ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Who should David Cameron put on the red benches?

One of the big challenges for what we hope will be an incoming Conservative government will be the need to ensure that we have a full working frontbench team in the House of Lords.

The current Tory representation in the Lords is summarised in the graphic on the right.  In order to have enough fronbench talent, ConservativeHome estimates that David Cameron will have to appoint approximately twenty new Conservative peers in his first twelve months - assuming that fundamental Lords reform hasn't happened by then.

Who would you appoint?

Here are some suggestions to get the debate going:

• David Fraser, one of Britain's foremost experts on crime and sentencing.  With twenty-six years experience working in the Probation Service, courts and prisons, and having addressed Commons Select Committee on Sentencing. His recent book 'A Land Fit for Criminals' was an encylopaedic attack on the myths and half-truths that are used to oppose tougher, longer prison sentences. 
• Jill Kirby, Director of the Centre for Policy Studies.  Jill is an articulate and thoughtful Conservative who writes the first essay in The Telegraph's 'Tories in power' series this morning.  She writes about the family - the issue about which she is one of Britain's leading authorities.
• George Magan, former Tory Treasurer, philanthropist and  City banker.  Mr Magan has been a long-standing supporter of the party and would bring much to the Conservative benches' understanding of the economy.
• Simon Wolfson, CEO of the Next chain.  Mr Wolfson has been a consistent supporter of Eurosceptic causes  and co-chaired the Conservative Party's Policy Group on economic competitiveness.

Good policy is 10% brainwave, 10% idea development and 80% implementation

Why have politicians fallen so far in public esteem?  Is it the sleaze that is the meat and drink of campaigners like Guido Fawkes?  Partly, yes, but large numbers of voters have ceased to respect their politicians since at least the days of Profumo.  A big additional factor - perhaps the most powerful factor - is the incompetence of politicians.  Reflecting on the Chinook helicopter debacle Stephen Glover, in the Daily Mail,  goes on to list example after example where this Government has failed to deliver on its promises.  It's a long list but... Will the Conservatives be any better?, he asks...

"The Shadow Cabinet has its fair share of dullards and professional politicians with little experience of a wider life. Its two most outstanding members, David Cameron and Shadow Chancellor George Osborne, are members of the new political class, both being young and untried. Mr Osborne has never had a job outside politics; Mr Cameron made a foray into PR. We must hope their undoubted talent will make up for their limited experience."

Mr Glover doesn't offer solutions but here are a few to get this thread going:

> Follow Boris' example and make full use of talented people from outside politics.  Since becoming Mayor Boris has brought high quality individuals into City Hall.  Tried-and-tested business people like Tim Parker, Patience Wheatcroft and David Ross are helping to cut waste and oversee the Olympics.  Successful social entrepreneurs like Ray Lewis are helping with the fight against crime.  Given that Nick Boles of the Conservative Party's Implementation Office is running Boris' transition we can be confident that this approach will also be adopted by an incoming Cameron administration.

> A much greater focus on the voluntary sector and other local delivery models.  Earlier this week Greg Clark MP and David Cameron launched an impressive range of ideas to boost the voluntary sector.  Many of the ideas came from Iain Duncan Smith's social justice policy group.  This voluntary sector agenda fits into the wider Conservative commitment to decentralise power - the agenda of the Direct Democracy group.  Too many decisions are taken in Whitehall - away from the people most affected by those decisions - preventing a close relationship between service deliverers and service users.  Localisation would facilitate more policy experimentation leading to a competition of approaches to solving problems and more immediate feedback when things go wrong.

> Focus on implementation, implementation, implementation.  We've argued this before but it might be necessary for the next Conservative Government to insert a lot of outsiders into the Whitehall machine in order to ensure that our policy agenda isn't frustrated by civil servants who oppose or don't understand our objectives.  These aren't so much political appointments - as the outsiders don't need to be Conservatives - but they need to be committed to the idea of the welfare, schooling, prison and other trademark Tory reforms.  Francis Maude, head of the Conservative Party's preparations for government, understands the importance of implementation and is carefully researching public and private sector models of successful delivery.  We'd like to suggest that we think in terms of Maude's Law to reinforce the importance of an implementation strategy.  Maude's Law hasn't been written by Francis Maude but honours his belief in the importance of delivery mechanisms.  It states that good policy is 10% brainwave, 10% idea development and 80% implementation. Most of our think tanks focus on policy development.  Very little attention is given to policy implementation.  The TaxPayers' Alliance is a notable exception to this.

Three observations about Francis Maude's 'Implementation Office'

Iain Dale has an interesting article in The Telegraph about the Implementation Office being headed up by Francis Maude and Nicholas Boles.  We've always been keen on this idea - it's essential that our frontbenchers are prepared for the hard task of managing Government Departments, with fully thought-through policies and with the iron will to implement ideas that will be resisted by a Whitehall machine that is far from the Rolls Royce operation that it once was.

A few comments additional to those made by Iain:

• Conservatives mustn't close their minds to making more political appointments in Whitehall.  There is already a sensible commitment to reduce the number of spin-doctors from David Cameron but that mustn't become a commitment to shun political appointments of an executive nature.  Successful implementation will need appointees friendly to an initiative to be stationed throughout departments that might otherwise be obstructive.
• The IO must not become a second policy approval unit.  Its job is to develop policies so that they can be successfully implemented - not to revisit whether they are worthy of being in the manifesto.  One shadow cabinet team is concerned that the IO may become too powerful; say that some policies are readier than others for initial Queen Speeches - downgrading some until 'later' and 'later' never arriving.  (10.15am: However, there is a real role in stopping impossible policies from swallowing up Government time).
• The IO's most important job (hopefully!) in the next few months will be helping Boris Johnson be an effective Mayor of London.  Nick Boles, in particular because of his understanding of London, should be seconded to the Mayor's office to ensure the best talent is available to the new administration.  If the Boris campaign is successful - and we mustn't count our chickens - the way it performs will be used by voters as an indication of the wider party's readiness for office.  Boris Johnson's idea of a Cabinet for London is a good one but the personnel picks will determine whether it really works or not.

Is David Cameron serious?

Today's Observer reports that David Cameron aspires for a third of his ministers to be women by the end of his first term as Prime Minister.  A member of CCHQ's revamped press team has just confirmed the story to ConservativeHome.

The article by Gaby Hinsliff contains quotations from two angry MPs:

Philip Davies, Shipley: "If you believe in true equality, which I do, then it should be irrelevant what somebody's gender should be. People who are good enough for the job will be accused of getting it on false premises and people who aren't will be exposed as not being up to the job."

Ann Widdecombe, Maidstone: "I just don't see how you can say what proportion of your government will be male or female, over or under 40, or ginger or blonde. When I was made a minister, it was presumably because I had convinced somebody somewhere I had earned it."

As Ms Hinsliff points out, with about fifty to sixty women likely to be part of the next parliamentary Conservative Party, that would mean there would be one ministerial post for every two female Tory MPs and one post for every four men.

ConservativeHome does not know all of the women who have been selected for winnable seats but knows many of them to be outstanding.  Louise Bagshawe, Harriett Baldwin, Karen Bradley, Rachel Joyce, Andrea Leadsom, Priti Patel and Philippa Stroud spring immediately to mind.  None of them should be rushed into frontbench jobs before they are ready, however - just in order to fit a target that is more politically correct than anything ever proposed by NuLabour.

After ten years of Labour incompetence it is vital that Conservatives make the machinery of government work again.  We need frontbenchers with executive experience and MPs who have become familiar with Parliament.  How far are we going with this quota-based politics?   Women do bring special perspectives but so do people with northern upbringings or experience of the voluntary sector.  Are we to have quotas for them, too?  ConservativeHome has long campaigned for the party to help poorer candidates afford the expensive process of becoming a Tory MP but next-to-nothing has been done to address that problem.  A strong representation of the female perspective on the Tory benches is a good idea but a target for the number of female ministers is not the approach of a serious governing party.

Implementation, implementation, implementation

Tony Blair had education, education, education as his electoral catchphrase.

David Cameron said that he didn't need three words, just three letters: N H S.

ConservativeHome would like to suggest an alternative: implementation, implementation, implementation.

There was a massive gap between what Tony Blair promised to do and what he actually achieved.

One of the most important things that David Cameron needs to do is to convince people that he is capable of actually delivering on what he promises.  Francis Maude's Implementation Office - just getting up and running under Nick Boles - has this task.  The IO has the job of converting policy ideas into workable departmental plans and for training shadow ministers to be real ministers.  Mr Maude has said that the possibility of a second General Election victory (should we get a first!) will owe much to whether the IO helps build an effective Conservative government.

There are many other ways of narrowing the gap between political promises and governmental achievements.  This week we've seen Chris Grayling emphasise the extent to which Tory welfare ideas are built on what has already worked in other parts of the world.  There is scope for localisation of solutions.  More people with business experience could be brought into Whitehall.  And, of course, government could do things better by doing fewer things.

We would like to suggest one other possibility: Whitehall may need more political appointments.

ConservativeHome's Tim Montgomerie has studied President Bush's faith-based programme in America.  It only started to work because political staffers within Washington's main departments pushed and pushed the bureaucracy to do what was necessary.  Our guess is that more political appointees in key Whitehall departments may be needed to ensure Sir Humphrey et al do not frustrate manifesto pledges.

The current Tory position is to reduce the number of political appointments but perhaps that's a promise that only refers to media positions?  We're not quite sure.  Anyhow, do you agree with our contention that a successful Conservative government may need a more politicised Whitehall?

The Government-in-waiting

"David Cameron has meanwhile been going back to his constituency and preparing for government. This has involved a fairly sober assessment of how many genuinely Cabinet-grade people he has on his team (he struggled to get into double digits). Ideally, his next reshuffle should be the last. It is vital for his prospects that the Tory frontbench look and sound like a competent government-in-waiting in comparison to the disintegrating Brown Cabinet."

Fraser Nelson wrote those words for The Spectator a few weeks ago.  Our emphasis.

So... Who are the people that David Cameron really rates in his top team?  Three groups of three stand out.

THE THREE BIGGEST BEASTS

David Cameron's three leading shadow cabinet ministers also top the league that measures grassroots approval of frontbenchers.  That's not just because they hold the most important positions.  Before the inheritance tax announcement George Osborne was sliding down the ratings.  At the end of September the Shadow Eric Pickles, Chancellor had dropped below Eric Pickles, Owen Paterson and Dame Pauline Neville-Jones.

George Osborne is certainly the most important member of the shadow cabinet to David Cameron.  We discussed the Shadow Chancellor's position at some length yesterday.

William Hague remains the darling of the grassroots as was proved by the reception he received for his two Party Conference speeches.  He also has responsibility for the party's northern revival through his chairmanship of Campaign North.  Can he discharge these tasks adequately given the scale of his outside interests?  That question isn't likely to go away in 2008.

Since becoming Shadow Home Secretary at the end of 2003 David Davis has moved the Conservative Party in a decidedly more civil libertarian direction.  He has also won the internal argument on drugs.  The more liberal approach signalled by David Cameron during the leadership election has been quietly ditched.  But has David Davis used his tenure to develop a hard-hitting Tory approach to crime?  Team Cameron are now pleased that the law and order issue is no longer monopolised by Mr Davis.  They have high hopes that Nick Herbert will deliver some more electorally potent policies on crime over the next two years.

THE THREE TO WATCH

Nick Herbert is one of three members of the shadow cabinet who are most likely to be the big beasts of the future.  Michael Gove and Jeremy Hunt are the other two of this trio that only entered the Commons in 2005.

Most significant of the group is Michael Gove.  As clever as he is courteous, when Shadow Housing spokesman he demolished Government credibility on HIPS.  He is now restoring credibility to Tory education policy after the grammar schools fiasco - although some of the more striking of his policy announcements owe much to the under-acknowledged work of David Willetts.  He regularly helps with the Tory leader's most important speeches and gave 2007's definitive speech on the intellectual weaknesses of Gordon Brown.  His neoconservative outlook has not prevented his rapid rise but will probably stop David Cameron from giving him a foreign affairs brief in the near future.  He recently ditched his glasses and appears to be adopting a snappier dressing style.  Mr Gove is not without ambition.

Gove is assisted by one of the party's brightest thinkers, Dominic Cummings.  Nick Herbert also has a powerhouse adviser in his Chief of Staff, Blair Gibbs.  Herbert ran the Reform think tank before entering Parliament and was the principal beneficiary of Michael Howard's mistreatment of Howard Flight.  Having impressed David Cameron with his work on police reform he now has responsibility for one of the biggest briefs in the shadow cabinet and is opposing Jack Straw, arguably Gordon Brown's most able Cabinet Minister.  If he succeeds in this brief he is set fair for a big future.

Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, is the most untested of the 'three to watch' and probably over-reacted to the James Purnell's fake photos row.  Nonetheless, his recent policy announcement on the licence fee is one of the most strategically important initiatives by the Conservatives since the 2005 General Election.  His rise has been slower than Gove and Herbert - and he leap-frogged Ed Vaizey because of the latter's complicity in the museums-charging row - but one of the most senior advisers at CCHQ describes Hunt as "our very best communicator".

THE THREE INDISPENSABLES

David Cameron and Liam Fox have not had an easy relationship.  Dr Fox did not think there was enough 'balance' to the first eighteen months of Project Cameron and his judgment was right.  He has nonetheless worked hard on the defence brief and his thinking on energy security is particularly impressive.  High points for Dr Fox included bringing Giuliani to London and leading the charge against Brown's Iraq troops withdrawal.  One of the most popular members on the right of the party he was also one of the first to understand the importance of a broader Conservatism, founding the Conservative Party's Human Rights Group and coining the 'broken society' term.

Oliver Letwin will be writing for ConservativeHome soon about the policy review process.  His fingerprints are all over Project Cameron and the West Dorset MP can probably be described as the leading frontbench representative of über-modernisation.  The first senior shadow cabinet minister to endorse David Cameron's leadership bid he was also the first senior advocate of the green agenda, of co-operation with the Liberal Democrats, of a rejection of supply-side tax cuts, of an emphasis on relative poverty and a downplaying of issues like immigration.  Martin Bright famously, and fairly, called Letwin the Gandalf of Camp Cameron.  Letwin has now struck up an unlikely alliance with Andy Coulson.  The party's director of communications is thought to regard Mr Letwin as indispensable.  He regards Mr Letwin's intellectual skills and hard work as central to earthing the hyperactivity of some of the Cameroons and their eagerness to announce things that haven't always been thought through.

The final member of our group of nine is our Leader in the Lords, Lord Strathclyde.  Very popular with the grassroots Tom Strathclyde has the enormous task of overseeing Tory operations in the one chamber where the party often enjoys a good chance of defeating or amending Government legislation.  He is 99% certain to be Leader of the Lords should Cameron become Prime Minister at the next General Election.  He is thought to believe that the party will need forty to fifty extra peers if it is to be able to conduct Government business adequately.  His considerable diplomatic skills might yet be stretched to breaking point if the party leadership's support for a more democratic Upper House comes up against the Tory peers' opposition to any big change.

***
If you were looking for people of Cabinet grade it wouldn't be difficult to grow the list but the above nine are, in our opinion, those most valued by the party leader.  Tomorrow we'll identify the MPs that the ConservativeHome Members' Panel most want to see in the shadow cabinet.  Then we'll look at the women in the shadow cabinet and which are likeliest to break into the inner core.

Brown "tainted by sleaze"

An ICM survey for Newsnight suggests that twice as many voters see Gordon Brown as sleazy (57%) as see David Cameron as sleazy (28%).  44% agree with Mr Cameron's PMQs' attack that Mr Brown is not "cut out for the job".  Unfortunately only 41% think the Conservative leader passes his own test.  43% think Mr Cameron the most competent leader and 42% think the same of Mr Brown.

Those LibDems who think Vince Cable should be their leader might have their enthusiasm cooled by the revelation that just 8% think their acting leader is cut out for the job.

8am on 4/12: As our party attempts to present itself as an alternative government - competent and prepared - one of the most important tasks has been given to Francis Maude and Greg Clark - our shadow cabinet office team.  They will oversee the party's implementation office - a unit that will ensure policy ideas are ready to be implemented and not just press released.  The unit will also help to prepare shadow ministers for the responsibilities of office.  At last night's Policy Exchange reception David Cameron was the speaker and he announced that Nick Boles - that think tank's highly-regarded founder and our candidate in Grantham and Stamford - will run the implementation unit.  I hope to write a lot more about this important unit soon and, in particular, the division of responsibilities between the MPs like Francis Maude, who has ministerial experience, and Nick, who doesn't.

Restore the standing of the shadow cabinet and other frontbenchers

• Invite all frontbenchers to propose new policies for their portfolios in preparation for presenting them to a new and formal policy approval process.
• Ensure that all frontbenchers have one bilateral meeting with the party leader at least once a year.
• Use Francis Maude's new implementation office to give every frontbencher full access to the training and support they need to be confident ministers-in-waiting.

A constant complaint of Conservative activists is that the shadow cabinet and frontbench are pretty anonymous.  Only five shadow cabinet ministers registered more than a 0.5% showing in our recent survey of party conference performers.  There are all sorts of reasons for this problem.  British politics is increasingly presidential and the media are not much interested in anyone other than the leader and a small handful of others.  Some of the problem also has much to do with the scale of frontbenchers' outside interests... but that's a subject we've addressed enough already.

Media coverage is not, of course, the only way of judging the impact of frontbenchers although Iain Dale's 'Media Tarts Lists' are always worth a scan.   Shadow cabinet ministers can also make a difference by providing the party with cut-through policies and breakthrough scrutiny of their opposite numbers' performance.  Nick Herbert, for example, has been terrific in recent days.  He's been all over the media; first attacking Labour on early prisoner release and then for failing to deport foreign convicts.

At Tuesday's press conference, David Cameron confirmed that the policy groups were being wound up.  This is an excellent opportunity to give shadow cabinet ministers some real opportunities to develop policies in their portfolio areas.  For the first two years of Project Cameron the existence of the policy groups process made it hard for them to be creative.  That has all changed.  Mr Cameron should issue a direct instruction to all frontbench teams to develop new policies - particularly micro policies that can be marketed via the internet.

Tories to set up Implementation Office

It's hardly a sexy news story but page two of today's London Evening Standard appears to suggest something very grown-up about David Cameron's Conservatives.

The Tory leader is planning to establish an 'Implementation Office' early next year which will draw up "the most detailed preparations" for an incoming Conservative government.  Every Tory frontbencher will have to liaise with the IO's permanent staff of business professionals and former civil servants.  Slowly but surely every shadow team will build up a 'to do list' for civil servants with detailed information on the Conservative legislative programme.  The IO will also be responsible for training Tory frontbenchers on how to manage their future departments.

Editor's comment: "This initiative is very welcome.  It begins to address the claim that Project Cameron is all style and no substance.  Over time the IO's 'prospectus' is expected to come to 40,000 words of detail on the Tory programme.  The Implementation Office could also build a perception that David Cameron is leading a government-in-waiting.  It will also contrast with Labour's inability to implement what they promise - this Labour Government's greatest failure (see David Cameron on Labour's graveyard of initiatives)."