Conservative Diary

Blogs, websites, e-etc

25 Jan 2010 15:57:59

Closing the deal 8/10: Lively campaign websites for key voter groups

There are key election battles in the regions. There are the day-by-day, hour-by-hour national messages. There are key national events such as the election debates. There are also the battles for key interest groups. The internet provides better-than-ever-before opportunities to micro-target key constituencies such as churchgoers... servicemen and their families... animal welfare enthusiasts... disability campaigners...

As I've already blogged, the Conservative Party has particularly potent policies for churchgoers.

An attractive website setting out those pledges in an attractive format, backed up with video messages, a newsy blog, and Search Engine-optimised could be an important campaign tool. In 2001 I arranged for the distribution of 300,000 Tory newsletters to churches. They were called News for Churches. The internet can enable the same to happen at a fraction of the cost.

There are just 101 days to the likely election date. CCHQ has fifty days to identify, say, ten pivotal voter groups and find an MP/ candidate and voluntary group to run a brilliant website for that group. David Burrowes MP, Fiona Bruce and the Conservative Christian Fellowship would be a perfect team to run a website for churchgoers. I'd help too!

Tim Montgomerie

25 Jan 2010 14:58:12

Closing the deal 7/10: David Cameron should join Twitter (and soon)

Screen shot 2010-01-24 at 21.03.43According to the table above, just released by Tweetminster,  the Conservatives are at a disadvantage on Twitter. @MayorofLondon and @Conservatives are our two biggest players but @DowningStreet (which hopefully we'll soon inherit) and @SarahBrown10 have many fifteen times as many followers.

I'm not sure what limits there might be on Labour using @DowningStreet during the election (the Left are already pre-emptively trying to curb Boris' use of his account) but, as @DavidTBreaker has argued, the Tories need a big hitter on Twitter. That has to be David Cameron.

He will need to address that "tw*t" gaffe (his first Tweet could be a self-deprecating "I was a twit not to tweet until now") but he could soon be reaching hundreds of thousands of people during an election campaign with 140 character messages. I think Cameron would be good at it. It'll be a great medium for communicating in a warm, direct way.

Mr Cameron was cautious when I asked him if he'd join Twitter earlier today (watch here) but I'm convinced it's too good an opportunity to miss.

@TimMontgomerie

15 Jan 2010 09:00:17

The blogosphere has a new star in Norman Tebbit

Tebbit2 He's only been blogging for three days but it already looks like the blogosphere has found a new star; Lord Tebbit. His posts are full of his trademark strong views but also a willingness to pick up and engage with comments left by his readers.

Here are extracts from his first three contributions:

Blogging on the BNP: "So what about the BNP? The trouble is that it is a national socialist party. Take a look at its 2005 election manifesto. You won’t find much about reducing the power of the state and increasing that of the individual. It has a curiously dated air of the 1960s and 1970s, with talk of controlling the commanding heights of the economy and building barriers to trade. To be kind to the BNP, one might call it a corporatist party. To put it more roughly, one might say that it is a fascist party, a Left-wing authoritarian party. One thing is certain. As a socialist party, the BNP can only be part of the problem, not part of the solution."

Against multiculturalism: "Having overcome rivalry between Protestants and Catholics, and learned to live in harmony with the Jewish faith and other minority religions and cultures by accepting a society based on Judaeo-Christian principles, we should be wary of those who seek to implant a rival culture with its own legal systems and standards of public behaviour to keep separate its followers from the mainstream of our majority. Apartheid is made no better by being voluntary."

Call me Norm: "London cabbies usually address me as “Norm”, to many others I’m “Lord T” , the very correct use “My Lord”, the less so, “Oy, you” – but please not Sir Norman or Mr Tebbit, as they are simply not correct."

Praise for Nick Clegg: "I hate to say it, but only one party leader seems to have grasped that, if you construct a system where unskilled people are worse off by taking a job than by staying on welfare, they remain trapped in poverty – and that is Nick Clegg. Lord knows, Frank Field and Iain Duncan Smith spelled it out in words and figures that only a simpleton could fail to understand, but the two main parties are unwilling to bite on the bullet and commit  themseves to raising the income tax threshold from £6,475 to something like £10,000 or £12,000."

Absence of grit: "About the only leading politican to show any [grit] these days seems to be the much-abused Prime Minister Brown. Grittiness and the stiff upper lip seem to have been replaced with emotional incontinence, political correctness and open-necked shirts worn with well cut suits."

Tim Montgomerie

8 Jan 2010 07:20:37

David Cameron's "Cameron Direct" meetings will make him all the more prepared for the TV debates

Picture 12 On Monday, just a few hours before the first snow fell across the capital, I braved the cold to go to a church in Hammersmith in order to observe a Cameron Direct meeting - my first, David Cameron's 57th.

More than 230 residents from across the redrawn marginal constituency - which will be contested for the Conservatives by Shaun Bailey - turned up to spend an hour firing questions on anything and everything at the Tory leader.

Picture 18 Readers may be unfamiliar with the format, since the meetings, which have now attended by well in excess of 10,000 people from all corners of the United Kingdom (as illustrated by the map) since they began in June 2008, are explicitly closed to party members. It's an opportunity for ordinary voters - sympathetic, apathetic, floating and indeed downright hostile - to probe the man who will be seeking their help in getting him the keys to Number Ten at the impending general election.

It's a very basic set-up: Mr Cameron takes to a modest 6-inch high podium (without a lectern), makes a few introductory remarks and then immediately gives the floor to the voters wanting to question him - which inevitably include some who are actively hostile to the party, as was the case in Hammersmith on Monday.

I felt that he came across extremely well in the environment: honest, human and - importantly - not just seeking to tell the questioners what they wanted to hear. And at those points when he was not willing to play to the audience, it should at least have garnered him additional respect from the genuine floating voters in attendance for being prepared to stick to his guns.

Continue reading "David Cameron's "Cameron Direct" meetings will make him all the more prepared for the TV debates" »

4 Jan 2010 17:00:43

'Ask David' about the Conservative manifesto

Picture 8 One of my favourite features of WebCameron MkI was an 'Ask David' feature which allowed visitors to ask a question of the Conservative leader and he then answered the ones that other users voted as most deserving of an answer. The feature was retired perhaps because a lot of the most-voted-for questions were from, for example, crazies who wanted to say 9/11 was a CIA plot and so on.

Anyhow, the 'Ask David' feature is returning as the party rolls out its draft manifesto. Visitors to conservatives.com will be able to ask a question about the latest chapter of the Tory manifesto (the first chapter is on health) and users will be able to vote for the ones they most want David Cameron to answer. Using a Google-based voting system (also used by the White House) that will prevent attempts to manipulate the voting, the Conservative leader will then answer the ten most popular questions at a Cameron Direct meeting - mixing live questions with online questions.

CCHQ are also stressing that the manifesto is in draft form. If knockout ideas emerge from the online conversations that take place at conservatives.com the party may embrace them.

> Below is a video in which David Cameron explains how you can take part in the Q&A he is doing this Friday

Tim Montgomerie

30 Dec 2009 19:30:44

Blogger of 2009

PicksOf2009

Picture 9 Jonathan Isaby's pick: I'm going to give my award for blogging this year not to a politician or a party activist, but to a journalist from the mainstream media - Paul Waugh, the deputy political editor of the Evening Standard. He has come into his own as a blogger during 2009 and always has something to say on the issues of the day, often ahead of the curve with his take on political developments. For a quick tasster of his posts from the year, read this prescient prediction of Alan Johnson's move to the Home Office, his minute-by-minute account of the make-or-break PLP meeting after this year's local and European elections and this account of the opening session of the Chilcot Inquiry. Make sure you have him bookmarked in your favourites for election year!

Screen shot 2009-12-27 at 14.02.09 Tim Montgomerie's pick: John Redwood's blog is my pick. I've praised his economic insight before. Alongside Allister Heath's City AM editorials, I have learnt more about the huge economic challenges facing this country from the former Welsh Secretary than from any other source. I cannot believe that his talents won't be used by the Tory government we all hope for. His blog is a success because he matches quality with regularity. He blogs every morning without fail. He also tackles non-economic subjects. By way of one topical example, his reaction to the Detroit terror attempt mixed common sense with speed. He noted that the attack was a failure of the authorities to act on intelligence. More intrusive checks at airports are not the best protection for travellers.

> We have already named our Backbenchers of the Year, Frontbenchers of the Year, and Moments of the Year.

30 Dec 2009 12:10:19

Jeremy Hunt to offer £1 million to the creator of a website to "harness the wisdom" of the British people on policy

HUNT JEREMY OPEN NECKED SHIRT Shadow Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has announced today that a Conservative Government would offer a £1 miilion prize - from Cabinet Office funds - to a person or persons who can create a website that would be able to take account of the "collective wisdom of the British people" when it comes to making policy.

According to the Press Association report:

Announcing the cash prize, which would be taken from the Cabinet Office budget, the party said it believed "the collective wisdom of the British people is much greater than that of a bunch of politicians or so-called experts".

It would be paid to the individual or team "that develops a platform that enables large groups of people to come together online to solve common problems and develop new policies". The competition is modelled on the use of the online science community by pharmaceutical firms to solve problems as part of their development of new products.

Mr Hunt told the Today progamme this morning:

"Look at the U-turns over child care vouchers, over the 10p tax, over the NHS IT system. It is crazy that these things have gone wrong when you've got lots and lots of retired health professionals, retired policemen, people in the teaching profession, who have huge knowledge and expertise and had they been able to contribute better to the policy-making process we could have avoided some of these problems.

"What we are trying to find is: is there a way that we can use the internet - it's a means to an end not an end in itself - to try and avoid some of these howlers so a future Conservative government can not just have good policy ideas but execute policy in a much more considered and thought-through way."

"We will only give this money away ... if we get a solution. One of the innovative things about this idea is that it is a prize so someone will actually have to deliver the entire product, working, functioning."

Jonathan Isaby

17 Dec 2009 08:49:11

Unions have £25m war chest to "unleash hell" on Tory government

ConservativeHome has learnt that the unions are holding back money from Labour's election fighting fund and instead choosing to build up a war chest with which to fight the Conservative government that they expect to be elected next year. The relatively benign economic years of the recent past have meant the unions have not had to fund much strike pay and the coffers of the public sector unions, in particular, are overflowing.

A very good source tells ConHome that the unions have as much as £25m to spend on campaigns to oppose cuts in the public sector workforce and in public sector pay.

PoundAttackToday's Daily Telegraph splashes with the news that public sector pay continues to grow under Labour: "The Office for National Statistics disclosed that, in the three months to October, state workers received an average annual rise of 2.8% This was close to triple that seen in the private sector, where pay edged up by 1.1%. Many private employees have been told that their pay will be frozen next year and have had Christmas bonuses withheld." Even before the recession Labour had allowed public sector pay to catch up with private sector pay but had not forced public sector workers to sacrifice some of the securities they received as a traditional substitute for less remuneration.

Continue reading "Unions have £25m war chest to "unleash hell" on Tory government" »

9 Dec 2009 05:40:43

Boris warned about sending political messages to his 59,000 Twitter followers

Picture 38

Boris Johnson's twittery celebration of The Sun endorsing the Conservatives has earnt him a warning.

The Guardian has the story:

"The matter was referred to the GLA panel for dealing with complaints, who concluded last month that the mayor "could have been seen" to have been breaching a clause in the code of conduct governing elected members, "as it appeared on the evidence presented that the mayor of London was using GLA resources in seeking to affect party political support"."

With nearly 59,000 followers Boris Johnson is by far the biggest Conservative representative on Twitter.

David Cameron (famously) does not Tweet for fear of looking a "Tw*t"!  The most newsy Twitterer inside CCHQ is Head of Press, Henry Macrory.

The Prime Minister's wife, Sarah Brown, is the biggest Labour star on Twitter. At just over one million followers, she has much more 'Twitterpower' than Boris.  With Downing Street emblazoned all over her site, however, she will be limited in her use of Twitter to back her husband.

Tim Montgomerie

11 Nov 2009 08:59:54

The enemies of the next Conservative government

The last 48 hours and the row over Gordon Brown's letter to Jacqui Janes have been further proof - if such proof was needed - that we live in a very hostile and unforgiving time. One of the greatest challenges David Cameron will face if he becomes Prime Minister is the management of this ungenerous and fast-moving media culture. Groups will be lining up to cause him trouble. He, like Margaret Thatcher before him, needs to pick his battles carefully. His decision, for example, to tackle the education establishment but not the NHS may, for example, be tactically wise. He also needs to do a lot more to reach out to his friends so that he has more strong allies for the big fights that lie ahead. The lack of contact between the party, the wider conservative movement and sympathetic third party groups (encapsulated in the decision to abolish CCHQ's External Relations Department) is short sighted.

Dartboard These are the likeliest enemies. Some are unavoidable but some can and should be squared off in order to avoid tension on too many fronts.

Labour and Liberal Democrats. Unavoidable opponents but not necessarily the principal threats that will shape public opinion.

The public sector trade unions. These would be my candidate for number one opponent. I don't often disagree with The Spectator's James Forsyth but I thought his recent column on how the Tories plan to work with the unions was too optimistic. If the Tories are to reduce Brown's budget deficit there'll have to be blood on the carpet. The unions are ready for the fight. The leader of the postal union leader, Billy Hayes, is already flexing his muscles and warning that he is stronger than the Arthur Scargill. The teacher unions, in particular, are certain to give a Conservative government a massive fight. Hopefully someone has a clear strategy to deal with the unions.

The Left 'netroots'. We haven't yet seen the web really take off as a political force in Britain but the Left in the widest sense will probably rebuild online. With Labour close to bankruptcy we will see a huge number of very cheap but very popular internet-based campaigns - national and very local - against Tory spending cuts. These campaigns could hurt the Conservatives but they could also hurt the Labour Party in the medium term as it is dragged to the radical left by purist internet activists. 

Continue reading "The enemies of the next Conservative government" »