington on intelligence: "I am absolutely clear that whether it be in matters of intelligence, diplomacy or commerce, the close alliance with the United States is and will remain indispensable to the United Kingdom.  When critics of our closeness to the US fight against terrorism complain that this puts our citizens at risk, the honest answer is that without the intelligence cooperation we enjoy, British citizens would be at greater risk still."

Ending the international breeding grounds for terror, in Afghanistan and Pakistan: "Another key element of our approach is the military contribution to countering terrorism.  The single most urgent priority in foreign policy if we come to government will be the American, British and wider NATO commitment in Afghanistan... A decade ago, Afghanistan was a training camp for international terrorism. It was the country from which Osama Bin Laden freely operated before 9/11. Whatever the challenges we face in bringing lasting stability to that country, we cannot go back to the way things were. Afghanistan cannot again be allowed to become a base that is used by international terrorists to pose a strategic threat to the US, the UK, and our allies and partners... Pakistan should be another major priority for us and for our international allies and friends. We must do everything we can to help Pakistan secure a stable, prosperous and democratic future, with a Government capable of controlling terrorist threats and playing an active role in securing a stable Afghanistan. Our connections to Pakistan as a nation, through the very large number of family ties between Britain and Pakistan, give us a particularly important role in this. What happens in Pakistan is particularly important for a number of reasons. It is now the base for the remaining leaders of Al Qaeda. To some degree the tribal homelands in particular have become a successor to Afghanistan in providing training for would-be terrorists. The progress that the Pakistani government has made in recent weeks in tackling the threat that it faces from the Taleban is very welcome. We will be much less secure as nations if large parts of Pakistan are under the control of militants."

Two must-learn lessons for David Cameron

There are reports in this morning's newspapers that some senior Tories believe that the party's austerity message is the explanation for the Conservatives' modest decline in the polls. I'd like to see evidence for that. The Tories haven't come close to setting out tough-enough spending plans and that is why 73% of party members fear larger-than-necessary tax rises from a Tory government. It's at least arguable that a failure to say more about the broad strategy for reducing spending is causing the softening in the Tory vote. [I emphasise "broad" because it's not necessarily detail that voters want]. On Tuesday I blogged the PoliticsHome poll that suggested a very strong correlation between the weakening of the Tory position and the Europe announcement. It's vital that CCHQ does not choose the wrong explanation for the, I repeat, modest decline in our support.

The biggest event in conservative politics for some time has happened downunder. Malcolm Turnbull lost the leadership of Australia's Liberals - mainly because of his support for a very expensive climate change bill, drafted by the country's left-wing government.  Turnbull lost the leadership for other reasons, too, but this was the main factor. Scepticism about combating climate change is widespread in Tory ranks. Look at ConHome's polling of Tory members. Look at this week's Spectator. Read Charles Moore in today's Telegraph. Read the Mail's 'no more hug-a-husky' leading article. The next few years are going to be difficult enough for the Tory leadership without gung-ho policies on global warming. What we need is the kind of 'other-benefits environmentalism' that Greg Clark has so far been careful to advance.

Tim Montgomerie

Patrick Mercer MP questions Obama's "deeply undesirable" timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan

Last night President Obama announced his much-delayed strategy for Afghanistan.

Conservative MP and former army officer, Patrick Mercer, has issued this statement to ConservativeHome, questioning the President's indication that troops will start to withdraw in 2011:

"One of the great military maxims is that surprise must be achieved whenever possible.  Yet, President Obama's surge in Afghanistan of around 30,000 troops is one of the most highly publicised punches ever to be delivered.  There is no doubt in my mind that it is necessary, that it will be welcomed by the Afghan people and the Afghan government and that it will provide a new dimension in which the war can be prosecuted.  But I believe that mistakes have been made presentationally.

When announcing 500 extra British troops our Prime Minister spoke about a "timetable" for withdrawal.  Now President Obama has suggested that US forces will start to drawdown in 2011.  Gordon Brown's comments were immediately greeted with rapture on jihadi websites claiming this was the start of the breakdown in the alliance and for President Obama to give a date like this also plays into our enemies hands.  I understand the need for the domestic audience to be pacified in America, but I would suggest that both leaders ought to have talked in more detail about a graduated series of achievements or goals rather than time lines.  To give time lines allows our enemies to pause or to concentrate in their offensives in order to achieve maximum effect both militarily and in terms of publicity.  Clearly, that is deeply undesirable."

Mr Mercer and Alex Deane are right but leading American hawk, Bill Kristol, is also right to welcome Barack Obama's embrace of military power - an embrace that has enraged much of the base of his own party. Kristol for the Washington Post:

"By mid-2010, Obama will have more than doubled the number of American troops in Afghanistan since he became president; he will have empowered his general, Stanley McChrystal, to fight the war pretty much as he thinks necessary to in order to win; and he will have retroactively, as it were, acknowledged that he and his party were wrong about the Iraq surge in 2007 -- after all, the rationale for this surge is identical to Bush’s, and the hope is for a similar success. He will also have embraced the use of military force as a key instrument of national power."

Tim Montgomerie

Brown on Cameron: "The more he talks, the less he says"

12.50pm: As Iain Dale has pointed out, Brown needs to apologise for wrongly stating that Spain is in the G20. Britain is the only G20 nation STILL in recession.

VERDICT: "A clear win on points for a confident Gordon Brown, with witty lines on Eton and on Cameron; 'The more he talks, the less he says'. David Cameron looks tired, I thought. Greg Barker raised the issue that Cameron should have raised near the end of PMQs; the threat posed by Single Market Commissioner Michel Barnier (of France) to the UK's financial services sector. Over at CentreRight, Mark Wallace has addressed the worrying implications of this French victory for the City of London."

Highlights, not verbatim:

12.26pm: An angry Greg Barker MP asks the PM to comment about Nicolas Sarkozy's boast that the English are the real losers from the French getting the EU finance post. Brown replies with some general remarks about the need for Britain to remain at the heart of Europe. 

12.25pm: Tom Harris MP asks question about Zac Goldsmith's non-dom status.

12.16pm: Nick Clegg calls for an Afghan strategy that doesn't rely too much on President Karzai nut also works through the country's regional leaders. Brown jokes that President Obama will be grateful for Nick Clegg's views. Boom! Boom! He insists that Karzai does not have a blank cheque.

12.12pm: After Speaker Bercow rebukes noisy Labour backbenchers, David Cameron pokes fun at a noisy Ed Balls on the frontbench, 'why isn't he in his ultra marginal seat?'. Perhaps, Cameron jokes, because the more people see him, the more his seat becomes marginal. The Tory leader asks again about Labour's record on boom and bust. 'The more he talks, the less he says' retorts Brown. He then attacks Tory policy on inheritance tax and non-doms, citing the Zac Goldsmith revelation, and concluding by asking if Tory tax policy was devised on the playing fields of Eton?