ConservativeHome's Columnists

Theresa May MP: Back to business - and with the bit between our teeth

This summer, we’ve experienced the usual silly season.  Not content with the Cornish great white shark, the latest ‘discovery’ of Lord Lucan, and Jasmine the piglet, we’ve also seen our fair share of mad political stories, which I wrote about recently.  But now, it’s time to get back to business.

And the Conservative Party is getting back to business with the bit between our teeth.  Throughout the summer, the Party’s policy commissions have been reporting, and the remaining reports are due soon.  The commissions have brought fresh thinking to tough public policy questions on social justice, economic competitiveness, fighting global poverty, and security.  Of course, not all of their proposals will end up as party policy, but the commissions have played an enormous role in the revitalisation of the Party’s generation of ideas.

In the coming months, solid policies and a clear philosophy for government will emerge.  These will define the battle that will be fought at the next general election.

But before that day comes, we will be taking the fight to Gordon Brown and his Labour Party.  In just the last week or so, we have landed a couple of significant blows.

Louise Bagshawe: In praise of Andrew Lansley

Louise Bagshawe welcomes the Conservative lead on the NHS.

For obvious reasons, it was very moving to be in Liverpool last week for the recording of Any Questions?. It is a wonderful programme that affords the panellist enough time to actually answer the questions put to them. Whilst I knew that the recording would concentrate on the unimaginable tragedy that had happened to Rhys Jones, it would touch on other issues too. You have a good guess at what might come up. That week the National Health Service had been much in the news, and the media spin was not wholly positive for the Conservatives. We had circulated a list of hospitals that were under threat. It contained one true error (the name of Altrincham hospital substituted for Trafford General, which is in the same NHS trust). A combination of media bias – the reporting of complaints by NHS Trust managers as though they were by definition justified – and unfortunate news management – Henry Bellingham MP apologising to his local hospital – led to a narrative of shambolic Conservative media controls and Tory fear-mongering on maternity and A&E.

The fact that the protestations of the trust managers were often unfounded and that Bellingham had never said his own hospital ought not to be on the list, but rather, that other area hospitals should have been added to it as well, did not seem to matter. Never complain, never explain.

On the AQ panel with me was Peter Oborne, the Daily Mail columnist. He gave a brave performance in the face of an unremittingly hostile audience and stood his ground on the issues. In an article last Saturday, Peter argued, as an aside, that Andrew Lansley should be sacked. I must disagree. Whatever the flaws of last week’s presentation, both our overall strategy on the NHS and the decision last week to highlight maternity and A&E closures are proving themselves justified.

Peter Franklin: Is our society really broken?

Is our society broken, as David Cameron says it is?  The Independent thinks not, fretting only that “repression and authoritarianism will further demonise disaffected young people and drive them away from a life of purpose.”

Cleverly, but misleadingly, the leader writer compares the deaths of Rhys Jones, last week, and James Bulger, in 1993, alongside the statements made by the Opposition in the wake of each murder. Seizing on parallels between what Tony Blair said then, and what David Cameron is saying now, it concludes that the “anti-social behaviour of a minority is a general problem that has always been with us.” To be fair, there is an acknowledgement that “guns, and indeed knifes, are a problem that may be worse now than 14 years ago”, however, this trifling detail is not allowed to distract the Indie from its argument.

Tempted as I am to administer a thorough fisking (particularly to the notion that our young people are being menaced by “repression and authoritarianism”), I think it’s worth concentrating on what we actually mean by a broken society.

According to a leader in the Times, our society is not broken, but “fractured” – the point being that gang culture is only taking hold in certain enclaves, not in every community.

However, this is a distinction without a difference – after all, David Cameron described our society as broken, not shattered. To use a medical analogy, a bone need not be multiply fractured to count as broken – a single fracture, if sufficiently severe, is enough to render a limb useless.

Andrew Lilico: The Power of the Right in the Policy-Formulation Debate

One of the most misguided notions informing Conservative marketing and policy-formulation over the past ten years has been a certain kind of defeatism.  Starting with the oft-repeated idea that people voting Labour in 1997 showed that “they wanted a bit more spent on health and education”, and reinforced by two further General Election thrashings, some Conservatives have developed the idea that the Right has lost the main intellectual arguments over core policy areas such as the public services, and needs to accept a New Labour “settlement” in order to “gain a ticket” to participate in respectable policy debate.

Peter Franklin decided to devote his column of August 15th to refuting a remark I had made on one of his previous columns.  He had asked “Does the Right ever ask itself why no one is listening?”  I had replied that this was plain wrong, that it isn’t true that no-one listens to the thinkers of the Right, indeed that, on the contrary, the thoughts of the Right are dominant everywhere except perhaps in the Conservative Party.  Peter replied that although the Right had won the highest-level economic debate — of Capitalism versus Socialism — a “second left” now dominates our society.

What did I mean by my remark?  Policy debates go on all the time in a number of different realms — on the pages of ConservativeHome, in your association, in student common rooms, and many other places.  But there are two really key places, and the others are really only relevant insofar as they influence these two: First, there is the public space of public policy debate, conducted in newspapers, on television, in the speeches of major politicians, in pamphlets from think-tanks, and so on.  This is the space in which policy debates impact most on voting.  In this debating space big issues are covered, but detail is typically not.

The other key space of policy debate is that among policy-formulators.  This is the debate between civil servants, consultants, think-tank-pamphleteers (as above), academics, the occasional policy-wonk politician, and others.  These debates are much more detailed, involve far more facts, sometimes involve complicated mathematical models, and are much less accessible to the public.

Stephan Shakespeare: The importance of the decision-making process in politics

There are three key components to a political offering: personality, policy, and process. Candidates for leading the nation must appeal to the voter on all three. There is debate of course about their relative importance, with either personality or policy being placed at the head by most people, and process coming a distant third. In fact, most people would say that the process of politics is a big yawn, interesting only to political junkies, and it needn’t feature prominently at all.

And yet, when we consider major recent failures, they have all had failure of process as a key aspect. Tony Blair did not lose the respect of the British voter because of the nature of his policies, not even for the Iraq policy itself, but for the way he made his decisions and how he defended them. John Major was heavily punished for the ERM debacle, which was a policy issue, but the scale of the slaughter derived just as much from the impression of sleaze and incompetence. Even in the case of George Bush, the main accusation against him is not that he went to war, but how and why the decision was reached.

In each case, the political process – the degree to which strategies and actions were developed with and through legitimate democratic processes – was critical. Even with Margaret Thatcher, it was her supposed autocratic behaviour that was cited against her as much as her policies or character. The final blow was delivered by her ex-chancellor declaring her to be a bad cricket captain.

Graeme Archer: London-ness and Andrew Boff - How to beat Livingstone

I was going to write about Iris Murdoch and Social Responsibility this week, but the media frenzy about the London Mayor seems to be heating up, and the esteemed Editor suggested I might like to try something new, like, ooh, why not write about politics? I said: Have you gone completely insane? But he meant it, apparently. So here goes: my four point plan to end Ken Livingstone’s career. My suggestions are in places general (i.e. they would apply to whoever fights the Tory corner) and in other places specific (either in terms of policies or in terms of the candidate: I am partisan for Andrew Boff, whom I believe to be best placed to defeat Livingstone).

Step 1 - Select a candidate who frightens Labour

I’ve known Andrew Boff for ten years, and I can’t think of anything about him that doesn’t make him a perfect candidate to be a great Mayor. He has the right set of just enough attention-grabbing, much-needed policies (some of which I discuss below). More importantly, he has London-ness in buckets: he has been the leader of Hillingdon Borough Council – so has experience of the fabled ‘Outer London’ of Tory mythology – as well as scoring the most spectacular by-election victory in Hackney’s Queensbridge ward a couple of years ago – so he knows how to win in Inner London. He helped establish (as secretary of the Residents and Traders association) the Broadway Market, one of the most successful of London markets that has been responsible for the regeneration of the London Fields area. He lives round the corner from London Fields and you’re more likely to see him cycling down the Regents Canal towpath to see a client in Maida Vale (non-London readers: that's a long way!) than you are ever to see him in a car. “London-ness” is what I call that ineffable quality a candidate for Mayor must have: they have to look, sound and live like the Londoners they want to represent. That might seem a tall order in a diverse world-city, which is why I call the quality “London-ness” rather than any specific demographic. Like the divine, you know it when you see it, and you feel its absence when it ain’t there. Andrew has it. The others don’t.

Andrew also frightens Labour. The Compass website is a sort of leftwing mirror of ConservativeHome. In a number of its recent discussions on the mayoralty, commentators there have singled out Andrew as the Tory they would most fear to battle. This might be, as I have previously suggested, because he is the sort of Tory who confounds the expectations of the commentariat (in a way that some of the other candidates do not). I happen to think they’ve misunderstood Andrew’s most pertinent charms – being leftwing, Compass focus on certain of his demographic characteristics – but having been with Andrew on the council estates of Hackney and seen the visceral hatred with which Hackney Labour poured enormous resource in order to win back that single ward seat, I know that this guy is the sort of person who terrifies the left.

Tory discussions about strategy always seem to devolve to either/or – either we focus on Outer or Inner London – when what we need, of course, is someone who’s a natural in both. For proof that an Etonian education is not required in order to be comfortable with people of any type of background, look no further than Mr Boff.

Cameron Watt: Each of us must stand up to the yobs

During a commute home on the Jubilee Line last summer, I found myself sitting opposite two youths, aged around 15 and 17. One was blasting music from his mobile phone. After my polite requests to switch it off were ignored, they squared up to me and I had to push one of them away. That’s the last I remember.

I regained consciousness at Finchley Road station. Blood was pouring from my face. Unsurprisingly, the lads had scarpered. It was the first time I been knocked-out; this 6’3’’ ex-rugby player was clearly not as tough as he thought he was. I’ll never know what, if anything, I was struck with. However, when getting stitched up at the Royal Free I reflected that many have come off much worse when challenging anti-social behaviour.

This has been powerfully reinforced to me with the a spate of recent murders including those of James Oyebola, Garry Newlove and Peter Woodhams, brave men slain for challenging anti-social behaviour. Rhys Jones’ murder has further highlighted the dangerousness and volatility of some of these feral youths.

Theresa May MP: Youth crime - our approach

"When stray bullets hit the pram but missed my son, I realised there was a gap in the market for products to protect babies in today's increasingly violent society"

This is a quote taken from an American mother who has set up a company selling bullet proof buggies. The £300 buggy, billed as "the ultimate in style, comfort and extreme combat protection" has already sold out in the US. 

Will we ever reach a stage in Britain where buying a bullet proof buggy for our children seems like a good idea?

Tony Blair once claimed that the problem we face today with youth crime is "a specific problem within a specific criminal culture". He was wrong. Youth crime is part of a larger problem in Britain’s society. Blaming the rise in violent youth crime singularly on hip hop music or a lack of youth facilities misses a fundamental point. Teenagers do not commit violent crimes simply because they listen to a song about guns or because they have nothing else to do. The root cause is a frequent lack of a secure family upbringing and a decreasing lack of community cohesion and respect.

Louise Bagshawe: Reasons to vote Conservative

Moving house is always a stressful thing. In our case, we are this week preparing for a move into the constituency. I was always clear that being a parliamentary candidate meant total commitment to the area you hope to represent. Our family story is just one amongst thousands – Conservative activists giving up their time, knocking on doors, standing as local councillors, donating, writing to the local paper, marching for their local hospitals, serving in their Associations, even starting blogs! We are a team. And  when we are united we are an unstoppable team.

What motivates so many Conservatives to give of themselves in this way? I was never so proud to be a Conservative as when I watched our councillors in East Northamptonshire, who had been elected unopposed, donating days and evenings over several months, posting thousands of leaflets and knocking on hundreds of doors, to get their colleagues in Irthlingborough elected. My last several columns have concentrated on what the Government is doing wrong. You can hardly blame me – as a professional writer, how can I ignore that much rich material? But ultimately, we are the party of change, optimism and hope. It’s a slogan, sure, but it’s one I believe in passionately. None of the major parties have yet produced their manifestos, nor is this column trying to anticipate ours. But what I list here is already announced as policy.

Vote Conservative. Because:

1. We will stop Brown’s NHS cuts: Conservatives are committed to ending pointless reorganisations and waste in the NHS. Crucially, we are committed to defending district hospitals. Labour’s policy is to “rearrange” A&E and maternity services to glossy “supercenters” that may be miles away from where local people live. As a new mum and a voter, I am quite clear this policy is utterly wrong. It’s “Accident and Emergency”, not “Accident and Not that Urgent so Let’s Drive Forty Miles” Department.

2. We will demand a referendum on the EU Constitution: The most recent poll showed that 81% of the people and 57% of Labour voters demand the referendum we were promised before we sign over yet more sovereignty to Brussels. 24% of Labour voters were prepared to vote Tory over the issue. Yes, sovereignty is that important. We are the only Eurorealist party that can actually win. Vote Conservative, or vote to give up the veto in 50 areas, our seat at the UN, control over justice, control over immigration, and control over taxes. This was the subject of my first ConHome column. It matters to me. According to the polls, the rest of the country feels the same way.

3. We will scrap the Human Rights Act: Enough said.

4. We will abolish inheritance tax and look hard at cutting CGT, stamp duty on shares, and business taxation: I would rather tax pollution than enterprise or already-taxed family wealth.

Peter Franklin: Hypercapitalism or hi-tech conservatism?

So, a largely predictable reaction to last week’s competitiveness report from John Redwood. Not having read the thing myself, I’ve no idea whether this really was, as widely billed, Redwood’s blueprint for a hypercapitalist Britain – all motorways and no regulation. Thus I won’t be dissing his utopia just yet.

However, if one picks through the output of our leading freemarket think tanks, the heady scent of hypercapitalism soon becomes apparent. Alongside a car-fixated view of transport policy and the traditional bonfire of red-tape and bureaucracy, other key elements include dramatically reduced taxation, the relaxation of planning constraints and an all-pervading eco-scepticism. Optional ingredients include immigration limited only by employer demand, the privatisation of public services and a heartfelt devotion to nuclear power.

Needless to say, this vision of the future has its opponents – and not just on the Left. Conservatives, big ‘c’ and small, are well represented in the ranks of our conservation movements. The uniform of the planning protester is as much twinset-and-pearls as nose-ring-and-dreadlocks: crusty conservatives and crusties standing shoulder-to-shoulder against the developers.

As befits true conservatism, this is nothing new. Anti-capitalist sentiment was a feature of the Young England movement, which counted Disraeli as a leading member. Disraeli’s novels, most notably Sybil, contained horrifying descriptions of conditions in the growing industrial cities of the North. Arguably, it was the Liberal Party that was the more committed representative of Victorian capitalism, with Conservatives reluctant to let go of the agrarian past. In culture too there was a conservative reaction to industrialisation. Pugin, Ruskin, Morris and the Pre-Raphaelites looked back to the Middle Ages for inspiration. Of course, some of these regarded themselves as radicals, even socialists, but theirs was a strangely conservative kind of radicalism, holding up the craft guilds of Medieval Europe as an idealised model for the trade unions.

Andrew Lilico: What should we say about taxes?

The latter phase of the Major government was subjected to a particularly effective alliterative Labour mantra — “Twenty-two Tory Tax rises”.  The idea was that in 1992 John Major had promised not to raise taxes — indeed had strongly attacked Labour for various tax-raising proposals — but had then raised taxes many times.  Perhaps partly as a consequence of this, in opposition the Conservatives have regularly come under considerable pressure to make unequivocal promises about taxes.  In both 2001 and 2005 we went into the General Elections promising tax cuts, with our only clear basis for paying for these being cuts in fraud and waste.

Now, as far as I can see, no-one doubts that government expenditure involves fraud and waste, but equally few people seriously believe that any one party will be materially more effective at cutting down on fraud and waste than any other party.  Do you believe this, Dear Reader?  Do you believe that Gordon Brown is not bothering to reduce fraud and waste, benignly looking the other way, but that a Conservative administration would effectively and efficiently eliminate it all?  I don’t.  I object to Gordon Brown’s government in all kinds of ways, but a belief that it is inefficient, except insofar as that is a natural concomitant of socialist methods of micromanagement and planning, is not amongst them.

Now we have a new formula.  We will “share the proceeds of growth”, having “put stability first”, and will “not commit to any upfront unfunded tax cuts”.  But we face pressure from our own side to commit to tax cuts, and journalists ask whether we really believe that a low-tax economy is more dynamic — and, if so, what is supposed to be the problem with committing to lower taxes?

In my view, all of these approaches suffer from the same confusion: they see the level of taxes as a startpoint, when in fact it is a residual — that is to say, the level of taxes is just the balancing item at the end of our political programme.  The right approach, in my view, is to begin by asking what it is that we want the state to be involved in, and what is best left to the market and the voluntary sector.  Then amongst those things in which the state is to be involved, we ask what is best dealt with by regulation or by the facilitation of (or compulsion to) private or voluntary provision, and what is best addressed by state provision or by state funding.  This then tell us how much we need to spend.  Then, knowing how much we need to spend, we know how much we need to raise in taxes, and we have our answer for the level of taxation — the level of taxation is the result, not the startpoint.

Stephan Shakespeare: How should the Conservative Party connect with voters?

Elsewhere on ConservativeHome today a variety of authors are considering the question, what should David Cameron do next? Here I would like to examine not the ‘what’ but the ‘how’.

I suggested last week that the relationship between political parties and the electorate was crucial but neglected. If I am to take an action which involves effort on my part, but which has no mathematical chance of having an actual effect – I mean the act of voting – then I must have some other good reason for doing it. Unfortunately, politicians cannot rely just on the electorate’s sense of duty as the relationship between them and the process becomes ever more artificial and alienating.

Politicians now try harder than ever to create direct relationships with the electorate, and use all the sophistications of modern media management to woo the people. But as with any other seduction, these techniques only work so long as they do not reveal themselves as mere techniques. Post-Blair, it has become harder to convince the public that emoting is backed with genuine feeling. The crucial quality of sincerity has become much harder to manufacture.

I have previously criticised the over-focus on branding at the expense of substance. But of course these two things need not – should not – be opposed. The best branding, the only sustainably successful branding, harmonises with the underlying substance. In other words, all branding depends on sincerity. When we don’t believe the pitch, the pitch actually turns us against the proposition.

I was only being half-ironic when I spoke of ‘manufacturing’ sincerity. It is not entirely oxymoronic. We do not simply have primal feelings: we can actively create the conditions in which feeling develops, just as we develop ideas and policies by deliberately engaging with the world around us with openness and intelligence. This is why I suggest that David Cameron and his team think again about the relationship between political leaders and the electorate, and how they can get to know them directly (rather than only through the sometimes distorting lenses of polling and focus groups). Instead of treating the electorate as a curious object, to be manipulated, can they actually create a genuine relationship?

Graeme Archer is away

His column returns next week.

Theresa May MP: Top five barmy ideas this summer

As it’s August, I thought I’d change my tone slightly for this week’s post, and list the five barmiest ideas I’ve heard this summer. 

1. “Abolish prison!”

No, I’m not joking.  The former Liberal Democrat Home Affairs Spokesman, Mark Oaten, does actually think we need to abolish all prisons.  Mr Oaten says that when he was on the Lib Dem front bench, “I would have been crucified as a front line politician for saying this in public and the party would have tumbled in the opinion polls … Prison is not fit for purpose and it’s beyond reform.  We need to abolish it”.  So there we have it: not just the truth of what the Lib Dems really think about criminal justice policy – but a bald confession that they don’t tell voters what they really think.

2. “Let all illegal immigrants stay in Britain!”

Yes, that’s right.  According to one of Labour’s favourite think tanks, the IPPR, half a million illegal immigrants should be allowed to stay in Britain.  You might think that this is a silly idea dreamt up by policy wonks destined only for the dustbin.  But during the Labour deputy leadership campaign, the idea won the support of Alan Johnson, and – you’ve guessed it – Harriet Harman.  And the Government stands accused of delivering the policy by the back door anyway.

Louise Bagshawe: Brown's bad news

Louise Bagshawe gazes into her crystal ball and forecasts trouble for the PM...

Damned if he does, damned if he doesn’t. That’s the dilemma for Gordon Brown as he considers whether to go for an autumn election. After eighteen months of seriously bad press for the Labour party, our left-leaning media are dizzy with joy at having a different story to tell – a shiny new Labour PM, Blair’s unpopularity eliminated, and, against the predictions of the pre-succession polls, a honeymoon bounce for Gordon. Now the commentators are thrilling to the thought of a snap General Election. Feed the numbers for the latest YouGov poll into Electoral Calculus, and Labour actually increases its majority – significantly.

Maybe Conservative relief at getting rid of Teflon Tony with his sure electoral touch was misplaced. Maybe Gordon Brown, hitherto thought of as a liability (including by Cabinet colleagues) could actually match his feat and march Labour into an historic fourth term with an even larger majority than today.

And then again – maybe not.

I think of what’s coming down the pipe for Gordon Brown, and none of it looks good. More of that in a second. So should he go early? After all, a non-domiciled expat has just promised to solve Labour’s money problem. The polls offer him hope. Who dares wins, eh?

But there are major troubles with the idea of an early poll. A friendly Guardian article, earlier this week, warned Brown against it. Electorates historically do not enjoy mid-term elections, and punish the men who call them. The last ICM poll asked who wanted an election this year, and 70% were against – of those, most were Labour voters. Gordon Brown, a keen student of politics, knows this full well. Labour is not organisationally ready – selections in key seats like Burton (where, based on outstanding local election results, they have scant chance of beating our outstanding PPC Andrew Griffiths anyway) are proceeding at a snail’s pace. They are broke – despite the promises, could enough cash be raised in time? And lastly, the internals of the polls, as pored over at politicalbetting.com this week by Mike Smithson, show the Tories are still net gainers over 2005 and Labour net losers.

Peter Franklin: The Second Left

Last week I wrote an unassuming little article entitled ‘Home truths for the Right’. While unlikely to win me the Simon Heffer Prize for Outstanding Services to Soundness, it did prompt a fair bit of comment, some of it quite excitable.

One post, however, really stopped me in my tracks. It happened to come from a fellow ConservativeHome columnist, Andrew Lilico, who in response to my contention that rightwing ideas have been marginalized in British politics, firmly disagreed:

“I'm sorry but this is just plain *wrong* - and it's very important to accept that you are just *wrong*, because much follows from it. It just isn't true that no-one listens to the thinkers of the Right. On the contrary, the thoughts of the Right are dominant everywhere, except perhaps in the Conservative Party. We overwhelm the policy debate, in which there is so little left-wing opposition that even committed left-wing ministers in the Labour Party have been unable to push any sort of left-wing agenda through. Take, for example, the case of the abolition of the Internal Market in the NHS. Frank Dobson would have loved to provide a left-wing alternative - but there wasn't one. It is right-wing ideas that dominate in health, education, international relations, monetary policy, and many other key areas.”

As I say, I was quite taken aback. I had expected vigorous opposition to most of my other points, but I thought that this one was the least controversial. I can say in all sincerity that some of my best friends are rightwingers, and I don’t think they’d disagree for a moment that their ideas have been pushed to the sidelines. Indeed, not only would they accept this – they’d also have some pretty strong views as to who’s to blame: namely, the Conservative Party establishment for failing to take a lead.

Andrew Lilico: What form should Britain's nuclear deterrent take?

What form should Britain's nuclear deterrent take?

Earlier this year there was a short and seemingly decisive debate over nuclear weapons, focussed on two main positions — namely (A) that we should commit to replacing Trident with a new generation of submarine-based city-killing nuclear weapons (a sort of Trident II); or (B) that we should abandon Britain's independent nuclear deterrent. Slightly less discussed positions were that we should put the decision off for a few years, or that we should aim to extent Trident's life.

But what seems to me to have barely been discussed at all is a different sort of position, still committed to retaining nuclear weapons.  The Trident system of city-killing submarine-based high-yield weapons was crucial in the Cold War.  Such weapons had two main functions: (1) They avoided a scenario under which the Soviet Union attacked the UK with nuclear weapons but offered no immediate threat to the US, whereupon the US would have to decide whether to respond with its own nuclear weapons, thereby placing its own cities and citizens under threat - would the US really do it?  (2) In the event that a conventional war was lost, it might be possible to deter conventional forces from over-running the UK by progressively eliminating Soviet cities until the conventional advance halted.  The deterrence provided by such weapons was key in maintaining the balance of terror.

Stephan Shakespeare: Why vote?

The question of why people vote has perplexed many political scientists, who don't just wonder why people vote the way they do, but why they bother voting at all. To political activists, it might seem obvious, but to many behavioural psychologists it remains a mystery.

After all, it takes effort to vote. Typically, it means leaving your comfortable seat, finding your voting card, and walking some distance to the polling booth. For political junkies, this is an exciting event. For most people, it’s an inconvenience, a disturbance, a pain in the neck.

And what do you get in return for this effort? A moment’s thought shows that there is vanishingly small chance that your vote will actually determine the outcome of anything. When was the last time that a constituency result hung on a single vote? And when was a government determined by the advantage of a single constituency? Multiply the chances and you get a probability equivalent to that of Mars colliding with Jupiter.

Graeme Archer's Diary: Why do Conservatives love George Orwell so much?

A cat may look at a king, but it’s a brave amateur writer who decides to discuss George Orwell, Nick Cohen and P.D.James in one article. Oh well. Here goes.

Why do Conservatives love George Orwell so much? My first (and probably last) attempt to sway a parliamentary selection panel involved me reading passages aloud from Nineteen Eighty-Four, to draw attention to the illiberal creep of the culture under Tony Blair. I am probably only one of hundreds of spotty Tory youths who have felt passionately that Orwell had put his finger on the seductive dangers of totalitarian regimes, and that by reminding the population of his warnings from the 40s we could persuade them to vote for us in the 90s. But Orwell, of course, wasn’t a Conservative.

It isn’t only foolish and correctly unselected Tory candidates who reach for Orwell when they want to make a point: do you remember John Major (sigh!) murmuring of “old maids cycling to communion through the morning mist”? He was derided for it at the time, but I knew what he meant. It was an idea of England. Romanticism isn’t meant to be realistic. But this romantic vision was Orwell’s, and he wasn’t a Conservative.

Leave aside the fact that the man was a genius who understood the power of fiction to convey political ideas. I wonder if Orwell is such a hero to Conservatives because he was a democratic socialist. Would we venerate him so much if he were completely ‘one of us’? Our big idea – the theme that runs through our modern history – is that freedom is more important than equality. We don’t usually state that so baldly, because it’s a frightening concept. But whether we choose to highlight it or not, it’s the answer to “I am a Conservative because…” for those of us who are liberal Conservatives. (It is not the answer that would be given by social Conservatives.). The fact that a man of sterling non-Tory credentials also thought it important to warn of the dangers of suppressing freedom is the perfect external validation of our Big Tory Idea. 

Cameron Watt is away

His column will return on 25th August.

Theresa May MP: What Harriet's priorities for women should be

In last month’s reshuffle, I was asked to become Shadow Minister for Women, as well as remaining as Shadow Leader of the House.  So this week, I thought I’d let you know my early thoughts on this important challenge.

Before Parliament closed for the summer recess, Harriet Harman, the Minister for Women, made a statement to the House of Commons on her priorities for women.  But she really needn’t have bothered, because it was completely vacuous.  (Incidentally, this is becoming a trend: in an attempt to show their new-found respect for Parliament, and to demonstrate supposed momentum under Gordon Brown, ministers made several pointless oral statements before the recess.  It wasn’t hard to see through.)

But back to Harriet’s priorities.  They were supporting families, tackling violence against women, and empowering black and ethnic minority women; all of them are important goals.  But there were two problems.  First, there was nothing new in how the Government intends to achieve these goals.  And second, there are other difficulties women face that need to be addressed.   

Louise Bagshawe: Educashun, educashun, educashun – Labour’s slumping standards

In a government of spin and soundbites, it was the most celebrated one of all. Blair promised us his priority was the education of our children. That struck a chord; the feckless Labour party of the past suddenly sounding responsible, and though it intended to deliver on the future of Britain.

There’s a lot of competition for the title of “worst Labour failure”. Where do you start? If I were to go into every area of Labour failure, your eyes would glaze over. But today, let’s consider the claims of education. For the way Labour has betrayed our children is a complete scandal, and the compliance of the media in this betrayal only marginally less so.

I was in the penultimate year that sat O Levels, and I didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. Two years later, my little sister sat the first GCSEs, and she got straight As. How I glowered with resentful envy. ‘Her exams were easier,’ I complained to my highly unsympathetic mother.

That was the first year that ‘grade inflation’ was discussed. It has barely ceased to be discussed since. But under Labour, with its apparent commitment to education, the problems in our schools are endemic. Things are at such a pass that employers complain their workers are illiterate and innumerate; the great universities have no idea whom to admit, since A grades are so common; mainstream subjects that are the bedrock of a basic liberal education are under threat because of declining standards and easier options – subjects like history and French.

What is the result of ten years of Labour? We learned some of that this week. The Press Association reported:

“Four out of 10 children left primary school this summer without mastering the basics of reading, writing and maths, figures showed today.”

Forty percent of our children not even up to speed on the basics. What do you reckon the figures are for the sciences, for history, for foreign languages?

And how did the BBC report this staggering announcement? With full Labour spin as (ahem) “the best results ever” because these appalling figures showed a 1% improvement on the prior year.

Peter Franklin: Home truths for the Right

“I’m not that pessimistic now, because I wasn’t that optimistic before.”

These level-headed words are by far the wisest I’ve heard on the recent ups and downs of the Conservative Party. They come from someone who would describe himself as belonging to the Right of the Party, but who is, in this context, atypical of his fellows, most of whom don’t know whether to hang their heads in despair or dance a little jig.

Gloom, not glee, is the more appropriate response. The setbacks suffered by Team Cameron have in no way advanced the standing of the Right with the electorate. Instead, the centre of political gravity has shifted to the Left, towards Gordon Brown. I hope that this is a temporary phenomenon and that the unpopularity which attached to Tony Blair will, like the fleas of dead dog, soon attach to his successor.

Of course, midway through a third term, Labour ought to be consistently unpopular. But can this really be blamed on David Cameron? After all, he has at least proven that a centrist Conservative Party is capable of benefiting when Labour is unpopular – something the Right has not managed in a generation. Before judging others, the Right – both within and beyond the Conservative Party – must ask itself why, after ten years of Labour Government, it remains on the margins of British politics.

Prevailing cultural conditions are unfavourable, but is the Right really so helpless to resist? Perhaps the root cause of its chronic weakness is internal. In which case, it is time for the Right to face up to a few home truths. Here are ten of them:

(1) Crippling self-indulgence. Politics is a hard slog. Territory has to be fought for inch by inch. You rarely achieve your objectives overnight. That is something the Conservative Party’s free marketers understood even in the statist depths of the post-war period. Through patience and discipline they built up the powerful position from which Margaret Thatcher was to eventually win the war against socialism. What the Tory rightwingers did not do was depart to found their own political party. What a contrast to so many of today’s rightwingers who have dribbled off to UKIP, Veritas and various other groupuscules. Other than getting a clutch of deeply unimpressive MEPs elected (thanks to the EU-imposed electoral system), the only impression these splinters have made is to ensure the survival of federalist Lib-Lab MPs in a number of marginal Westminster constituencies. Thanks a bunch.

(2) A limitless supply of useful idiots. Still, better an honest ’kipper than the sort of Tory who spills his guts to the media. Clearly, this isn’t just a rightwing problem. Indeed, the worst offenders have tended to be on the Left of the Party. Nonetheless there’s something particularly idiotic about the rightist variety. At least when the former feed the mainstream media’s appetite for anti-Conservative stories, they demonstrate a degree of ideological consistency. The latter, however, should not mistake the media’s flattery and attention with any kind of sympathy for the rightwing cause. The agenda is pure and simple: to do as much damage to the Conservative Party as possible. That is why useful idiots – right, left and centre – are always welcome at the BBC.

Andrew Lilico: Two economic policies

Are Gordon Brown's monetary policy arrangements beyond criticism? If not, how could they be improved? Could any criticisms of them be politically useful, or would they just be technical matters best left to academic and practitioner debate?

There are many ways the Brown's arrangements could be criticized, and many politically useful reforms that could be proposed. I shall here mention just two, trying to focus on the politically-attractive criticisms and leaving aside many technical critiques and nuances.

First, the inflation target that Brown gives to the Bank of England is flawed, is widely accepted to be flawed, and is only not reformed because of Brown's notional commitment eventually to join the euro. We should openly criticize this and propose an alternative. The current target, a 2% annual rise in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI), was introduced when Gordon Brown announced that his five tests for euro membership had not been met. It was explicitly introduced in order to promote convergence between the UK and Eurozone economies - they use the same consumer prices index (usually called the "Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices" (HICP)).

About one fifth of household costs in the UK are housing costs, but the CPI has no housing costs component. This is not because there is some argument against having a housing costs component. It is simply because there are technical statistical difficulties in formulating a common way to account for housing costs that will work across the whole Eurozone. These would not apply to a UK-only measure. The only reason it isn't done is because of Brown's notional commitment eventually to joing the euro. This commitment is damaging UK monetary policy, and everyone knows it.

Stephan Shakespeare: It's time to focus on pensioners, crime and the economy

Louise Bagshawe responded to my last article by saying that I was completely wrong, there was no need to adjust the strategy, that the present one was remarkably successful. Louise and I must live in different worlds, or else we just have very different expectations when we talk about ‘success’ for the Conservative Party. In the thread below her article, I promised to provide some positive thoughts about what a better strategy might look like. But yesterday two great articles in the Sunday Times, by Andrew Sullivan and Michael Portillo pretty much sum up what I had to say. Nevertheless I’ll proffer some minor points.

Before that, though, let me get Aunt Sally out of the way. The most annoying aspect of the current debate about strategy is the way the ‘loyalists’ characterise any call for change as a demand to ‘lurch to the right’. This is infantile. It’s a convenient way to shift the blame but it won’t do for people who genuinely care about the future of the party. If we start from that premise, we needn’t bother having a debate at all. Most Conservatives I know agree that the party’s image needed to be renewed to show that it is a normal part of the modern world. My own view as a Londoner and as an immigrant (Shakespeare is my wife’s family name which I adopted when we married 23 years ago – until then I was Kukowski) is that Cameron’s championing of tolerance and inclusiveness is terrific. Ideally, Conservatives should be comfortable engaging with both metropolitan and rural values.

What’s wrong with the present strategy is not that it is too left or too centrist but that it is concerned with the wrong things. It is entirely about the internal narrative of the Conservative Party – about how David Cameron’s Conservatives are new and nice. If this is your mission, you don’t deserve to win an election, you just deserve a pat on the back.

You win an election by showing the voters that you are there for them, that you will defend their security, that you will provide them with a better future. So stop serving up 1997 Blairism. Stop talking about how you are changing – why should anyone outside of the political class possibly care? And start talking about how life for everyone will change if you win power. Get rid of the self-obsession and start looking outwards. Cut the vanity and the eternal celebration of how clever you are, and make it your mission that old-age pensioners feel more comfortable.

Graeme Archer's Diary: Cohabitation, Archer's Conjecture, cats

The Law Commission has renewed its calls for legislation to provide “partnership rights” for couples who have been cohabiting in an unmarried state. Their concern is with the legal status of the “injured party” in a broken-down common-law relationship, after said partnership ends, and they want to give such people legal claim on the property of the partner they have left/been left by. I don’t know where to begin with the mess of this proposal. Practically all pair-bonding sexual partners have always been able to regularise their legal commitment to one another: we called it marriage. Some grotesque inequalities were tidied up for gay couples with the advent of civil partnerships, although oddly heterosexual couples were forbidden to register CPs. (So in fact we’re now in the ridiculous situation where gay people can get married, but mustn’t call it that (though guess what – we do! Ha ha!), while straight people can’t form civil partnerships, if they want to get married but avoid the cultural connotations of that word.) The Law Commission’s “solution” – which, farcically, is presented as a tidying up exercise – merely adds another tier of legal distinction and polices that most private of spaces: the bedroom habits of private adults.

Cameron Watt: Labour and Tory approaches to the voluntary sector are not the same...

British society is broken. David Cameron repeatedly made this assertion last month as the Social Justice Policy Group’s proposals were published and debated. In spite of all the controversy generated by commitments to strengthen marriage through the tax system, commentators did not challenge the contention that something is seriously wrong in our country. It goes beyond inexorably rising rates of welfare dependency, addictions and violent crime. For most people, depressing statistics are corroborated by first-hand experience of menacing, rude and anti-social behaviour.

In response, David Cameron has developed the language of social responsibility, reminding us that we have a shared duty to tackle the breakdown. Government can only do so much, and action on a seemingly modest scale by individuals, families and communities can have a significant cumulative impact.

Cameron has also called for a much bigger role for the voluntary sector in enabling the most vulnerable make positive changes in their lives. There is now a cross-party consensus that disadvantaged groups, from excluded pupils to drug addicts and the long-term unemployed, are often most effectively assisted by the voluntary sector.

Theresa May: Ritalin - the easy option?

Not a subject which you might expect me to write about but one on which I feel strongly.  This week I released research on the use of methylphenidates, of which Ritalin is one of the most commonly used types, to treat ADHD a neurobehavioral disorder which affects up to one in 20 of our children.

The results of the research are disturbing, the number of prescriptions for methylphenidate has risen by 156% over the last six years and under this Government NHS spending on methylphenidate has risen by 975%.  The Government doesn’t give figures for the number of children being given these drugs, but if the number of prescriptions has risen that fast then it’s pretty clear that the number of children being given the drug has risen too. Yet we really don’t know what the long term effects of using these drugs are.

NICE states that drug treatment of ADHD is not always necessary. The decision to prescribe should be based on a range of factors including the presence of other conditions, the potential for drug misuse and the preferences of the parent and child. Drug treatment should only be initiated by a healthcare professional with expertise in ADHD and should be based on a comprehensive diagnosis. Continued prescribing and monitoring of drug therapy may be performed by GPs under shared care arrangements.

But these drugs can have serious side effects.  In 2000 there were 50 adverse reactions to methylphenidate in the UK. However in 2006 there were as many as 95 reactions. Nine reactions have been fatal. In the US methylphenidate has the highest level ‘black box warning’ indicating that the drug may have serious side effects and potentially life threatening effects. In France methylphenidate is classified as a narcotic and its initial prescription is always made in a hospital.  We desperately need more research on the long term impacts of these drugs.

The enforcement of NICE guidelines is a problem. According to a survey of children being treated for ADHD at one doctor’s surgery, only 42% of the patients prescribed methylphenidate had a clearl diagnosis of ADHD. Only one patient at the surgery on Methylphenidate had the shared care arrangement recommended by NICE. Worryingly one patient prescribed methylphenidate was only 5 years old. Although this is against NICE guidelines, the Government permits GPs to prescribe methylphenidate to children younger than six through ‘off label prescribing’ – yet it fails to monitor how often this occurs.

I don’t doubt the existence of ADHD nor that for some children treatment with Ritalin or some other methylphenidate is right. But this drug must not be seen as the easy option for treating children with behavioural difficulties. It should only be used where it is the most suitable treatment for children clearly diagnosed with ADHD.

That’s why we need a review of NICE guidelines and their enforcement, a review of the use of these drugs and research into their long term effects.

Louise Bagshawe: Stick with the leader. Stick with the strategy. Fight for the country.

Replying to Stephan Shakespeare’s Monday Column, Louise Bagshawe argues that David Cameron is on track – and he shouldn’t change a thing.

If you put yourself up as a Parliamentary candidate, people have a right to expect a lot from you. Commitment, for one thing. Effort, for another. And a willingness to put your head above the parapet. So I write this piece in the full knowledge that it will bring down the wrath of some ConHome commenters upon my head.

My fellow columnist, Stephan Shakespeare, is almost completely wrong. He’s right that we don’t need to change our leader. He’s wrong, in that we also don’t need to change our strategy. It is both the right strategy and a winning strategy.

This has been a week of dissent. Not from towering figures in the party, whatever the BBC would have you believe. But from a disgruntled candidate and a former donor who stopped donating prior to the last election. It doesn’t stop the BBC from relentlessly parroting the “top Tory donor” tag. Clue to editors: Lord Kalms hasn’t given this party a penny since 2004. A lady in my constituency who bought a five pound strip of raffle tickets last month is more of a “top Tory donor” than he is. More credibly, the former junior frontbencher, Graham Brady MP, also waded in, repeating the Labour line that David Cameron’s inclusive, green, eurorealist brand of compassionate Conservatism appealed only to the metropolitan elites and not to voters in the Midlands or the North.

I found this line of attack curious, since it is so easily refuted. David Cameron was elected by over two thirds of the membership on just such a platform. One need only to read ConHome’s excellent archives to see the disquiet of the right during the leadership campaign that a centrist might get the party leadership. But the Tory members knew exactly what they were getting when they elected David.

Peter Franklin: Of kettles and car engines - why nuclear power is not the solution to energy security

National security is an all important issue, and the security of our energy supplies a vital part of this equation.  Thus the Dave-baiters couldn’t believe their luck when the National and International Security Policy Group, chaired by Dame Pauline Neville-Jones – now  a member of the Shadow Cabinet , appeared to contradict  the Conservative leader on the subject of nuclear power.

According to the Financial Times: “A Conservative government should support new nuclear power stations to ensure security of supply, a Tory policy group said on Thursday, in seemingly direct contrast to David Cameron’s insistence that nuclear should be a “last resort”.”

But is this what the report actually said?  Here’s the relevant quote:

“A full treatment of policy ensuring security of energy supply to British consumers requires nuclear energy and renewables to form part of the picture. This is beyond the remit of this Group which has focused on the implications of the UK’s increasing energy dependency.”

Note the phrase “a full treatment of policy,” i.e. a full policy analysis. Thus the report did not contradict David Cameron, because it doesn’t actually make any recommendations regarding civil nuclear power in the UK. That’s just as well, because the chapter on energy security mentions nuclear just twice, and then only in passing. What the report does do, in some detail, is to describe the far from secure supply of fossil fuels to Europe and the United Kingdom.

Of course, for many Conservative commentators, this is tantamount to saying we must go nuclear. But must we?  In what way would going nuclear reduce our dependency on fossil fuels?