ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Politics need not be brutal

Peter Oborne issues a warning to David Cameron in his Daily Mail column: Don't over do the personal attacks on Gordon Brown at PMQs or in private briefings.  It may have a positive political effect in the short-run, suggests Oborne, but it may ultimately lead the British people to conclude that David Cameron lacks the basic decency that they want in politicians.

For the record: we don't think that David Cameron has gone too far but the warning is wise nonetheless.  As long as Cameron's anger is always on behalf of the British people he is doing his job as Leader of the Opposition.

Peter Oborne ends his piece with this:

"Politics need not be brutal. Indeed, I witnessed another fascinating insight into how it can be conducted on Thursday night when my wife and I went to a reception at Lambeth Palace, the historic home of the Archbishop of Canterbury.  Among the guests were many priests, bishops, charity workers and some politicians, including Gordon Brown and the backbench Labour MP Frank Field, who had spent all week spearheading a successful backbench revolt against the Prime Minister over his decision to abolish the 10p tax band.  At a late stage of the evening, under the benign gaze of the Archbishop, Frank Field stepped forward and embraced Gordon Brown, who responded in kind.  It was a moving and blessed moment between two honourable men who have been bitterly at odds for more than a decade and yet proved they could forget their differences."

Politics needs more of that.

Related link: Watch highlights of David Cameron's latest PMQs exchange with Gordon Brown

Innovation at the heart of public policy

Here's our (belated) "pick of the paragraphs" from this morning's interesting speech by David Cameron at the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. Go to NESTA's website for a video and transcript, and WebCameron for a blog post on the speech.

Technology changing our lives: "There were no computers in classrooms when I was at school. When I first started work, it was still “word processors” not computers – and not everyone had one. But today the Cameron household’s weekly shop is done online. And the Cameron family holiday tends to get booked on the internet. More seriously, I take a close interest in the new disciplines such as biotechnology that scientists are using to fight illness and disease."

Social innovation: "I think that innovation should not be limited to science and the economy – as it overwhelmingly is in the Government’s recent innovation strategy. They say their strategy is about innovation in general, but the weblink to it is actually “scienceinnovation.pdf”, and the bulk of the document is about promoting innovation in the economy. I want to talk this morning about innovation in its broadest sense. Most of all, I mean innovation in public policy – what might be called social innovation."

Government's failure: "Before New Labour came to power they talked about social innovation and social enterprise too. Ten years on, I think there’s a sense of disappointment. Too often, as so often in the past, top-down government has stifled innovation rather than stimulated it...  Indeed, the odd thing about the Government’s innovation policy is how un-innovative it is... Whitehall and innovation don’t go together, for the simple reason that innovation is the product of many heads not a few, and free thinking not state control."