CentreRight

Why is Cameron using the Tory B team?

A few questions.

Who would be a better and more reassuring candidate for Chancellor? George Osborne or Ken Clarke?

Who would be a more impressive candidate for Chief Secretary and the control of public spending? Philip Hammond or John Redwood?

Who would be a more powerful candidate to be Home Secretary? Chris Grayling or David Davis?

Who would be a better Justice Secretary? Nick Herbert/ Dominic Grieve or Michael Howard?

Who would be a more powerful candidate to be Work and Pensions Secretary? Theresa May or Iain Duncan Smith?

I'm told a reshuffle would look like panic.

I predict that the fallout would be a two day affair but we would have swapped our B team for our A team.  We'd go into the election without our key players on the substitute bench.

Clarke, Davis, Hague and Cameron are the Tory A team.

China throws birthday party for Robert Mugabe

Liam Fox has failed the armed forces

According to Fraser Nelson the armed forces budget will be cut by 20 per cent by a Conservative government.

How did this happen?

We are at war.

The armed forces are stretched to breaking point.

Conservative Home surveys find the party grassroots putting defence spending at the top of its priority list.

What did Andrew Lansley and Andrew Mitchell say to Cameron that Fox did not?

You can blame Cameron and I do.

But you also have to blame Dr Liam Fox.

He should have got a better deal for the military.

George Osborne proudly declares that the party is giving FOUR speeches on the environment this week

We haven't had FOUR speeches on immigration all year.

Get rid of the bottled water

There is a big photograph of Gordon Brown in the FT today. You can't miss it. Page one. Next to him are two bottles of water. One sensible measure in this age of austerity would be for all ministers to drink tap water. It's also better for the environment.

The inspirational Peter Davies

The more I read about Peter Davies the more I like him.

He is the directly-elected mayor of Doncaster and is responsible for the local services of just over 250,000 people.

He has ordered budget cuts across the city of 10pc to 15pc. Decades of monopoly Labour rule have convinced him that the savings can be found.

He is planning a 3pc cut in council tax.

He has already cut his own pay in half to £30,000.  Next he wants to cut the pay of his own chief executive in half. That would save £85,000 more.

He wants to cut the number of councillors by two-thirds to just 21.

He has ended Doncaster's twinning with five other cities.

Another £80,000 has been saved by leaving the trade union of local councils (otherwise known as the LGA).

He believes immigrants should learn English and has scrapped the translation services that were slowing integration.

His war against political correctness is also evident in his cancellation of funding for gay and race pride events. He says they can go ahead with his blessing but not with money from Doncaster taxpayers. Also on the way out are community cohesion officers.

He may have scrapped the chauffeur-driven car he inherited but he is otherwise very positive about the motor car. He is increasing the number of parking spaces because he wants Doncaster to be business friendly. Incidentally he does not believe that Doncaster has a duty to save the planet from global warming but it does need to provide jobs for its people.

This retired RE teacher wants schools to run themselves.

What a guy.

I am indebted to Gerald Warner, Harry Phibbs, Robert Hardman and Wikipedia for the content of this blog.

Chris Grayling must move on from "shallow" soundbites

Chris Grayling became shadow home secretary as a reward for his attack doggery. He was part of the "pub ready" reshuffle that also saw the elevation of Eric Pickles and Mark Francois. Attack doggery and pub readiness is not what the party needs six months on. It needs gravitas and a preparedness to govern. Chris Grayling hasn't caught that change of gear. He is still in the soundbite phase. The left wing media has leapt on his dodgy references to The Wire television series (as you would expect) but Janet Daley has joined in with an attack on Grayling for "shallow" politics. Wiregate (sorry) comes on top of his derided promise to give the Nokia generation a 21st century clip about the ear. Mr Grayling must put the soundbite politics behind him. He is a better man than this.

Will Andy Burnham say Claire Rayner is "unpatriotic" for her criticism of nurses?

Claire Rayner today (BBC): "I am sickened by what has happened to some part of my profession of which I was so proud. These bad, cruel nurses may be - probably are - a tiny proportion of the nursing workforce, but even if they are only one or two per cent of the whole they should be identified and struck off the Register."

The British taxpayer is spending 60pc more on the EU

Last month I noted that the Tories wouldn't just protect the Health Service and overseas development from spending cuts but also Britain's EU contribution. Courtesy of the News of the World we learn that that commitment just got a lot more expensive: "Britain's contributions to Brussels will rocket by 60 per cent next year, meaning every household will pay the EU £257. Documents slipped out by the Treasury reveal we will fork out £6.4 billion in 2010-11, compared to £4.1 billion in 2009-10. And it means Britain will be the second biggest contributor, behind Germany. Much of the increase is down to the reduction in the rebate won by Margaret Thatcher in 1984. It made up for the huge proportion of the EU budget that went on the Common Agricultural Policy, which benefited Britain less than other countries. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown surrendered a big chunk of the rebate in 2005, making it worth just £3.3 billion in 2010, compared to £5.1 billion this year."

Timothy Kirkhope's new constitutional rule

It is no secret that the Conservative MEP Dan Hannan does not much like his colleague Tim Kirkhope and Tim Kirkhope does not much like Dan Hannan.

One is a better off out man and Timothy is not. They have disagreed for years.

Kirkhope was consequently no slouch in rushing to the World @ One radio studio to attack Dan Hannan's NHS interview. Mr Hannan will be called in to the Tory Whip he said.

Kirkhope added that it was wrong for Hannan to have talked about the NHS because the European Parliament does not have a role in healthcare.

Where does this new Kirkhope rule end?

Are MPs forbidden to talk about issues that have been surrendered to Europe? That won't leave them with much to say.

A right winger's case for David Cameron

Last week I posted Mikey's "depressing list" of reasons why the right might be unhappy with David Cameron. One reader sent me an email response via Tim Montgomerie. As with Mikey's list I have decided to republish it.

"Dear Mr Grove,

Your list of reasons why right wing conservatives were unhappy with Cameron has provoked me to put fingers to keyboard. I think of myself as a right winger; I adore Lady T; backed Davis in 2005; and am now very enthusiastic about Cameron. Mikey had 14 points. Rather than rebutting them 1 by 1 as your correspondents did, I offer 6 positive reasons why right wingers of all types should be excited about Cameron becoming PM.

Force of emergency circumstances.

The public finances are so shocking that a 'steady as she goes' course will be impossible. Cameron will have to reshape the state. It may not have been his first path of choice but he will have to be open to radical thinking. In better economic times he might have chosen to ignore the counsel of David Freud, Andrew Haldenby, Andrew Lilico, Edward Leigh, Liam Halligan, Fraser Nelson, Tim Montgomerie and the Taxpayers Alliance. He will be more inclined to listen to radical voices because do nothingness is now the road to national bankruptcy. The State will look different in five years because the current State is too unaffordable. It is reform or bust.

Power to the people.

The Cameron prospectus is stuffed full of ideas that will give power to people. My top 5 are the power to set up new schools; to elect police chiefs; to veto large Council Tax rises; to abolish Regional offices; and to set up Local TV. These are dispersals of power that politicians will never be able to take back once people have tasted them.

Sometimes Israel is hard to defend

Will Britain's contribution to the EU be reduced?

No. I'm told that Britain's contribution to the European Union will also be protected from the axe - not by choice but by necessity.  Renegotiating our contribution will either be too time consuming or impossible.  Either way it cannot be cut quickly. Britain pays about £12 billion to the EU every year and only gets about £7 billion back. Once the next Tory administration has protected the three budgets of health, aid AND Europe it will be left making even bigger cuts in all the other budgets.

My own view: No extra money for the EU until it can get its budget successfully audited.

Pi**ed off with David Cameron

I know the usual Cameroonians will moan at me for this post but it is not acceptable for a leader of the Conservative party to use street language in broadcast interviews. I'm talking about this. Does Cameron talk like that in front of his children? David Hughes of the Daily Telegraph agrees with me.

A depressing list

On ToryDiary 'Mikey' has left this comment that I thought deserved wider attention.

"Although I hate Heffer's style here's why I fear he might be right:

CAMERON'S TRACK RECORD

1, Accepting the climate change consensus.

2, Opposing grammar schools.

3, Accepting 50p tax.

4, Declining to say he'll reverse Lisbon.

5, Cutting defence spending but increasing NHS spending.

6, Forcing Catholic adoption agencies to accept homosexuality (I'm gay btw but support freedom of association).

7, Backing extra state funding of political parties.

8, Making air travel too expensive for poor families.

9, Supporting positive discrimination for women and ethnic minorities.

10, Backing for shooting galleries for drug addicts.

11, Cuddling up to Obama while shunning Bush.

12, Opposition to nuclear power stations.

13, Dumping of the Patient Passport.

14, Silence on immigration.

Enough for now."

Santa Klaus

The Thatcherite President of the Czech republic has teamed up with seventeen of his country's senators to refer the Lisbon Treaty to his Constitutional Court. If he succeeds he may stop the whole thing being ratified before Cameron comes to office. Lisbon is not yet a done deal.

Thanks to the EU Referendum blog for the title of this post.

'Labour is morally guilty of corporate manslaughter in Afghanistan'

"War imposes moral obligations, especially upon those who send men into action. If they will the end, they must will the means. In Afghanistan, this would not necessitate vastly expensive space-age technology. It would merely require the basic tools of modern warfare, such as armoured vehicles whose armour is worth something, and helicopters. Without them, we are effectively reduced to Second World War methods....

Wherever there is out-dated equipment, whenever men's lives have been endangered by a failure to spend small sums, one man's fingerprints are always to be found: Gordon Brown's. After 1997, the then Chief of the Defence Staff, Charles Guthrie, offered every Cabinet minister a briefing on defence. All but one accepted. Gordon Brown could not be bothered. The only time he took a positive attitude to defence was when there was a prospect of some warship construction at the Rosyth shipyard, in his constituency. Otherwise, Mr Brown was uninterested, negative and surly....

Labour MPs often talk about corporate manslaughter and the need to prosecute company directors whose employees are killed in accidents because of low safety standards. So what about an outfit where safety was known to be deficient and which had received repeated warnings from many experts? Could it begin to mount a defence? Gordon Brown must be aware of the consequences, yet he chose to perpetuate a regime of neglect which was bound to lead to unnecessary deaths. He is morally guilty of corporate manslaughter."

Bruce Anderson in the Independent.

The political benefit of being reluctant cutters

Osborne & Cameron could be accused of being slow to recognize the need for cuts in state spending. They talked for too long about greenery and General Well Being. But it is possible that the politics of this behind the curvery may turn out to be positive. Voters may prefer reluctant 'cutters' to ideological 'cutters'. They may prefer people in charge who would rather be spending.

Just a thought.

MPs must face Inland Revenue probe

Charles Moore writes "One hopes that the Inland Revenue will also correlate the sale of "second" homes by MPs with its tax records. Did those MPs pay tax on the capital gain from the sale, or did they suddenly decide that the house was, after all, their principal residence, and so avoid paying any tax at all?" (Telegraph).

Charles Moore hopes but someone must insist.

Will a Cameron landslide bury the Labour party AND Tory backbenchers?

YouGov's new opinion poll for the Daily Telegraph would produce a Conservative majority larger than won by Margaret Thatcher in 1983 and almost as large as the Blair win of 1997. Do we want to win so big?

A Conservative majority of 150 and more would bury Labour for a generation and it would give David Cameron all the power he needs to take the tough decisions that will be needed. So far so good but do we wanted an elected dictatorship, even if we think it will be a benign dictatorship?

Francis Pym was frozen out by Margaret Thatcher after his famous 1983 warning against a large majority. He worried that a super majority would protect the Cabinet from having to listen to the breadth of backbench opinion and could lead to arrogance. He was right. She began to lose the plot when she ran Britain from Downing Street. Tony Blair never had to listen to backbench opinion.

David Cameron is already semi-detached from his parliamentary party. A massive majority could intensify the problem. He could ignore the Right and govern on the back of the A list intake.

On balance my preference is for a solid majority of 50 to 80. That's enough for Cameron to govern effectively but not enough for him to ignore the the opinions of John Redwood, David Davis and John Whittingdale. Or for that matter John Gummer and Ian Taylor.

Proof 942 that the French ARE different

France is witnessing 'an outbreak of kidnapping—or “bossnapping”—of company bosses, held by workers in their offices overnight. Student protests have closed some universities, with lectures cancelled, for weeks on end. Fishermen this week blockaded the ports of Boulogne, Calais and Dunkirk with boats and barricades of burning tyres. None of these incidents is related. But they all seem legitimate in voters’ eyes: 64% of respondents to one poll say that the perpetrators, including bossnappers, should not be punished.'

Source, The Economist.

The Right should not get too close to Guido Fawkes

Elsewhere on these pages Graeme Archer says we all owe Guido Fawkes a debt of gratitude. We owe him (Paul Staines) thanks this weekend but the Right / the Conservative party shouldn't get too close to this anarchic blogger. He practises the same coarse politics that he has attacked very successfully this weekend. Right wingers may enjoy the way he portrays Gordon Brown as a closet homosexual but he has also been brutal to Conservatives. Andrew Rosindell and Graham Stuart have both been seen their reputations dragged through the mud by Guido himself and within the comments below his posts.

The BNP are coming

All the warnings signs are there. The only big news on Conservativehome today is a 23pc increase in BNP support in a Manchester by election.  Tim put this BNP leaflet on his Twitter feed earlier. The political establishment is out of touch. If you are not worried you should be.

Scrap NHS funded hospital priests and pay for more nurses

I am a Christian but cannot support the state paying for religion.

NHS Blog Doctor says the £32 million cost of hospital vicars could pay for an extra 1280 hands-on nurses.

It's an open and shut case for me.

"We are going to move heaven and earth to show that we are not the party of the wealth creators"

My alternative title to Tim Montgomerie's post on Tory Diary.