Douglas Carswell MP: 'Small-state Conservatism' is more popular than 'wind turbine Conservatism'

Douglas Carswell is Conservative MP for Clacton. Follow him on Twitter or read his blog.

It’s not all doom and gloom.  Here in my part of Essex, our brand of Conservatism actually seems to be doing rather well.

“Wind turbine Toryism” might be struggling a little elsewhere.  But in my experience the appetite for small-state, direct democracy Conservatism has never been stronger.

Take our local Association membership, for example.  Nationally, fewer folk each year seem to join political parties.  Not here.  Over the past year alone, over a hundred new members have joined, including young people and families.

Far from struggling to find local candidates to field in local council elections, as was once the case, our local Association has been inundated with applications from local residents wanting to serve their community – even in seats we’ve not held for decades.

Elsewhere, Tory modernisers might agonise over whether to wear black tie to black and white parties.  Here we hold regular supper evenings in the local town hall, open to every local resident.

Local folk come as they are – and in droves.  Whether to listen to culture minister, Jeremy Hunt, talking about the Olympics over fish and chips, or Chris Grayling, discussing welfare reform over curry, we could have filled the town hall twice over.

Britain is, it seems to me, crying out for a popular Conservative alternative.  Offer it, and the punters will come.

Douglas Carswell MP: MPs should oversee the appointment of Britain's next Ambassador to the EU

Douglas Carswell is MP for Clacton and he blogs at TalkCarswell.

Exactly one year ago to the day, at an emergency meeting of EU finance ministers, Chancellor Alistair Darling, committed us to bailing out the Eurozone.  The deal he struck has made UK taxpayers liable for over £10 Billion.  So far.

By any measure, this has been a disastrous deal for Britain.  Having spent twelve months struggling to cut public spending by £6 Billion, we have ratcheted up liabilities worth far more.

Why then are ministers about to promote one of the senior officials behind the disastrous deal – Sir Jon Cunliffe – to be the next head the UK Permanent Representation to the EU?

Through an accident of history, the Prime Minister has inherited more or less intact the powers that once attached to the monarch: the award of peerages, treaty-making powers and, much the most important, the power to appoint officials.

In a Westminster Hall debate today, I will be proposing that these powers should pass to Parliament. Having freed Commons select committees from the dead hand of party whips, Commons committees should now be given the task of holding the executive to account with confirmation hearings for key appointments – starting with Jon Cunliffe’s.

Douglas Carswell MP: Why sharia-lite is wrong

Douglas Carswell, MP for Harwich & Clacton and a CentreRight contributor, explains why sharia cannot be implemented into UK law to any degree.

Unlike Rowan Williams, Sayed Qutb - the intellectual architect of political Islamism - was never noted for his nuance.  Qutb's 1964 manifesto, Milestones, is to the point;  sharia - the law of God - needs to be forcefully imposed on a decadent (jahili) world by a revolutionary Islamic vanguard.

Qutb argued that God's sovereignty over all the earth is violated wherever there is no sharia.  Anyone who therefore ignores sharia in favour of man-made laws cannot be a true Muslim.

However one looks at what Dr Williams said - and millions on Al Jazeera have - his comments can only have encouraged those inspired by Qutb's teachings.

As the BBC has been quick to point out, Dr Williams was not apparently arguing for nasty hand-chopping sharia.  No, he simply wants a little bit of civil sharia.  Just in a few cases.  Domestic disputes, you understand.  By consent, of course.  No "blank cheques", whatever that means.

Yet, if Qutb's Milestones is anything to go by, the kind of folk who want sharia - bar the odd Anglican clergyman - are unlikely to be satisfied with sharia's limited application in a few civil cases.

Douglas Carswell MP: Parliament isn’t working

Douglas Carswell, MP for Harwich & Clacton and co-founder of Direct Democracy, laments how voters don't have real control over politicians and politicians don't have real control over the real power-brokers - senior civil servants.

Another year, another Queen's Speech.  Yet more headline grabbing laws churned out by our politicians.  Parliament produces a torrent of legislation, but is it any good at putting the spotlight on government?

The House of Commons is a house of charades; Ministers pretend to make the big decisions and we MPs pretend to hold them to account.  Voters give up.

Parliamentary procedure is partly to blame.  Debating rules favour seniority over originality, ensuring those with something fresh to say speak last, if at all.  It is a tradition for the Commons Speaker to defend the rights of the Commons – when in retirement.  If only Mr Speaker was as fierce when in the job.  Institutionally flat-footed, Parliament lacks punch.

Fresh into the Commons, and angry about what had happened to kids in my constituency forced out of their special school, I jumped at the chance of serving on the Commons Education Select Committee.  Two years, three foreign trips and half a dozen reports later, how much has made any difference? Control over education lies not with politicians promising to improve it, but with unaccountable officials.

Douglas Carswell: More bang for our buck - Conservatives need to rethink their position on defence

Douglas Carswell MP is co-founder of the Direct Democracy group. He recently returned from a visit to Afghanistan.

Des Browne's departure from the Ministry of Defence, when it eventually happens, will do little to solve its underlying failures. Regardless of which Minister happens to be serving as the department’s mouthpiece, the MoD is institutionally incompetent.

As the recent "cash-for-sailors" fiasco has revealed, the problem at the MoD is that Ministers slavishly follow official advice, and official advice turns out to be unresponsive at best, and at worst, plain wrong. When the issue at stake is the relatively trivial question of how to handle media interest in returning hostages, this merely means embarrassment. When the issue is how best to allocate Britain’s £32 Billion annual defence budget, the consequences are more serious. Yet evidence shows that the MoD is every bit as inept at spending money wisely as they are at public relations.

Slavish adherence to poor official advice is undermining our armed forces. Vital equipment has been bought overprice, late or with key design flaws; Apache helicopters cost over £30 million each, almost three times what other countries paid. The new Lynx will not be ready until at least 2012. One batch of Chinooks turns out to be unable to fly at over 500 feet in cloudy conditions. And that is just the helicopters.

Bungled defence procurement is nothing new; the Nimrod early warning aircraft is proof of that. Problems with the SA80 rifle took years to sort out. Yet Nimrod and the SA80 merely tell us that incompetence at the MoD happens regardless of which politicians are nominally in charge.