Saturday 15th October 2005

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• Andrew Pierce suggests that a leading Cameron supporter believes that a thorough modernisation programme might (initially) see Tory support slip to 25%.

"After decades of repression and dictatorship and more than two years of war and insurgency, Iraqis went to the polls Saturday to vote on a draft constitution that would set up a democratic framework to govern the religiously and ethnically disparate nation." - CNN

"Millions of Iraqis will risk their lives today to endorse their new constitution, but it's a measure of American defeatism that the vote is already being dismissed in many quarters as a mirage on the road to inevitable civil war. On the contrary, we'd say the vote is further evidence that the Iraq mission still has every chance of succeeding..." - Wall Street Journal

CONSERVATIVE NEWS & COMMENTARY

This morning it's difficult to find any Tory story that isn't about David Cameron and the drugs issue.  Listed below are a selection of the news reports and comment pieces focusing on Mr Cameron and 'did he? didn't he?".  Despite the fact that the press pack have pursued Mr Cameron the balance of coverage is sympathetic:

• "David Davis last night intensified the pressure on David Cameron, his main challenger for the Tory leadership, when he declared that recent users of hard drugs should not be prime minister and demanded that his rival come clean on whether he has ever taken drugs." - Times

• Telegraph leader: "On a television programme to be aired this evening, David Davis will contrast his own denial of any contact with drugs to his main rival's reticence. In doing so, he makes a mockery of his boast about never speaking ill of fellow Conservatives. More seriously, though, he does his party no favours, making it seem mean and puritanical. Mr Davis must realise that this intervention will damage him, but he has plainly calculated that it will do more damage to the man he would least like to face in the final run-off. His tactic, although unedifying, is at least understandable."

• Matthew Parris: "What an irony, what stunning hypocrisy, if we should bay for a Tory leader who knows and relates to 21st-century Britain, then, on finding one at last, throw rocks at his head for not being without sin." - Times

• Guardian leader: "It is hard not to have reflexive sympathy for Mr Cameron on all this, however. Everybody does silly, even illegal, things at some point, politicians and journalists not excepted. But we elect political leaders more for their public than their private qualities. Of all the things that may matter about Mr Cameron, it is hard to believe that this is the most important one."

Go to the Leadership blog for an analysis of David Cameron's drugs policy - as set out in the Daily Mail.

As well as discussing the drugs issue Charles Moore recommends a final round between the two Davids, Cameron and Davis.  Mr Moore thinks Ken Clarke would be unable to modernise conservatism and fears that Liam Fox is speaking too much "from within a political ghetto".  Mr Moore writes: "Mr Davis is creative about using "Right-wing methods to achieve Left-wing outcomes" (i.e. non-statist policies to create opportunity and good services for poorer people), but hasn't managed to seem like a leader. Mr Cameron has, and he is by far the most eloquent about why change is needed, but by far the most untried of all four.  If MPs arrange a play-off between the two Davids, the right battle can at last take place."

The quotation below comes from a memo written by David Cameron in the aftermath of Black Wednesday.  Andrew Pierce has unearthed it for today's Times:

“There is no doubt that a single currency would have a number of benefits. Transaction costs and exchange-rate risks would be eliminated and, as a result, trade would increase subtantially.  Also, a central bank and a single currency, if established in the right way, could help to make Europe a zone of permanently low inflation.”

Have I missed any important story?
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