ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

You know the game's up for Labour when... Jarvis Cocker says a Tory victory is "necessary"

Whilst I don't expect to be seeing the former Pulp frontman given a speaking slot at a Tory conference any time soon, Jarvis Cocker has declared a Conservative victory at the next general election to be "necessary".

In the new edition of GQ magazine, the singer is quoted as saying:

"A Conservative government is necessary... Labour has been in power for a certain amount of time and (apart from the Conservatives) there is no credible alternative, so if you're not going to have Labour you're going to have the Conservatives. You can sense an era passing."

He goes on to conclude that the efforts of Gordon Brown are "all a bit lame".

Since the publication of the magazine, Cocker has released a statement emphasising that he is not giving his personal support to the Conservatives, but rather saying that a Tory victory "seems inevitable".

Even so, it's another nail in the coffin of the Labour Government when its former celebrity cheerleaders offer these kinds of assessments.

Jonathan Isaby

"One BBC journalist told me that his colleagues and editors were now more interested in an announcement from George Osborne than from Alistair Darling."

I blogged the title to this post last night and my friends at PoliticsHome decided to put the anecdote to the test...

Asked "In general, would you say you now pay more attention to policy announcements from the Conservatives or the Labour government?" 50% of the Westminster insiders answered Conservative.  Just 7% said Labour.  42% said Labour and Conservative equally.

Tim Montgomerie

The BBC is "love-bombing" Tory frontbenchers, candidates and (even) bloggers

Although some observers interpret yesterday's Conservative Party announcement that it would freeze the BBC licence fee as confrontational, most readers commenting on ConservativeHome saw it as being rather on the timid side.   

Much more important than freezing the licence fee - a relatively modest measure - has been the Tory leadership's stepping away from the much more radical option of forcing the BBC to share the licence fee.  David Cameron declared himself to be a supporter of the licence fee and said it would remain "the principal way of funding the BBC for some time".

It certainly seems that the Corporation has been going out of its way to endear itself to the Conservatives of late, as it recognises that the party is more than likely to be in government and deciding its future before too long.  Indeed, to use Eric Pickles's terminology, it could be said that the Beeb has been "love-bombing" the Conservative Party:

• Contact between BBC Director-General Mark Thompson and Ed Vaizey and Jeremy Hunt is "very frequent".
• There have been several programmes aired very recently which - unusually for the BBC - depicted Margaret Thatcher sympathetically.
• The Corporation has recently recruited a former Conservative HQ policy unit staffer to work on strategy, reporting to Caroline Thomson, the BBC's chief operation officer.  Tina Stowell, former key aide to William Hague, has been moved from BBC Worldwide to domestic Corporate Affairs.
• What's more, the BBC's in-house lobbying operation - also headed by a one-time senior figure at Conservative Central Office - would appear to have upped the ante in terms of its courting of the Tory MPs of tomorrow.  Reports have reached us that when the BBC aired those programmes about Margaret Thatcher the other week, emails were sent out from the BBC public affairs department to a number of Conservative PPCs and other figures in the party with information about them.  And the same department is now hosting a programme of dinners for Conservative parliamentary candidates expected to enter the Commons next year, at which the aforementioned former CCO insiders are giving presentations on the BBC's future.
• Conservatives (including this site's editors) are now the beneficiaries of free DVDs of best BBC output - including, before Christmas, of the (excellent) serialisation of Little Dorrit.

In the words of one Tory insider familiar with the operation, it is "one of the country's most professional and well-financed lobbying machines".  And it is, lest we forget, funded by the licence fee.

Jonathan Isaby and Tim Montgomerie

David Cameron urges freeze of BBC licence fee at monthly press conference

David Cameron has just given his monthly press conference in Westminster. Here are the highlights of what he said:

• He thanked all the media for their messages of support and sympathy in the wake of Ivan's death.
• He also reiterated the messages of his Birmingham speech from last Friday.
• Mr Cameron's only new announcement was that as of now the Conservatives supported freezing the BBC licence fee for a year, and that the party would continue to look at it "on a year by year basis". He said that it was important to recognise that everyone has to live within their means at the moment and that an organisation such as the BBC should have to do so too. However, he declared: "I am a supporter of the BBC, I am a supporter of the licence fee" and that it could "go on as the principal way of funding the BBC for some time". See Jeremy Hunt's post on CentreRight for more details.
• He said he disagreed with Liam Donaldson's proposal on alcohol duty, and re-iterated previous Tory proposals to put up duty on high strength beer, lager and alcopops. He said that he didn't think Liam Donaldson's proposal was "a very fair way to proceed" and that action needed to be targeted at problem drinkers - and the kind of drinks they buy, such as high strength cider which has "never seen an apple".
• Asked by George Pascoe-Watson of The Sun why he was making such an issue of the Binyam Mohamed torture allegations, he said that torture was "immoral" and that it was important to get to the bottom of whether Mohamed was tortured and whether Britain was complicit in it. However, Mr Cameron added that he does not necessarily put "faith or credence" in all his words, saying that he did have questions to answer himself, adding: "Do I think he's an upstanding citizen? Almost certainly not."
• Fraser Nelson of The Spectator asked whether he could name five reasons to vote Conservative. Mr Cameron said the Government was tired and exhausted and had run out of ideas; the Conservatives would give people more power and control over their lives; they would drive power to local government and people; they'd move away from an economy built upon debt to an economy built on saving; he highlighted the Conservative "menu" of mending the broken society, including radical school reform, pro-family policy in the benefits and tax system, encouraging couples to stay together; and the plans for radical welfare reform.
• On the EPP, he said that he had actually had a good meeting with European Commission President Barroso this morning and that it was right to leave the EPP so that what the party says in Brussels and Strasbourg is the same as what it says in Westminster. "I don't want to see further transfer of powers [to the EU]. The process of integration has gone too far already." He added that a new centre-Right grouping would still be able to work with the EPP when there were issues on which they agreed - but that the Conservative Party wanted to be a "friendly and happy neighbour, not reluctant and unhappy tenants".
• A journalist from the Newcastle Journal tried to extract an apology for the Conservative Government's actions in the North East during the miners' strike. Mr Cameron said that he was "a great believer in apologising for my own mistakes" but that he didn't believe in apologising for things which happened twenty or 100 years ago.
• He said he didn't expect to be meeting President Obama when he is in London for the G20 next month. "I'm not trying to muscle in on the G20. It isn't normally possible to have those sorts of meetings... I haven't requested one and don't expect one to take place". He did, however, say that it was his role "call the Government to account" over decisions made at the summit.
• Finally, I suggested that with Lord Mandelson refusing to debate Ken Clarke on television, that it was time to change the Standing Orders of the House of Commons to allow Lord Mandelson to answer questions at the Despatch Box in the Commons and be held to account for his department's actions in the elected chamber. Mr Cameron said that it was "an intriguing idea" and that since Ken Clarke had chaired the party's constitutional task force, perhaps it was something he could examine.

Jonathan Isaby

Tories must oppose using taxpayers' money to bailout newspapers

Jeremy Hunt MP noted on Thursday that the newspaper industry is in trouble and others have worried that, without a vigorous press, democracy will lose its watchdogs.  But should newspapers join the growing list of industries receiving special government subsidy?

A report in Friday's Scotsman suggested that Scottish Conservatives think the answer to that question is 'yes'.

"Tory media spokesman Ted Brocklebank [MSP] has called on the Scottish Government to re- consider its decision to switch its advertising to the internet in a bid to tackle the financial problems in the newspaper industry."

That's a bad call; bad for taxpayers and also potentially bad for democracy.  We need a free press but we need that free press to be fiercely independent of government.  If the press starts to rely on state-subsidised favours for its survival we are on a very slippery slope.

Tim Montgomerie

Ed Vaizey proposes a national library card as part of the party's library strategy

Ever keen to provide comprehensive coverage of developments in the Conservative Party, here are details of some proposals outlined by shadow culture minister Ed Vaizey in a speech to the  London Libraries Conference at the end of last week, but which have not received any attention in the national press.

He was launching the party's library strategy, with the aim of rejuvenating the country’s public library service, and specific proposals include:

• Introducing a national library card, entitling any member of a local library to use any library in the country (whilst ensuring the scheme did not impose any unfunded liabilities on local authorities);
• Launching a voluntary Library Charter, to which local authorities would be invited to sign up. This would set out minimum standards for libraries, a community reading strategy, provide guidance on what constituted a “comprehensive and efficient” library service under the Public Libraries Act, and so provide objective guidance for the use of the Secretary of State’s powers to call in a local authority’s decision to close a library.
• Putting in a place a four-year Renaissance for Libraries programme to share best practice between local authorities, resulting in a reduction in administration costs, greater investment in books and information technology, as well as better training for staff;
• Encouraging councils to devolve budgets to local ward councillors, allowing them to decide whether to fund their local community library;
• Abolishing the Advisory Council on Libraries.

You can read Mr Vaizey's speech in full here.

Jonathan Isaby

Tory members say Defence should be top public spending priority

From 22nd to 28th December 1,816 Tory members told us their highest and lowest priorities for twelve calls on public spending identified by ConservativeHome. The two graphics below summarise the findings (click on either to enlarge):

HIGHEST PRIORITY FOR PUBLIC SPENDING

LOWEST PRIORITY FOR PUBLIC SPENDING

We asked the two relevant shadow cabinet members - Liam Fox for Defence (members' highest spending priority - not for the first time) and Jeremy Hunt for Culture, Media and Sport (members' lowest priority) for their reactions:

Dr Liam Fox:

"ConservativeHome readers clearly understand what Gordon Brown's government fails to- namely that national security is the first duty of any British government. It is worth noting that while President Sarkozy was announcing a 2 billion euro boost to defence spending as part of his economic stimulus, Britain's Labour government were announcing delays to major programmes such as the carriers. Not only has Labour failed to live up to its part of the Military Covenant and failed to fully fund our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan but they will leave behind a huge unfunded liability in defence procurement for future taxpayers. No one knows how catastrophic Brown's economic legacy will be but picking up the pieces in defence will be one of the most difficult challenges for the next government."

Jeremy Hunt:

"Spending at the disposal of the department of culture, media and sport amounts to less than half of one percent of all government spending. That means the potential to make a large impact on government spending as a whole is limited. That said, all government departments - big and small - need to tighten their belts in the current climate and that of course includes DCMS."

ConservativeHome comment: "The public spending priorities of Tory members are largely very sensible.  The first duty of any government is defence of the Realm and law and order at home.  There is no ambition amongst grassroots members for cuts in education and health and there is also a concern to invest in infrastructure spending.  Where members are wrong is, I think, in the low priority they attach to international development.  Maintaining international development spending is not just the morally correct course - in an age when so many are dying of treatable and preventable diseases - it is also an essential part of any national security agenda.  While trade liberalisation and private investment are more important to prevent failed states George W Bush has shown in sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, that well targeted aid can save hundreds of thousands of lives.  Britain's aid budget could be better spent - and Andrew Mitchell is right to promise a diversion of aid from nations like China towards the poorest nations - but we should not trim a budget that is already worth £334m less because of the sharp decline in the pound.   

Tim Montgomerie

> Five days ago we published the views of Tory members on appropriate public sector economies.
> Stephen Crabb MP's case for maintaining development spending.

Will serious policy follow David Cameron's criticism of the BBC?

David Cameron writes for The Sun today about the future of the BBC.  He declares himself a "rare creature — a lifelong Conservative who is a fan of the BBC" - and goes on to list the BBC output that he enjoys.  The thrust of the article, however, is a complaint about BBC bias and its economic behaviour:

The fact that Mr Cameron's words appear in The Sun will be provocative to the BBC who will see the Tory leader currying favour with the Murdoch empire; which has long resented the BBC's privileged position in the UK media.

Mr Cameron mentions a reduction in the licence fee once the costs of the digital switchover are complete.  Much more likely to change the culture at the Corporation is the end of its monopoly control of that licence fee.  Jeremy Hunt has proposed that a small portion of the licence fee should be passed to another broadcaster (we hope that it would be a new broadcaster along the lines proposed by Peter Whittle rather than, say, Channel 4).  That idea, we understand, has become bogged down in the party's policy-making machinery.  Jeremy doesn't mention the change in his 'three things that need to change post' for CentreRight.

Mr Cameron is right to defend the idea of public service broadcasting but he now needs to show that he has the will to bring some competitive discipline to the Corporation.  That is why the 'Hunt reform' could not be more important.

Was it Cameron who triggered the suspension of Ross?

Paul Waugh makes a realistic case that it was Cameron wot did it:

"There is a credible case for saying that it was the Conservative leader's intervention in the row on Tuesday that was the most significant trigger to real action.

By stepping into the controversy and making clear he shared the views of the public, Cameron in turn forced the Prime Minister to speak out. Once Brown (who was very reluctant to get involved) had spoken, the Beeb knew it could no longer get away with its shaky defence and DG Mark Thompson finally roused himself to act.

Cameron's decision to speak out wasn't just smart politics. It perhaps underlined his frustration that he had been ambushed by Ross on his programme two years ago. Many will remember Ross's asking the Tory leader whether he masturbated over a photo of Margaret Thatcher. I call myself pretty broadminded, but even I was appalled that Ross had coarsened a mainstream TV channel in a way that would be barely acceptable in a pub bar.

Cameron was clearly uncomfortable, but was keenly aware that if he over-reacted at the time he could lose the younger demographic of Ross's show. He didn't really have any choice in saying he would go on the show again - as Opposition leader who would want to boycott a prog that reaches millions?"

PS Our view is that Paul now writes the best blog from a Westminster Village journalist.  Add it to your favourites!

PPS Paul; you must change that photo of you... it doesn't do you any favours :-)

Jeremy Hunt calls for broadcasters to help fight alcoholism and other social ills

Shadow Culture Secretary is giving a major speech this morning on the future of Conservative broadcasting policy.  At the bottom of this post we publish key extracts relating to his support for more local TV and his concerns that the BBC might be crowding out alternative media suppliers.  Most interesting to us, however, is his view that TV influences behaviour and broadcasters - particularly those in receipt of privileged funding - have a duty to behave responsibly.  ConservativeHome wholeheartedly agrees (but we are 'nudgers' as you know).

First Mr Hunt addresses the influence that broadcasters do have on behaviour:

"The University of the West England recently found that 73% of all alcohol references on radio encouraged drinking. That matters, because for better or worse what Chris Moyles says has more impact on binge drinking than the glossiest advertising campaign from the Department of Health, or indeed an alcohol education campaign by Radio 1. It isn’t all bad news. The media can have an equally strong effect in a positive way. Eastenders’ Mark Fowler [pictured] was the first mainstream soap character to be HIV positive.  A 1999 survey by the National AIDS Trust found that most young people learned everything they knew about the illness from watching him deal with his condition. Lisa Power at the Terrance Higgins Trust has said that ‘one decent soap episode is worth a thousand leaflets in schools’. HIV has returned to TV drama with Hollyoaks currently tackling the issue – I hope it is as successful as Eastenders was in the 90s."

Mr Hunt goes on to say that a few “worthy” programmes "should not be a fig leaf for a lack of social responsibility in other output.":

"It’s not good enough for Channel 4 to say they are doing their bit with a Dispatches programme on alcohol abuse like Drinking Yourself to Death when 18% of the screen time in Hollyoaks was accounted for by alcohol references. Nor can five claim to be doing their bit with Diet Doctors Inside Out when the gym instructor in Home and Away is seen with alcohol in 50% of his scenes."

John Whittingdale leads concern at Ross-Brand calls

Conservative MP John Whittingdale - Chairman of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, has asked tough questions of the BBC in the last 24 hours.  His intervention followed a prank message left on the answer machine of elderly actor Andrew Sachs.  Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand broadcast their controversial voicemail on Saturday night on BBC Radio 2.  Mr Brand suggested he had slept with Mr Sachs' 23-year-old granddaughter, Georgina Baillie, an aspiring model.

John Whittingdale said:

"The trouble is, this is not the first occasion on which Jonathan Ross has crossed the line and has been pulled up by the BBC and told not to carry this kind of material, and it appears that has had little effect... [The BBC pays] a very substantial amount of public money for Jonathan Ross and a pretty large amount for Russell Brand too. I think they are both talented broadcasters but they have got to remember that when they are broadcasting on the BBC in particular, they are not able to use material they might use in a live show.  The message needs to be rammed home. It does raise questions about their future with the corporation...

I think anybody who listens to Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand has a rough idea of what to expect but, in my view, this did go too far. To make that kind of comment to a much-loved, elderly character actor like Andrew Sachs was pretty offensive in the first place. To then broadcast it to two million people seems to me unacceptable."

Mr Whittingdale called for OfCom to investigate the matter.

The Mail leader-writers do not require an investigation.  They've already decided: "Is there any reason why we should be expected to go on paying this vile man [Brand] - or the executives who judge his filth fit to broadcast?"

1.45pm:

David Cameron has joined this controversy: "The BBC have got some very straight forward questions to answer. Why did they allow this programme to be broadcast? Who made the decision to broadcast it? How high up the editorial chain did it go? Who examined it? Why did they conclude it should be broadcast? The BBC needs to be transparent about all of those decisions and explain its decision-making process so everyone can see what more needs to be done." (Quoted in The Sun).

Conservatives need their own democracy agenda

ConHome is delighted that Nick Herbert has already promised fairer-sized constituency seats but the Conservatives need a bigger 'democracy agenda'.  We'll return to this agenda on another occasion but here are three things we hope to see:

• End the power that big money and big unions have in the political process.  By the end of a Parliament the maximum donation to a political party should be reduced to something like £1,000 or even lower.  Such a change would have a revolutionary impact on how political parties relate to voters.  Big money donations from business, unions or the taxpayer insulate parties from real voters.  The internet could be harnessed to build political parties that rely on the little guy for their income.  Barack Obama has shown the way.
• Move to a system where we have more and more City Mayors.  City Mayors - like US Governors - would not only be good for their communities but could be the heads of Cabinet departments of the future.  Too many of our MPs lack executive experience.  We need to build a system which sees a Prime Minister appointing successful Mayors to run Whitehall initiatives and departments.
• Share the BBC licence fee with a new public service broadcaster (or broadcasters) - built on a different model of impartiality (Peter Whittle explains more).  Jeremy Hunt is taking steps in this direction but will he be bold enough?  Ending The Guardian's near monopoly of public sector ads should also be part of a Conservative vision to end the privileged status of the BBC-Guardian worldview.

> Step 5/10: Greg Clark must keep the lights on

Online readers slam BBC coverage of Osborne

An indication that the way the BBC has covered alleged links between Oleg Deripaska, Peter Mandelson and George Osborne has been very ill-received is the comments thread to Robert Peston's story on Tuesday. The BBC's business editor is attacked by the overwhelming majority of commenters for giving so much focus to this political story - or non-story, as some suggest.

"what has all this speculation and innuendo to do with your post as Business Editor?"

"Mr Peston - close your Labour mouthpiece over a NON STORY . We know your background in politics. Labour. Why did it take Sophie Raworth to ask the questions that you so called reporters would not - and why grovel to a person who is proven to be corrupt - finally, WHY, when Nissan is cutting back production, the UK is dying, and the Clown is borrowing MORE money, ARE u not really quizzing Labour, instead of an if and but and maybe story. The answer, even as an ex Labour voter, is obvious. BIAS."

"When Mandleson does nothing improper but his judgement is called into question it gets a couple of minutes on a Sunday morning BBC show. When Osborne does nothing improper but his judgement is called into question it gets wall to wall coverage on every news broadcast going at the BBC. Consistency?"

"This is beyond a joke! Robert Peston is supposed to be the Business Editor. When is he going to go back to doing his job, instead of commentating on political tittle tattle? There are very serious business stories in the news today!!!!"

"The BBC has become nothing more than a mouthpiece for the worst spin doctors of the worst Government this country has ever has. You Sir are a parody of a serious journalist. It surely cannot be you are peddling this titttle-tattle because Mr Osbourne (quite rightly) is backing the complaints made about you to the SFA? You are a disgrace and the organisation you represent is a disgrace"

"I think you are flying very close to the wind sensationalising a non story. I was not impressed with your performance nor that of many others on radio 4 this evening. You were struggling to put a coherent sentence together when asked direct questions. I wonder why? Lord heseltine I thought was quiet brilliant dismissing your story as a non story."

"Why in your original article 'Rothschild v Osborne' did you start with a background of Rothschild to suggest that you believed his side of the story ...'does not make allegations lightly'. Would you consider that Osborne would make a denial of 'soliciting' a donation lightly - or were you not ensuring balance in your article? Should you not be disclosing your conflict of interests in your articles, namely that Senior members of the Tory party have asked for an FSA investigation into the leaking of market sensitive news in the last few weeks? You were Gordon Browns biographer were you not? Did the Independent not suggest that you were identified as being part of the 'Brown' camp in their review of your book back in 2005?"

"Why is business editor Robert Peston, now commentating on politics matters? Its the economy stupid is his job description! Has Nick been fired? Or is the fact that the BBC has lost control of what its reports choose to write on. In this case, will John Simpson be doing the football column from now on?"

The BBC apparently remains keen to keep the story going, publishing today an opinion poll it commissioned assessing how the public views the Shadow Chancellor - with mixed feelings revealed.

Tory leadership senses that the corner has been turned on 'Yachtgate'

Despite the very difficult last 48 hours the mood at a mass gathering of MPs and candidates last night for a big dinner was said to be good.  The Daily Mail and Sun have both swung into action today - The Mail rightly suggesting that the potential scandal is really Peter Mandelson's links with Oleg Deripaska and The Sun complaining about the BBC's biased coverage.

Daily Mail leader: "[The George Osborne affair] is no cash-for-peerages or Formula 1 scandal. There is no suggestion that Mr Osborne actually did anything remotely illegal. The fact is neither he nor the Tory Party accepted a penny from Mr Deripaska. Indeed, even if he had asked for a donation - which he hotly denies - that would not have been against the law... If there is to be an inquiry, it should be into the far more serious question of whether Peter Mandelson allowed his friendship with Mr Deripaska to influence EU policy on aluminium tariffs?  After all, we know that a decision taken when Lord Mandelson was EU Trade Commissioner benefited Mr Deripaska's companies to the tune of £50million a year."

The Sun Says: "The integrity of the BBC is coming under question for the way it has treated the case of the Russian billionaire and his British contacts. Hundreds of viewers are complaining of unbalanced reporting — and with good reason. According to its own internal memo, hundreds of listeners accused the Corporation of bias against the Tories — pointing out that the party received NO cash at all.  And it’s strange that the BBC only went into overdrive on the story AFTER George Osborne’s name was linked to oligarch Oleg Deripaska. When just Labour’s Peter Mandelson was involved it boasts it resisted making much of any allegations. Strange, that. And reason enough for their own enquiry into left-wing bias."

CCHQ thwarts Channel 4 attempts to infiltrate Tory donors club

A Channel 4 researcher Jenny Williams (photo from Facebook) - working for the Dispatches programme - attempted to infiltrate one of the Conservative Party's donor clubs, Team 2000.  As CCHQ carried out compliance checks they became increasingly suspicious of her true identity and eventually rumbled her.  Last year the Mirror's attempt to infiltrate the Party Chairman's office was also thwarted.

A Conservative Party spokesman issued this statement:

“This was irresponsible and deceptive. Compliance by all major political parties with the laws of political party funding is a fundamental requirement in promoting confidence in the democratic process.  The Electoral Commission, not an undercover journalist, properly regulates this compliance and the Conservative Party takes its responsibilities and obligations to the Electoral Commission very seriously. It is not acceptable is for journalists to masquerade as a member of the Conservative Party - or any Party for that matter - in a covert, self-appointed role to “check” compliance procedures. It is of particular concern that as part of this subterfuge, Channel 4 deliberately obscured the source of Party donations so we were misled into believing it was Miss Williams who made the donations, when it was not.  This meant that we were not able accurately to account for her donations. Such behaviour by Channel 4 in this case undermines the proper working of a political party, and its accounting regime.”

Our key question: Did Channel 4 also attempt the same infiltration of Labour?

Why is the BBC funding pro-Obama polls?

We already knew that most of the world wanted Barack Obama to be the next US President.  Plenty of polling already existed to suggest as much (see Pew for example).  That didn't stop the BBC commissioning a poll of its own to reach the same conclusion.  Shadow Culture Spokesman Jeremy Hunt (incidentally being tipped as the next Tory Chairman) wonders if this is a good use of BBC resources.  He issued this statement to ConHome:

"I'd like to know where the money is coming from the fund these polls. If they are funded from the commercial profits of BBC World News, that's one thing but I would question whether it is something UK taxpayers should be financing through the licence fee."

Does anyone doubt that the BBC wants Obama to win?  Last week Jim Naughtie wished the Democrats "good luck".  This entry on BBC Online yesterday ends with a very negative reference to McCain-Palin.  At 4am this morning on BBC World Service an hour long debate from LA found only one person in the "balanced" audience who thought Sarah Palin had the experience to be VP.  The list could go on and on...

Jeremy Hunt seeks charitable revolution to power Britain's creative industries

Jeremy Hunt MP, Shadow Culture Secretary, gave his first big speech on the arts yesterday evening.  He was speaking to Peter Whittle's increasingly influential New Culture Forum.  Within the audience were Sir Nicholas Serota, Director of Tate Modern; Nicholas Hytner, Director of the National Theatre; Neil McGregor, Director of the British Museum; and Colin Tweedie of Arts and Business.

Here are some of the main points made by Mr Hunt within an impressive speech delivered without notes:

The creative industries are vital to the British economy and regeneration. They account for 3.7% of the national income and 1.9 million jobs.  No social regeneration project is complete without a strong creative sector dimension.

Labour has done many good things for the arts but the renaissance began under the Conservatives in 1994 with the establishment of the National Lottery.  He noted that the Lottery had provided £3.8bn for the arts and £4.1bn for heritage.  Labour had, he said, reduced funding for the arts by raiding the Lottery pot and taking from what was originally intended for the 'four pillars' - arts, heritage, sport, local community causes.  A Conservative Government's National Lottery Independence Bill would restore the exclusivity of Lottery funding for the four pillars and this would mean nearly £100m more each year for the arts and heritage.

More private charity. Further to ensuring that the arts received more public funding he also said that Conservatives would do more to encourage private giving to good causes.  Saluting the work of Greg Clark MP, Shadow Charities Minister and his co-author of papers on 'progressive conservatism', he said that £3bn to £4bn extra could be made available to the arts and other good causes if giving rose to 1% as a percentage of UK national income, from its current level of 0.7%.  This shouldn't be impossible given the huge wealth in the City, for example.  In the US philanthropy is at 1.7%.  He discussed streamlining gift aid, using the honours system for recognising major philanthropists and encouraging endowments but most important were new social norms.  Giving to charity must become as normal as leaving a tip of 10% at a restaurant, he said.  Both Greg Clark and Jeremy Hunt have been strongly influenced by Daniel Finkelstein's thinking on the importance of social behaviours.

Less bureaucracy.  Jeremy Hunt promised to look at the bureaucracy that had meant the Arts Council spent 12p of every pound it donates on administration.  It was just 5p.  Action against this sort of bureaucracy and the red tape that government imposes on the arts sector in more direct ways could free significant resources.

No ifs, no buts, free museums were here to stay.  Following last year's controversy which saw the sacking of his predecessor Hugo Swire, Jeremy Hunt affirmed that free museum access would be protected by a Conservative government.  Noting that admissions had increased by 80% he applauded then Culture Secretary Chris Smith's victory over then Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

Mr Hunt said that the arts shouldn't be seen in purely 'instrumental' terms by politicians but also in 'inspirational' terms.  Quoting Alain de Botton he said that the arts helped us thrive, not just survive.

PS There's a really silly story in The Sun this morning that suggests Jeremy Hunt endorsed graffiti.  He did nothing of the sort.  He merely noted how one piece of graffiti on the M40 - Why do I do this every day? - was an example of how the arts can often challenge us.

David Davis on Today

Did you hear David Davis on the Today programme, 8.10am?  In a ten minute interview about 90% was spent on the "process story" of his resignation and what it meant for his political future/ the Conservative Party.  There was almost no discussion of the issues upon which David Davis has resigned.  That's what is wrong with political coverage today.

Over the next few weeks let's hope that that can be put right and David Davis gets the chance to put his case on 42 days, CCTV, DNA databases etc.

11.15am: David Davis has just done half an hour with Five Live, he described 42 days as "frankly evil" and also said that his good friend Dominic Grieve would be a better Home Secretary than him anyway. Afterwards R5 played clip of David Cameron talking about the need for the Shadow Cabinet to be "permanent", at its "very strongest"... and also that it is "a team, and will play as a team."

BBC banned Tory Blackberrys on election night

... because the slick CCHQ machine was getting results to Conservative spokesmen before the BBC had them! The Guardian's Backbencher reports:

"The BBC never likes to be reminded that it breaks news as if it's a quarterly periodical rather than a 24-7 outlet, and because of this it rather churlishly did its best to upset the smooth running of the Thursday night Tory results machine. Allegedly. If you've watched the videos on Webcameron, you'll have seen Cameron et al waiting and then celebrating as the results came in (you haven't? Gosh. It's what West Wing would have looked like if George III hadn't lost America and Aaron Sorkin had been a Brit).

Well, off camera there wasn't much champagne action. Instead there were number crunchers and phone bashers extracting results from counts around the country and endeavouring to get them out to their front men sitting in television studios around London - ahead of the rest - to be able to put their gloss on it first. Impressive. Until the BBC made all politicians turn off their BlackBerrys. BBC sources said it was because of electronic interference ... Tory sources said it was because they were scooping them. Instead a Tory aide would receive an email, trot a print out of said results on to the set and hand it to their Tory. Even allowing for time wasted in the printing out and trotting in of results, you may remember that George Osborne still managed to broadcast some results on air before Dimbleby did."

As soon as results came in to Sheridan Westlake and co at CCHQ, they were innovatively syndicated via Twitter so mobile alerts and the front page of Conservatives.com were often beating the BBC and Sky.

Tory consultation paper proposes ending the BBC monopoly

The Mail on Sunday reports this morning that the BBC is angry at draft Tory proposals from Jeremy Hunt MP to 'top-slice' the licence fee and allow other broadcasters to share the revenues.

The proposal first became public knowledge just before Christmas and has won the approval of the Tory grassroots.  The graphic opposite shows that 61% of Conservative members supported it although many hoped for a still bolder policy.  Only 20% wanted the BBC to continue to enjoy a monopoly of licence fee revenues.  11% opposed the policy for being too cautious.

We can also reveal that the idea has won the ConservativeHome Award for Policy Innovation of the Year.   More than 8,000 people voted in December and January and chose this policy above  the idea for co-operative schools and Peter Lilley's advocacy of 'real trade' policies that would benefit poorer nations.

Other ideas in the Tory draft paper on the future of broadcasting include:

• Replacement of the BBC Trust with a new Public Service Broadcasting Commission that will oversee distribution of the licence fee.
• Deregulation of restrictions on the global commercial activities of BBC and Channel 4.
• Protections for new media start-up companies from unfair competition from large, established broadcasters.

Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum has written for ConservativeHome about the kind of alternative public service broadcaster he would like to see.  He summed it up as Less Woman's Hour, More Moral Maze.

Culture Warrior: Jeremy Clarkson & Top Gear

Jeremy Clarkson and the Top Gear team have won the Culture Warrior vote for "defying the BBC monoculture". This is what Michael Gove had to say about Top Gear a few months ago:

"Over the years, something amazing happened. Not only did Top Gear become addictive viewing, it did so by doing something I don’t think any BBC programme (apart from possibly The Moral Maze) has ever done: by moving to the Right.

Thanks to Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond, the programme has become a celebration of individual freedom, capitalist excess and private-sector innovation. It is also laced with laddish distrust of political correctness, nannying and Ken Livingstone-style finger-wagging. Some viewers might find its sensibility just a bit too juvenile, even public-schoolish, with the presenters mobbing each other up and addressing each other by their surnames. But I find it totally absorbing."

The other shortlisted nominees were Peter Whittle for establishing the New Culture Forum and presenting Culture Clash, and Douglas Murray for leadership of the new Centre for Social Cohesion.

* More than 8000 people voted on the 2008 ConservativeHome Movement Awards. The previous award announced was One To Watch, which went to James Forsyth.

Good causes would gain nearly £200m every year from Tory changes to National Lottery

As reported in today's Daily Mail, the Conservatives wish to reform the National Lottery so that it returns to its original purpose of only funding good, voluntary causes.  During the Labour years £3.8bn has been taken away from good causes to fund politicians' pet projects.

David Cameron and Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt will promise a National Lottery Independence Bill that will end political inteference in the Lottery.  Three measures should ensure that nearly £200m extra every year will find its way to good causes:

• An end to funding politically-determined projects.  £100m is currently denied to good causes every year.
• 15% of lottery good cause money is currently assumed by the administration costs of the distributors. A new cap on these costs would release up to £36m for good causes.
• New tax treatments would produce another £40m or so for good causes without affecting Treasury revenues.

Conservatives must encourage more media diversity

There are two draft 'media policy' ideas that ConservativeHome would like to see fully embraced by the Tory leadership in 2008.

One was released just before Christmas by Jeremy Hunt MP, our Culture spokesman.  It's an idea that will take a modest portion of the licence fee (perhaps 2%) - currently monopolised by the BBC - and distribute it to another broadcaster, or other broadcasters, so that they can also offer 'public service broadcasting'.  Our hope is that the 2% would go to form an alternative to Radio 4:

"What we need, as former BBC journalist Robin Aitken has proposed, is a new licence fee funded broadcaster that is based on the British system of getting to the truth' via having opposing arguments test one another.  Our judicial system (defence and prosecution) and parliamentary system (opposition and government) is based on this adversarial principle.  At the moment, the BBC is largely based on the French inquisitorial system whereby an expert searches for truth.  The trouble is that the BBC expert is up to eleven times as likely to be liberal as conservative."

Next week Peter Whittle of the New Culture Forum will be writing a Platform piece for ConservativeHome that will describe what this alternative broadcaster might look like.  It would not be a conservative station but a station that ensured those groups (those licence feepayers) currently under-represented by the BBC would get more of a chance to be involved in programme-making.

The second idea was one that won overwhelming approval from ConservativeHome readers when it was part of our 100policies process (a process that we will revive later this year).  'Aristeides' explained his policy idea at the time:

"All government and local authority jobs will only be advertised on a single government-run website. Operationally, it will be on a low cost almost blog-style platform, searchable by indexing (google-type) software. No one who is looking to work in the civil service should not be able to use the internet. All job centres would obviously also have readily available access to the site over the internet. Departments, councils and quangos would then use the site rather than advertising in the press. With the benefit of technology, jobs can easily be sorted by area, skill or salary."   

We understand from George Osborne's office that the idea remains under active consideration.  We can see no good reason why it does not become party policy.  It would save the taxpayer a considerable sum of money and it would end a huge subsidy to a newspaper with a strong left-liberal bias.  Why should conservative taxpayers be paying for Guardian journalism?

The first Agenda2008 item was published earlier this week: It's time for fairer seats.

Throughout 2008 we'll provide monthly updates on the progress of our 2008 campaigns.

Why should the BBC have a monopoly on the licence fee?

There's a story in tomorrow's Times that is genuinely exciting.  The Times' Sam Coates reports this:

"Mr Cameron’s culture team has begun a policy review into public service broadcasting which is looking at ways to ensure Britain will have a “plurality of public service broadcasters” in the digital era. It will report early next year...  Jeremy Hunt, the Shadow Culture Secretary, told The Times that in future the BBC might not be the sole recipient of the licence fee. “That’s one option because we want to make sure we aren’t exclusively dependent on the BBC for high quality television.  “We want choice for consumers, and the BBC is not the only silo of good quality television.”"

Absolutely.  It appears that Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt is pursuing the issue I raised with him earlier this year (see second answer in this Q&A).

There are two things here that are often conflated:

1. The TV licence fee - the poll tax on every TV-watching UK household that provides a means for high quality broadcasting to be produced.
2. The BBC - the organisation that currently consumes all of the licence fee.  The same organisation that ConservativeHome believes is institutionally biased in a number of ways.

The Tories wouldn't be politically sensible to recommend that a large proportion of the licence fee is taken away from the BBC but the Corporation would find it much harder to argue that a small proportion (say 2%) shouldn't be allocated to new public service programming - either on other channels or, ConservativeHome's preference, to fund a new public service broadcaster that is based on a different approach to news impartiality.

What we need, as former BBC journalist Robin Aitken has proposed, is a new licence fee funded broadcaster that is based on the British system of getting to the truth' via having opposing arguments test one another.  Our judicial system (defence and prosecution) and parliamentary system (opposition and government) is based on this adversarial principle.  At the moment, the BBC is largely based on the French inquisitorial system whereby an expert searches for truth.  The trouble is that the BBC expert is up to eleven times as likely to be liberal as conservative.  That's why, in the last 24 hours, the BBC's coverage of the Bali summit has been disgraceful.  There has been next to no attempt to give fair coverage to the Washington perspective.  The Europeans have been presented as the good guys in wanting to address the issue (even though they're better at signing treaties than meeting their obligations under them) and the Americans are the bad guys (although Washington is investing hugely in clean technologies).

10% of the current licence fee funds the BBC's ten national radio stations.  There's surely room for one-fifth of that money to go to a new current affairs radio station that is based on this adversarial approach to truth seeking?  If you want to think of what it would look like, I'd point to the BBC's excellent Moral Maze as an example of what could be imaginatively replicated.

Who has just written this?

"You know my trouble? I'm just too generous to the government."

"Forgive me being a little slow but I've only just properly clocked yesterday's revelation that 11,000 illegal immigrants had been permitted to become security guards. Why am I telling you about it now then? Because it's dawned on me just how different these numbers are to what the Home Office claimed they'd be."

Keep reading...

"Weeks ago, when this problem was first announced, I listened hard to the Home Office briefings, I tried hard to treat the news calmly and I calculated hard what the figures might be. On the basis of this guidance - I wrote that "based on the outcome of checks made so far the worst case scenario could be over 8,000... Ministers insist that it is impossible to be more precise than they have been so far since they will only have accurate figures once checks are complete in December and say that 5,000 is still the best estimate at the moment".

Perhaps next time I should not listen to the official guidance and think of a number and then double it!"

The author who is now less willing to listen to the official guidance is...

Nick Robinson, the BBC's Political Editor and probably one of the most important people for a politician to keep sweet.  Any politician with any sense, that is.

Mr Brown doesn't appear to have that basic sense, however.  It's not the first time that he's poked Mr Robinson in the eye.  Remember this?