The conservativehome.com blog

Social liberalism doesn't come cheap

Writing in this morning's Times, David Willetts continues to point the way towards a humane, yet still authentic, Conservatism:

"We talk as if the problem is just the supply of government. But, increasingly, I believe that the real problem has been the demand for government that grows as a consequence of a fractured and fragmented society. There are different ways in which this demand for government expresses itself. If people are living on their own, we know that they are more likely to use the NHS. If you feel rotten in the middle of the night and there is nobody beside you to mop your fevered brow and tell you not to worry, you go to A & E instead. This is just one example of a wider point: atomised individuals need more external support. Social liberalism doesn’t come cheap..."

From Springfield to Sellafield

So, Max Hastings has come out in favour of a new generation of nuclear power stations. That’ll be the end of that idea, then. Like many other supporters of nuclear power, Mr Hastings is a gentleman of certain age with a history of supporting big, ugly, centralised and expensive solutions to problems we don’t really have. For instance, Mr Hastings was an enthusiastic supporter of the European Union and all its works, and used his position in the commentariat to excoriate the Conservative Party for failing to see the light.

Of course, if the Conservative Party is to embrace nucleoscepticism alongside euroscepticism then it will need more evidence against nuclear than the dodgy record of the nucleophiles. Readers of this blog will recall the recent news that twenty tonnes of highly radioactive uranium and plutonium had leaked from a pipe at Sellafield’s Thorp reprocessing plant. At the time, it was unclear exactly when the leak has taken place. The news, ahem, leaked out shortly after the election and there was a suspicion that things had been hushed up in order to keep nuclear power off the campaign agenda.

But according to the Daily Telegraph the truth is rather is rather more disturbing:

Why isn't Peter Mandelson expelling France from the EU?

The excellent Labour MP Kate Hoey was on Radio 4's PM this evening - being interviewed about France's 'non' vote. She reminded listeners of how Mandelson and other Labour Europhiles had said that the Conservative "rejectionists" of the Brussels Treaty were endangering Britain's membership of the EU. Rejection of the Treaty wasn't compatible with full membership of the Union we were told. 'No to the Treaty' would leave Britain in a semi-detached state, on our way to full separation.

Has Mr Madelson told President Chirac about France's new semi-detached status or was New Labour's great propagandist performing his usual dark arts?

Europe's 'Chikelsconi' politicians

Italy is in recession. French growth fell to 0.2% in the latest quarter. German unemployment stands at over five million. A new conservativehome.com memo (celebrating France's 'non' vote) spotlights the economic weakness of Europe's centre-right parties:

"Angela Merkel, German CDU Leader, is often compared to Margaret Thatcher but there is little reason to believe that she will be any more of an economic realist than Chirac or Berlusconi, two other centre-right leaders. Chirac and Berlusconi have presided over their two countries’ woes and Ms Merkel shares their views on the big questions facing Europe’s economies.

Continental Europe’s ‘Chikelsconi’ centre-right establishment support the EU Treaty and its inflexible employment rights and the centralisation of power in both the Brussels Commission and the weakly-accountable European Parliament. The Chikelsconi politicians are also unanimous in their support for the euro. Frankfurt’s European Central Bank has failed for two main reasons – (1) it has flattened growth because of its over-anxious attitude to inflation, and (2) its one-size-fits-all monetary policy has been unable to simultaneously suit the needs of every eurozone economy.

The Sunday Times’ David Smith* believes that if the euro continues to fail it will be replaced but not until the current “generation of politicians committed to EU integration and monetary union” retires."

So where is Mr not-Davis?

So utterly has the not-Davis wing of the Conservative Party failed to organise a stop-Davis campaign that David Davis has had to organise it himself. Or, rather, some of his more enthusiastic supporters have been overstepping the mark in various ways thus generating negative headlines as well as positive ones.

But does David Davis need to be stopped? Isn’t he just what the party needs – tough, intelligent, presentable, human? He is all those things, but for some reason, which is far from apparent to the wider world, not all of his parliamentary colleagues seem overjoyed by the prospect of a Davis leadership. Then there is the question of how exactly he intends to revive the Party he hopes to lead. No doubt he intends to tell us in due course, but we need a rival vision to compare it against: hence the need for a stop-Davis candidate, whether or not he needs to be stopped.

Mr Bush, whatever happened to your commitment to "end tyranny in the world"?

The conservativehome.com website is a great admirer of George W Bush and his progressive brand of conservatism. We support him in the war on terror and in the Iraqi stage of that war. We were always worried, however, that he would find it difficult to live up to the rhetoric of his January State of the Union speech and our fears are being justified in horrible fashion.

Bush's idealism is floundering at the end of the Uzbekistan government's rifles. Two weeks ago 500 people, including many women and children, were killed by Uzbeki troops in the Andijon province. President Bush's response was muted. Uzbekistan's leader, Islam Karimov, was the first power to offer America support after 9/11. But, as noted by The New Republic, Uzbekistan is the kind of unsavoury regime that Bush's new foreign policy was meant to challenge:

Blair shows no r-e-s-p-e-c-t to parents

We've heard a lot about respect from Tony Blair of late but our Prime Minister doesn't show much respect to Britain's parents.

Although his condom compassionate government has thrown more and more resources into safe-sex education, the latest data show that teen pregancies are actually up. The proliferation of safe sex education and contraception has also done nothing to stop the explosion of sexually-transmitted disease. But this does nothing to stop New Labour and, sadly, Andrew Lansley from recommending even more of the same at an earlier and earlier age. Why don't these people ever ask if the sexualisation of children - encouraged by ever more sex education - is part of the problem, rather than the solution?

The Tories' passé modernisers

In a brilliant article for today's Scotsman Bill Jamieson demolishes the platitudinous language of the new Tory Constitution:

"Earlier this week, the [Tory] party's new chairman, Francis Maude, issued what he described as "a statement of the party's values" (as if it previously never had any) which would be enshrined in the new constitution.

"We are a national party", this statement declares, "committed to serving the entire nation and open to and respectful of everyone in Britain, regardless of their background, race, sex or religion. We believe in strong communities, cohesive society, personal freedom and responsibility, limited government, the rule of law and an enterprise culture."

WELL, that's sure one in the eye for all those out there who believe in weak communities, anarchic society, personal enslavement, big government, lawlessness and a Soviet economy.

It is a perfect example of how what today's modernisers seize upon as "new" is already passé and well past its sell-by date. Such vapid and meaningless statements of the obvious neither uplift nor inspire. On the contrary. These litanies have descended on our public culture like a dampening fog...

Time to think again about Tory rule changes

In the introduction to “A 21st Century Party” (Michael Howard’s master plan for what is described as the “reform” of the Conservative Party), the current Chairman, Francis Maude, opines that “it is absolutely vital that we do not squander the unity, harmony and dynamism that we mobilised in recent months.”

How unfortunate, then, that the presentation of the master plan to Conservative MPs on Tuesday night should have done just that. The reception was hostile, to say the least, and the proposals are, if not dead in the water, then wearing concrete Wellingtons and sinking fast.

What went wrong? It had been thought that most MPs would welcome the chance to regain their exclusive right to choose their leader. That may well be the majority view, but what they hated was the sheer arrogance with which the proposals were presented. Consider the following passage, also from the document’s introduction:

Blogs attack China's dictatorship

This blog recently reported on France's bloggeurs and effective bloggers in the US and Canada. But bloggers may be most powerful in resisting totalitarian regimes. Nicholas D Kristof has penned a thoughtful piece in this morning's New York Times about China's subversive bloggers.

Noting that 100 million Chinese people now have access to the web, Kristof lists a number of dissident websites and bloggers, including one leader of the Tiananmen democracy movement. Despite constant attempts by the Chinese authorities to ban websites the criticism of China's corrupt establishment is surviving on proxy servers.

Kristof highlights the website of Li Xinde: