Nick Vaughan: Why I am joining the McCain campaign

Nick Vaughan is a Director of the Young Britons Foundation, former National Chairman of Conservative Future and Councillor back home in Herefordshire. He is about to lead out a large group of volunteers to Ohio to support the John McCain '08 Campaign.

As a Republican sympathiser and like so many other UK Conservatives, I have been left to defend the shared interests of the transatlantic alliance more than ever as consequence of the specific distaste toward the Bush administration. Many who criticise Bush point towards his policies. However, I am acutely aware of the strength of criticism which has focused on the ‘language’ which has been espoused by the administration in the past eight years. Some of you will recall that last Blair-Bush press conference held at the White House in May 2007, and when asked of his biggest regret as regards operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush spoke of his sometimes ‘aggressive’ language. And in June 2008, speaking to The Times he conceded that his rhetoric could have made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war”.

Like him, I still do believe our polices in Iraq and Afghanistan were right, and hopefully history will prove that. Though the aggressive ‘with us or against us’ attitude of the US administration has been one of the main catalysts behind contemporary anti-Americanism.

Only a few years ago I was there listening to McCain addressing the Conservative Party Conference. It didn’t have me jumping up and down, it certainly didn’t make one jump in the spontaneous way Hague seems to manage every time – but what it did do was made me realise that here we had a Conservative who knew his brief and above all else, shared my values. He spoke then as he does now of the need to achieve victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. And he still speaks of the good old Conservative values of a low-tax, low-fat government.

Nick Vaughan: Worst nightmare or second honeymoon?

Nick Vaughan, a former Chairman of Conservative Future currently working for public affairs firm FD-LLM, overviews the challenges at conference.

David Cameron’s Conservatives return to Blackpool distracted with speculation of an impending General Election coupled with Labour taking a surge in the polls - with thanks to what many political commentators have deemed as Brown’s ‘second-bounce’. En-route to the seaside I look forward to what we can expect from Cameron’s speech, his key messages to delegates and the wider public - and what will be the key focus of debate which will draw the dividing line between the Conservatives and Labour.

Nick Vaughan: Six Months On

Nick Vaughan is the current National Chairman of Conservative Future, representing over 18,000 young activists. He is currently reading for a BA in Politics at the University of Essex, having previously been employed in the House of Commons and the European Parliament as a Parliamentary Researcher.

It is six months since I was elected the National Chairman of Conservative Future, the Conservative Party’s organisation for members under the age of thirty. So I wanted to update CF members, as well as the wider party, on how the time since has gone, and especially on my view of where CF can go from here. ConservativeHome is a perfect platform to do this, in its potential for reaching out to active Conservatives, to those who are more loosely involved in the party, and to what I hope to be an emerging conservative movement in Britain, including such organisations for right-of-centre young people as the Young Britons’ Foundation.

CF and its activities should not be a secret known only to those most involved – not least because so often it’s been the arrival of a few cars, or a busload, of CF members that has turned a small campaign by a few hard-working activists into a major opportunity for canvassing and leafleting multiple wards in sizeable portions of constituencies. As Conservative Future’s membership grows, I want this to happen more and more, directing the energy and readiness of young people towards the campaigns the party needs to fight. And I welcome feedback and ideas from all Conservative members on how this can best be achieved.