ConservativeHome's Columnists

Andrew Lilico: The Difference between a modern Conservative and a Blairite

Why are you a Conservative?  How are your views different from those of a New Labour supporter?  How do you believe that your views are better than those of a New Labour supporter?  I’ll tell you how I think matters lie.

New Labour is the current manifestation of one of the oldest and longest-serving political programmes still active: Catholic Collectivism.  Catholic Collectivism was the major political doctrine enacted during the middle ages, and has evolved and found new expression in each new age - as all vibrant political philosophies must.  It is a coherent, attractive and powerful foe.  Earlier this century its major expression was Corporatism, a programme explicitly inspired by two Catholic encyclicals - Rerum novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo anno (1931).  New Labour’s ‘Third Way’ is its most recent form.

Catholic Collectivism advocates close co-operation between employers and workers over working conditions, wages and prices, production and exchange, with the state as overseer. It aims to promote social justice and order by substituting collective considerations in the place of competition and the price mechanism.  Catholic Collectivism has always promoted a pan-European hierachy, and still does.  New Labour’s philosophy adds a populist side, with a collectivist notion of democracy.  For New Labour, democracy is something we do collectively.  It is how we ‘rule ourselves’.

For New Labour the People’s Will is sovereign.  Focus groups and opinion polls are not mere marketing devices, as some naive Conservatives suppose.  They are how New Labour’s policies find their moral legitimacy.  New Labour wants to reflect the People’s Will, so that those who oppose it are automatically wrong — they oppose the People.

What today’s Conservativism offers — as reflected in its intellectuals and in the instincts of its members, albeit not in the programmes offered by our leadership for the past seventeen years — is quite different.  It is a somewhat newer philosophy than Labour’s, but it has a good pedigree.  Modern Conservatism reflects closely its Whiggish tradition.  The Whigs were the dominant party for most of the eighteenth century.  Famous Whigs of this period include Walpole, the two Pitts, and Burke.

Towards the end of that century the party split into two factions - the Pittites and the Foxites.  Over time the Pittite faction came to be called ‘Tories’ (though they had had nothing to do with the seventeenth century party of that name).  This faction went on to form the Conservative Party in about 1830.  During the 1830s many members of the Foxite faction (now called ‘Whigs’) defected to the Conservative Party, including Edward Stanley, later a Conservative Prime Minister as Lord Derby. The remains of the Whig Party defected to the Conservatives in the 1880s on the Irish Question.  The Conservative Party is thus the inheritor of the entire eighteenth-century Whiggish tradition, and modern Conservatism reflects this tradition very closely.

In modern Conservatism we can identify four key Whiggish principles — a New Whig Agenda around which our future policies could be formed.  These principles are:

• favouring Parliament over the Executive
• favouring the interests of small traders over concentrated wealth
• favouring toleration of non-conformists
• promoting ordered liberty against the arbitrary powers of the State

In short, the New Whig is the champion of the individual and the underdog.

Stephan Shakespeare: Changing the leader would be madness for the party; but it is also madness not to change a flawed strategy

“No lurch to the right”, “stay the course”, “stick with the centre ground”, “no wobble” – when these familiar phrases appear in the press, we can sum up the situation with one word: “trouble”.

The next election is still winnable for David Cameron. But it will demand clear thinking. Above all, Tory strategists must understand that in the modern world – and after all, we strive to be ‘modern’ – there is no such thing as a ‘centre ground’. We live in a multi-dimensional world, we do not aggregate around some fixed mid-position on a line on a graph. Where would you place the Gordon Brown of taper relief, which he has pledged to continue even for private equity? On the left or right? It’s certainly not centrist.

So far, CCHQ has provided a one-dimensional strategy: changing the party brand from nasty to nice. No problem with that, DC has done really well on that account. Whether or not the Conservatives were ever truly seen in those terms, there is no doubt that the image of knee-jerk cutters of public services was a real problem.

Graeme Archer's Diary: Shambo and racial profiling

The City of London crumbles into the borough of Hackney at the interface of Bishopsgate and Shoreditch High Street. Between these two is a tiny handful of properties called Norton Folgate. On Monday evening I passed along this route on the upper deck of the number 26 bus – nothing unusual in that. I was reading Tamburlaine Must Die, a novel about Christopher Marlowe written by Louise Welsh. Just as the bus juddered out of Bishopsgate, I read the following: Where else can a poet live but the bastard sanctuaries? Beggars’ breeding grounds where all are as welcome, or unwelcome, as the other. My lodgings are in a broken-up tenement in Norton Follgate. Well! By chance I found myself passing along the same street that Christopher Marlowe was entering in the novel. This is only the second time I’ve experienced this; the first was half my lifetime ago. I sat in Russell Square one hot, yellow evening in July 1989, reading (with my mouth hanging open) The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst, as the characters made an entrance into the same square. Is this a universal sensation, like deja vu? There must be a Greek word to describe the oddly pleasurable, reality-flickering jolt it serves on you. Russell T. Davies, if you are a Conservative Home columnar regular – and I can imagine nothing else – please take note: there’s a Doctor Who story in there somewhere.

Cameron Watt: Notes from Northern Ireland

Having got married in Belfast in January, we have been back in Northern Ireland this week for our first break since returning from honeymoon.

Saturday 21 July, Belfast

The love-in between Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Minister shows no signs of abating, but it’s all a bit too much for Belfast Telegraph columnist Kevin Myers:

“Viewing the pictures of Martin McGuinness and Ian Paisley avidly viewing one another at the North-South meeting like a pair of Linda Lovelaces, I felt a panic-inspiring vertigo. It was like Pope John Paul snapping awake at a Papal Banquet in the Vatican and finding a nude Mother Teresa cavorting with an equally naked Ayatollah Khomeini, while the Mormon Tabernacle choir sang Seven Drunken Nights and the Dalai Lama harpooned koala bears.”

However incongruous and even nauseating Mr Myers finds such displays of affection, I’m thankful that the Province’s two most powerful men are getting along. Unless they continue to, the new settlement may not endure.

Tuesday 24 July, Belturbet, Co.Cavan

We’re visiting friends in a sleepy town situated just inside the Republic, in what used to be the border badlands during the Troubles. Two of the town’s youngsters were murdered in a car bomb, so the peace dividend is particularly cherished here.

Whereas the impoverished Republic was once viewed with disdain by those in the North, the tables have been decisively turned over the last fifteen years. Indeed the Celtic Tiger is now dispensing considerable largesse to improve the Province’s infrastructure.

The Irish Times has further details of Eire’s 400 million Euro investment in the North, which will include a new Dublin-Londonderry motorway. Some Unionists consider this part of strategy to achieve a united Ireland by stealth, but none of the main parties are prepared to look such a generous gift horse in the mouth.

Wednesday 25 July, Ballycastle, Co. Antrim

I fell in love with the north Antrim coast when I first visited last summer. We’re back in the same cottage, perched on the coast a mile from the seaside town of Ballycastle. As the sun sets I look out over the tranquil waters of the North Channel to the small island of Rathlin. Sweeping, hypnotic beams of light are cast over the sea from two of the island’s lighthouses. Silhouetted above them are the towering peaks of Jura. BBC Scotland’s Radio Nan Gaidheal is on in the background, playing its usual mix of haunting Gaelic melodies and accordion and fiddle music. This is a glorious place to be.

There is far more to this dramatic stretch of coastline than the Giant’s Causeway. Antrim’s multitude of excellent links courses make it a golfers’ paradise – Royal Portrush is the only club outside Britain to have hosted the Open Championship, in 1951.

Tourism obviously has a major role to play in revitalising the Province’s ailing economy. Northern Ireland consumes more than £5 billion in public spending than it pays in taxes. Expenditure is over 60% of GDP, yet per capita GDP is still 20% below the national average. In the race to attract inward investors, Northern Ireland is struggling to stay in touch with the Republic where corporation tax is a mere 12.5%, less than half the 30% levied in the North.

Jump-starting Northern Ireland’s economy is the most pressing priority for the new all-party Executive, yet they have few tools at their disposal to achieve this. However there are signs of hope. This week the Bank of Ireland announced the creation of 150 graduate-level jobs in Belfast administering hedge funds. Ryanair also announced it was establishing many new routes from Belfast City Airport to Britain and Europe.

When you’re next planning a vacation or weekend break, why not consider Northern Ireland? For too many Brits it’s the undiscovered gem on their doorstep.

Theresa May: The draft Queen’s Speech – what a massive disappointment!

As Parliament came to a close this week we held our first ever ‘draft Queen’s Speech’ debate. This was heralded by Government spin doctors as an historic moment – for the first time the Government was going to allow public scrutiny of its future legislative programme. And therefore we waited with baited breath for something radical and new. What we got was something close to déjà vu.

The Government have proposed 23 Bills for the next session of Parliament. However every single one of these 23 Bills has been announced before. From the counter terrorism Bill which they announced last week, to the dogged Crossrail Bill of February 2005, and the housing and regeneration Bill which they have promised since March 2004 – nothing in Brown’s draft legislative programme was new.

I should not have been surprised really. Despite the Prime Minister’s assertions that he has changed, everything that has happened since he ascended into power has felt rather familiar.

Louise Bagshawe's column returns next week

Louise has just given birth to a son, Lucius.  Many congratulations to her from all of us at ConservativeHome for this latest addition to her family.

Peter Franklin: Abolish the Treasury

I know what you did last summer. 

Amid the hosepipe bans and dwindling reservoirs, you slashed the flood defence budget. 

By ‘you’ I mean Her Majesty’s Treasury, which would no doubt object that the budgetary decision was taken by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which has immediate responsibility for flood defence. Never one to miss a trick, HMT would also point out that Defra had been given all the money it needed and only ran short thanks to its lavishly incompetent implementation of the Single Payment Scheme for farm subsidies. This much is true. But what has flood defence to do with the Single Payment Scheme? Not much. Until 2001 they were the responsibility of different departments.  Nevertheless rules are rules, and the rule in this case was that, irrespective of Britain’s flood defence needs, flood defence work had to be postponed because somebody somewhere buggered up yet another public sector IT contract. 

Welcome to the wacky world of the Treasury, the guys who make the rules in Whitehall. 

Andrew Lilico: House of Electors

The Labour government is committed to further reform of the House of Lords.  The Conservative Party’s main position (albeit on a free vote) appears to be to favour a substantial measure of election.  I have previously set out why I think this should be a whipped issue, and why I disagree with having an elected Upper Chamber.  In this article I wish to set out what I would propose, instead.

The proper order is to understand what the Upper Chamber is for, and then to specify a membership that meets that purpose.  My previous article specified its key legislative purpose and powers.  To summarize, this purpose is to provide a block on the democratic chamber and an alternative source of action from it, in respect of non-money matters of order and liberty, in order to preserve and promote ordered liberty.  Thus its powers would be equal to the Commons in respect of non-money bills (it could not be over-ridden and would have equal power of initiative), whilst it would not consider money bills at all.  (The Speakers of Commons and Electors would determine, and in case of dispute, the monarch would be the final authority upon, what did and did not constitute a money bill.)  As discussed last week, another purpose I would see for it would be to select the new Monarch upon the death of the previous monarch — hence my proposal of the name: “House of Electors”.

Stephan Shakespeare: The public need to be convinced that changing government is worth the risk

Michael Portillo, who I greatly admire, used his Sunday Times column on the weekend before the Southall and Sedgefield by-elections to call on David Cameron to show more ‘cojones’, reminding him that the ‘half-hearted’ don’t get to the top. He meant that up to now the modernising project had lacked the necessary ruthlessness, and that DC should stop feeding the party’s ‘baying right’.

Since then the party has had two awful by-elections – twice pushed into third place – and yesterday was hit with two more woeful opinion polls. Maybe Michael’s suggestion that DC is not yet sufficiently like Blair is the correct explanation for the recent down-turn in David Cameron’s fortunes. Maybe the party needed an even more modern candidate in Southall.

Unlikely, but possible. One thing strikes me as certain, however: the ultra-modernisers are already starting to prepare the ground for blaming any future failure on ‘the baying right’.

This seems unfair. ‘The right’ has never been better behaved. It has preferred to mutter under its breath rather than make trouble, constantly reiterating (correctly) that David Cameron is ‘the only show in town’, accepting that there is no alternative.

Graeme Archer urges all good Tories not to buy Campbell's Diaries

Graeme Archer's Sunday diary.

Alistair Campbell has published his diaries. Lots of apparently sane Conservatives are poring over them. The blogosphere, Sunday supplements (and BBC supplicants) are awash with reviews. Why this? Am I alone in finding the thinly-veiled respect for Campbell, evident in many Tories, completely repugnant? Why would you want to read anything written by that bullying, foul-mouthed, moral pygmy of a man? What can he teach us, exactly? How to besmirch the name and reputation of honest, good public servants? How to plagiarise Ph.D. theses and pass them off as “intelligence”? How to blacken the names of people who can’t answer back, such as hospitalised pensioners or the victims of train crash carnage? How to use belligerence as a mask for the fact that you have lost whatever moral compass you may have been born with? No thanks. Bad enough that my taxes paid his salary while he infected the body politic; unbearable to contemplate adding to his retirement pension scheme.

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If you’re not awake at 6am of a weekday morning this won’t mean much to you, but those of you who are: don’t you get sick of those two-way conversations with which Today illuminates its main news stories of the day, after the 6am headlines and before the 6.12am paper review? For the uninitiated, it goes like this: suppose the topic is a report on poverty by the Rowntree trust, or a government white paper on Improved Regulations For Breathing. What happens is that some BBC reporter, adopting the confident tones of a lifetime expert on poverty, or breathing regulations, or whatever, is “interviewed” in a scripted manner by the main presenter. So we’ll have Edward Stourton [for it is he] saying “So, Sally, this report makes pretty grim reading for the government, does it?” – as though he doesn’t know what Sally is going to say – whence Sally replies – breathlessly, as though importing news that should shock you bolt upright against the pillow -  “Yes Ed, that’s absolutely right, this report really does make pretty grim reading for the government”. Sally then proceeds to read out the press release from the lobby group, government ministry or political party involved. It’s pointless (we know no more than had we just read the press release ourselves), patronising (are we supposed to think, post-Hutton, these are spontaneous conversations?) and when the “news” story being so breathlessly relayed to us by Sally is a press release from the Labour party about how great the prime minister is, downright sinister.

Cameron Watt: Building to Win

Gordon Brown has made clear that housing is a policy area he believes can win him many votes at the next General Election. Already announced are plans to increase the number of new homes built annually from 200,000 to 240,000 by 2016. Next week much more detail of the new Government’s housing strategy is expected with the publication of a green paper. If Brown can enable large numbers of younger voters currently priced out of the market to fulfil their dream of home ownership, he will be obviously become very popular.

Housing also has the potential to be almost as important as welfare reform in reversing poverty. As well as benefits traps, punitive marginal tax rates and couple penalties, the poor are also increasingly trapped in ghettoes of social housing where both aspiration and opportunities are scarce. Two facts here are particularly startling:

• In the UK’s 3.8 million social housing units, more than half the adults of working age do not have paid work; and
• If you are living on a council estate and have two people of working age on either side of you, the chances of them both working is just one in 10.

Theresa May: Proper scrutiny. Real accountability. Healthy democracy.

Last week, I examined Gordon Brown’s claim that he wants to make Parliament the “crucible” of our political life.  This week, I want to examine one of the gaps in his proposals: Westminster’s broken system of scrutiny for European legislation.  This was the subject of my speech to Politeia on Monday (the full version of which can be found here).

It is estimated that between fifty and seventy per cent of UK laws originate in the European Union.  The EU produces four pieces of secondary legislation each week.  And every year, more than 1,000 European documents are deposited in Parliament.  But Parliament’s system for scrutinising these documents is broken.

This is because the House of Commons’ European Scrutiny Committee is overwhelmed by the volume of its work and lacks real teeth.  By contrast, the equivalent committee in the House of Lords does its job well.  But that job is to produce fewer, more detailed reports, and not to scrutinise the thousands of European laws passed by Parliament.  That is why my proposals focus on the House of Commons.

Louise Bagshawe: Protect women and children – reform the judiciary

Louise Bagshawe is the candidate for Corby. Join her Facebook Group here.

New Labour loves to portray itself as the trendy friend of women. All-women shortlists for Parliamentary seats, an enduring tendency for female officials to describe themselves as bits of furniture "Chair" of the Labour party, and Jack Straw (ahem) announcing to the Commons that he would be changing parliamentary language to get rid of "gender bias".

But lift the lid on the PR gloss for one second – and you’ll see this party is no friend of women.

No friend of women, and no friend of the weak. The criminal justice system has imploded under Labour. Most Conservatives are used to discussing liberal bias in the media and on the BBC. Far more devastating is the liberal bias which has sunk into every corner of our judicial system.

Peter Franklin: The most important fact in British politics

The Brown bounce is proving to be a bumpy ride. Nevertheless, I am sure the experts are right when they tell us that we won’t see a true picture emerge until after the conference season. But perhaps we need an even longer perspective, because we seem to have forgotten the most important fact in British politics:

Which is that the last British recession ended in 1992.

That’s over sixty quarters of continuous economic growth – more than enough to pave over ten years of New Labour Government. So forget Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Forget the long saga that is the Conservative Party in opposition. Just think GDP. Nothing else goes quite so far in explaining why they keep beating us.

That is not to say they deserve the credit. No, that belongs to the following:

(a) The Thatcher reforms
(b) The rise of China
(c) Not joining the Euro
(d) The pursuit of a sane monetary policy

Gordon Brown opposed (a), had nothing to do with (b), had something to do with (c) and, thankfully, did not trust himself with (d).

Andrew Lilico: Should we care about the demise of the constitutional monarchy?

Certain elements of Gordon Brown’s proposed constitutional reforms have received extensive discussion — in particular the abolitions of the royal prerogative in respect of war and in respect of the ratification of international treaties.  However, the two most important elements did not even merit a mention in the BBC’s coverage: the power to request the dissolution of Parliament and the power over recall of Parliament.  To be fair to Gordon Brown his speech on the matter gave these elements due prominence, but subsequent discussion has been almost absent.

These proposals have been spun as "returning power to Parliament" — as if it were the royal prerogative, rather than the excessive use of whipping and guillotines, announcement of key measures in newspapers rather than Parliament, the majority of legislation passing through European institutions and UK regulators and for which MPs are rubber-stampers at best, and so on were the true complaint of those regretting Parliament’s loss of status.  But be that as it may, I wish to focus on these measures as they are, rather than to dismiss them as a cosmetic distraction.  For though their intention might be cosmetic, their effect would be profound.  In particular, removing the power of the monarch to request the dissolution of Parliament and the power over recall of Parliament would eliminate two of the key elements of the constitutional monarchy, leaving only the power to appoint ministers and the power to withhold assent to legislation (as well as some limited role in resolving constitutional crises — though without the power to dissolve Parliament, the monarch’s ability to force such as resolution would be limited).

Stephan Shakespeare: The Brown honeymoon will likely endure for at least six months

The 'two polls' that appeared in Sunday’s newspapers, each purportedly showing a 7 per cent lead for Labour, were in fact one and the same poll, with two different bits given to two different newspapers, and each press released separately the evening before. So Conservatives thinking that two polls have now confirmed a continuing downward trend can take a crumb of comfort from knowing it was just the one.

The Sunday Telegraph got the proper ‘state of the parties’ question, while the News of the World were given a rather curious follow-up – “Now that Brown has taken over, and faces Cameron and Campbell, are you feeling warmer to the idea of supporting the Tories/Labour/Lib Dems?” I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Feeling ‘warmer’ towards supporting something isn’t the same as voting for it.

We pollsters can sometimes find ourselves writing some pretty weird polling questions, and they can obscure as much as they reveal. In the months before Blair quit the stage, we were asking people how they would vote if Brown were the Labour leader. I warned this question could turn out to be misleading (people can’t know how they will vote under different conditions in the future), but YouGov asked it along with the other pollsters because that’s what newspapers required. The results suggested that Brown would be a pushover for Cameron, and Tories became rather optimistic. At that time I predicted that Brown would perform well in the transfer of power, and that the British people would be generous to the man they saw as finally getting ‘his turn’. That’s happened, and I suspect both this generosity from the public and the quality of his performance will endure for at least six months. Brown could easily call an election before this period is over.

Graeme Archer's Diary: David "David" Cameron and other things

Graeme Archer's Platform archive can be read here.  He begins his column today.

Verona
For Janet Daley and I to agree about anything, something pretty tectonic-plate-shifting on the centre-right must be happening. After all, I’m an authentic card-carrying, leaflet-delivering, vote-garnering grassroot Tory activist of twenty-plus years experience, while Ms Daley is a (formerly) Marxist journalist at the Daily Telegraph. Just joking! I speak of course of our support for marriage. Ms Daley this week wrote beautifully of how a marriage is an act of union between families, and is not solely a machine for providing the best upbringing for children yet found (though it is this too, of course). At Mr Keith’s and my Civil Partnership ceremony last March I told our guests (including our families, sat together for the first time – you’ve not experienced stress until you’ve introduced one set of inlaws to another, have you?) how I had struggled to find a non-confrontational form of words to describe the event, before I gave up and used those which seemed the best fit: “Today we got married. Welcome to our wedding”. Anyway. As you read this, the newspaper columns will be filling up with 500 word articles, saying that tax-system support for marriage is either nothing but common sense, or an unfair attack on single mums. I think this line of Labour’s – that we are intending to subsidise feckless men at the expense of struggling mothers – will not gain traction, not least because David “David” Cameron is so visibly at ease with the good things about modern Britain. You can’t be a happy supporter of legal and cultural equality for gay people and be easily painted as some sort of finger-wagging right-wing authoritarian nutter. Some of “David”’s critics at the Telegraph might like to reflect on this.

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I woke this morning to a Sherlock Holmes moment: the mystery of the clanging bells (the mystery being that there were none). Italian church bells are more cow-herd than Canterbury (think “Heidi”), and their noise, for the 5 years I lived here, was my first intimation of consciousness of a morning. But no more. Italians are increasingly unwilling to have their sleep disrupted in this way, and have required the church to put a sock in it, at least before 7am. I’m not sure how this creeping modernity makes me feel, though I was once driven close to a psychotic state by the relentless, multiple-churched, quarter-hourly clanging which was perhaps the only interesting feature of the frazione of Laveno in which I dwelt. E. M. Forster understood something of the gap between the Englishman’s dream of Italy and the reality: Where Angels Fear To Tread.

Cameron Watt: What a week!

Never have I been so relieved to reach a Saturday as this one. The Centre for Social Justice, of which I am Deputy Director, and Social Justice Policy Group hosted nine events between Monday and Thursday. Most of these were linked to the launch of the Policy Group’s Breakthrough Britain report with its bold and detailed proposals to mend our broken society, for which Iain Duncan Smith deserves great credit.

For the last 18 months, Philippa Stroud has inspired the Group’s staff to work harder than we ever thought we could. Our team of able young graduate interns (some pictured here with June Sarpong) has done superb work in supporting the volunteer chairman of the Group’s working parties. As one our friends reflected, “It’s amazing what you can achieve with kids!”

However in recent weeks I was most nervous about overseeing the third Centre for Social Justice Awards, sponsored by the Pears Foundation, which JPMorgan Asset Management hosted on Wednesday evening. Now in its third year, the Awards showcase the work of exceptional small groups successfully tackling poverty to politicians of all parties.

Theresa May MP: Gordon Brown’s respect for Parliament - A glorious epiphany, or just a new type of spin?

If the new Prime Minister is to be believed, Parliament is to become, once more, the “crucible” of our political life.  I thought I’d use my first weekly Conservative Home article to examine whether Gordon Brown really has experienced a glorious epiphany, or whether it’s just a new type of spin.

Certainly, Gordon Brown’s record as Chancellor of the Exchequer never indicated any sort of respect for Parliament.  Every year, he announced a budget that left those watching feel like they’d won the lottery, only to discover in the next few days that he had neglected to mention his customary stealth taxes.  He became an expert at burying bad news.  And he refused to answer all sorts of reasonable Parliamentary questions, from serious issues of policy, to harmless information such as whether he uses email. 

But that was the past.  Maybe he’s done the unthinkable, and undergone a personality transplant?

Last week, he came to the House of Commons to make a statement about his proposals for constitutional reform.  Much was made of the fact that he had come to the House to make a statement to MPs, without going on the Today programme first.  Wow.  But it did sound awfully familiar.  It sounded familiar because – you’ll never guess what – most of it had already been trailed in the media.  Danny Finkelstein kindly did the Research Department's work for it at Comment Central.  So much for talking to MPs before talking to the media.

Louise Bagshawe: Why we must not let up on the demand for a referendum

I have often been embarrassed – not least during selections – by the couple of months I spent in the Labour party in 1996, before I became a Tory activist again in 1997 and subsequently. As I have written elsewhere, I thought Tony Blair was a Tory. I was taken in by his rhetoric on low taxes and the respect he offered to my heroine, Margaret Thatcher.

And I was shaken to the core by our own flirtation with the Euro. We disastrously joined the ERM, and Black Wednesday resulted. Those of you with relatively good short-term memory will recall how enthusiastically Gordon Brown supported the ERM. He was far more of an advocate for it, at the time, than any Tory including Ken Clarke. How ludicrous that he now likes to bait Cameron for being around, as a young researcher, for the fallout for something he supported ardently as a senior Labour MP.

But really. Given that Europe was one of my primary concerns, how could I ever – for no matter how short a time – have thought that Tony Blair was the answer?

His little jaunt in Brussels was his final two fingers to the voters. And don’t let us buy Labour’s line that Gordon is a Eurosceptic. He isn’t. He wasn’t during the Major years, when he pressed for ERM entry. And he certainly isn’t now. Under Brown, the era of Euro-spin continues.

Peter Franklin: The lopsided blogosphere

In his first column Peter Franklin argues that blogging is changing British politics... but only on the Right.

Is the Left useless at blogging? Labour activist, Mike Ion, posed the question last year, after noting the Right's domination of the British blogosphere. A few months later, he was at it again, noting that:

"Right of centre political "gossip blogs" like Guido Fawkes and Iain Dale's Diary receive hundreds of thousands of hits each month and are proving to be influential in setting the news agenda ahead of the printed and broadcast media. Left of centre, pro-government blogs are nowhere near as popular and, as yet, not particularly influential - few (if any) are read by the likes of Nick Robinson and Adam Boulton."

However, this time, he found cause for optimism (proving that for every negative Ion there must be a positive Ion):

"It could just be however, that things are about to change. Respected and influential commentators like Tim Montgomerie, who runs Conservative Home are predicting that 2007 will be the year when Labour blogging (and bloggers) comes of age. If Montgomerie is proved right, if left wing blogging is to have an impact in 2007 then it is likely to be as a direct result of the contest for the deputy leadership of the Labour party."

Well, the deputy leadership contest has come and gone, and the British blogosphere is as lopsided as ever. There is no sign that Labour blogging has come of age. The Right remains dominant, with Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale and ConservativeHome top of the pile.

Andrew Lilico: The value of choice for those that don't choose

“Choice” is a buzz-word in many policy debates. Politicians from all parties now talk about expanding choice in public services such as health and education. Osborne has attempted to paint our point of disagreement with Brown as being about "choice versus voice". Yet promoting choice remains controversial for many, and even those in favour often seem confused about who should be choosing what, and why.

The most common argument against the extension of choice usually runs something like this: extra choice is all very well for those that have the time and resources to research what is available, or those that have sufficient wealth to choose widely. In contrast, ordinary people do not want choices — they just want reliable, high-quality services in their neighbourhood.

Behind this argument lies the assumption that the only people to benefit from choice are the ones who actually choose. So if well-informed parents choose to send their children to a better school, all those left behind won’t gain anything. Or if a minority of patients choose to be treated at a shiny new hospital in the next town, the majority using the local hospital will be stuck with the same poor service. Extra choice seems to benefit the middle-class or the savvy, but is of little help (or even harm) to those that are poorer, less well informed or more vulnerable.

Welcome to the columnists page

Welcome to this new section of ConservativeHome.

We are delighted to have recruited seven excellent writers to each contribute a weekly column to ConservativeHome.  Andrew Lilico kicks things off tomorrow with a discussion of choice.

Here are the magnificent seven:

Monday: Stephan Shakespeare co-founded the YouGov polling organisation and is the proprietor of ConservativeHome.com.

Tuesday: Andrew Lilico is an economist, Managing Director of Europe Economics and a member of the IEA/Sunday Times Shadow Monetary Policy Committee.  He describes himself as a "Whiggish Conservative", by which he means he is a believer in the Whiggish Constitution, competitive market solutions, toleration of non-conformists, and ordered liberty.

Wednesday: Peter Franklin is a Conservative policy advisor and speechwriter specialising in environmental and social issues.

Thursday: Louise Bagshawe is the Conservative PPC for Corby and East Northamptonshire. Married with two children and a third due any moment, Louise is a novelist by profession. She joined the party at 14 and became a Conservative activist in 1997.

Friday: Theresa May was elected Member of Parliament for Maidenhead in May 1997. She is the Shadow Leader of the House of Commons and Shadow Minister for Women, having previously served in several Shadow Cabinet positions and as Party Chairman.  Before becoming an MP, Theresa worked in the banking industry and was a councillor in the London Borough of Merton between 1986 and 1994.  In Merton, she was Chairman of Education between 1988 and 1990 and Deputy Group Leader and Housing Spokesman between 1992 and 1994

Saturday: Cameron Watt is Deputy Director of the Centre for Social Justice. The Centre was established by Iain Duncan Smith in 2004 to learn from innovative grassroots poverty fighting groups in developing effective new approaches to tackling social breakdown.

Sunday: Graeme Archer is a bit of a waster, more kindly a delusional dreamer, and is on the board of not a single important body, unlike every other ConservativeHome columnist. He describes himself as "quite a bit fatter than my facebook photo would lead you to believe" and has no strong political views about anything. He writes mainly on scraps of paper which he then loses.