By Lewis Sidnick
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The
departure of Steve Hilton and Andy Coulson from Downing Street received
widespread media coverage. But much less attention has been given
to the wave of Prime Ministerial advisers and Special Advisers (SpAds) deserting
their posts. Since
2010, with a few exceptions, Secretaries of State have been allowed to
have a SpAd, but other Ministers have not (in contrast
to the Blair and Brown Governments). When entering Downing Street, David Cameron placed great emphasis on cutting the number of advisers across
Government from 82 to 61. The decision got some good headlines - but it was a
mistake.
SpAds are crucial to their Ministers. First, they are political, and can therefore protect, warn and be a safety net for a Minister walking the tightrope of Ministerial office. Civil servants have agendas (to varying degrees). They want to direct their Ministers, and they want to influence decisions. A Minister often stands very little chance against an army of civil servants and the boxes of papers that they present. A little advice and perspective from their political adviser can be crucial - but this is unavailable to most of David Cameron’s Ministers below Cabinet level.
By Peter Hoskin
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You may have heard, Andy Coulson – that Andy Coulson – has written a “ten-point masterplan” for David Cameron in the latest issue of GQ. It was published today, so I’ve given it a quick read. Much of the advice it contains is sensible, be it on Mr Cameron’s relationship with his backbenchers (“David should be better at recognising and supporting the talent he has throughout the party”) or on the Eds Miliband and Balls (“The Tories must look for divisions and make the most of them”). But there’s one passage that stands out not just for what it suggests, but also for how hazardous that suggestion is. After an extended paean to Samantha Cameron, Mr Coulson writes:
“Sam might also take a more active part behind the scenes . With the absence of so many original advisors, she is one of the few people able to see straight to the heart of a matter and offer a clear, sensible view. This will naturally steer clear of policy discussion but it shouldn’t stop her joining select strategy meetings. There are few people in Number Ten with a better eye and she could play a key role in the winning back of female voters. As a small example Sam would, I think, agree that when her husband talks about the importance of family he should be careful to include the words ‘single’ and ‘parent’ each and every time.”
Mr Coulson’s enthusiasm for Mrs Cameron is easy to understand. She has, as he says, “maintained a benign and broadly positive press”. And she has also, “[used] her position sensibly with charities such as Save The Children and Tickets for Troops.” In this task, it’s worth noting, she is aided by a special adviser – the idea being to give her a limited amount of support for what is a carefully limited role.
Does Mrs Cameron sometimes go beyond this, and advise her husband on aspects of his job? Almost certainly, in a sort of informal, over-the-breakfast-table way. We already know, for instance, that she has a say in the construction of his major speeches, and that she deployed her creative talents in service of the last Conservative manifesto. But to formalise and expand on this, as Mr Coulson suggests, would be rather risky. After all, despite his casual separation of “select strategy meetings” and “policy discussion”, there’s a murkiness to all this. What about those instances when strategy directs policy, as happens so often? Where are the lines of accountability drawn in the case of the Prime Minister’s spouse? Such questions would arise if ever there was a strong sense that Mrs Cameron was influencing government, but one other would stand above them: who elected her? And the newspapers would scrutinise her all the more rigorously. Just remember how Cherie Blair was treated when it was thought she was interfering in matters governmental.
Such a set-up wouldn’t just be difficult and damaging for Mrs Cameron, but also for her husband. He is already accused of presiding over a “chumocracy” in No.10 – what would it say, to Tory MPs as well as to the public, if he didn’t just number friends among his advisers, but also his wife? No, far better that Mrs Cameron stick with what she’s doing, which is occupying a difficult, delicate position, and occupying it well. Strange that a man who is noted for his streetwise nous should recommend otherwise.
By Paul Goodman
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Here are three measures that, if implemented -
They are as follows:
Having been in the Commons for the best part of ten years, I appreciate that logic isn't everything in politics: sometimes, even often, there's a role for fudge. But a lesson of so much that's happened to Cameron on EU policy - from the dropping of the Lisbon referendum commitment in opposition to the EU referendum revolt last week - is that by consistently seeking to put off making decisions on the EU issue, the Prime Minister has merely stored up trouble for himself later.
Continue reading "Three ways for Cameron to get back on the front foot - and stay there" »
By Paul Goodman
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No political party should alter a bedrock institution without the following conditions applying - especially if it is the Conservative Party. A sizeable campaign to change that institution should be in place: in other words, there should be real evidence of public pressure. The Party should then discuss and debate the matter internally. If the Party then decides on change, if should say so unambiguously in its general election manifesto. If it doesn't win the election, but enters into Coalition, any commitment to effect that change should be written into the consequent Coalition Agreement. Ideally, any bill enacting the change should be preceded by a Green Paper in which any problematic consequences of the bill could be aired, and solutions thereby sought. Such solutions could then be written into the bill, or tacked on to it by amendments. Finally, the bill should be subject to a geniunely free vote.
Not a single one of these conditions apply to the same-sex marriage bill, on which MPs will vote this evening.
No campaign for same-sex marriage preceded the bill. (Although Stonewall has consistently favoured same-sex marriage, it didn't launch a big campaign for it - at least partly because it thought the Government wouldn't concede it.) There was no discussion within the Conservative Party, especially at local level. There was no manifesto commitment. There was no Coalition Agreement undertaking. There was no Green Paper. There have been no significant amendments - other than Labour's on equal civil partnerships. And there has been no free vote, at least at when it comes to members of the Executive: it has been made very clear to Ministers which lobby the Prime Minister wants them to go into. For these reasons alone, Tory backbenchers should vote against the bill at Third Reading this evening. The way in which it has been introduced and championed has broken every rule of good government and party management.
The Loongate row is still reverberating in the Party, especially at local Association level. The key point about it is that too many Conservatives, from the Cabinet table to the grassroots, believe that the controversial words are what is thought and said of them in Downing Street. No measure has done more to buttress that impression than the same-sex marriage bill - which has been imposed on the Party with such absolutism, and which is the cause of such a bitter culture war. Many older people especially see the measure as a deliberate assault on their values: the bill might thus almost have been designed as a recruiting-sergeant for UKIP. For this reason alone, Tory MPs should vote against the bill this evening in good heart. They will certainly grasp that Ministers haven't a clue what the courts will do when they get to work on Equality Act challenges, and that the bill is consequently a threat to religious freedom.
By Paul Goodman
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This weekend of the “mad, swivel-eyed loons” row will swiftly be followed by Commons debate on the same-sex marriage bill. Will Conservative MPs accept Lord Feldman's denial, view the incident as yet another instance of media irresponsbility, and look more sympathetically on the measure - on which David Cameron has staked part of his political reputation? Or will the report only harden the opposition to it - since some will conclude, regardless of what they think of Lord Feldman's denial, that his words represent what Downing Street thinks anyway?
The answer will become clear over the next few days. What is evident this morning, however, is that what Cabinet Ministers do and say about the bill will be watched very closely indeed. The Sunday Telegraph confirms that Chris Grayling will support amendments that aim to protect people who work in the public sector and believe that marriage is between men and women - and that Owen Paterson and David Jones will oppose the bill at Third Reading. The logical extension of Philip Hammond's pointed remarks on Question Time last week is that he should, too.
By Paul Goodman
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Andrew Feldman has issued a statement as follows: "There is speculation on the internet and on Twitter that the senior
Conservative Party figure claimed to have made derogatory comments by
the Times and the Telegraph is me. This is completely untrue. I would like to make it quite
clear that I did not, nor have ever described our associations in this
way or in any similar manner. I am taking legal advice."
The question that obviously follows is whether some other person with "strong social connections to the Prime Minister and close links to the party machine", as the Times (£) put it this morning, spoke the contested words. This seems not to be the case, and Lord Feldman's statement confirms that he is indeed the man at the centre of this controversy. I understand that a conversation between him and several lobby journalists took place at a dinner earlier this week.
By Paul Goodman
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David Cameron has promised an In-Out referendum on the EU in the next Parliament. Why, then, do some of his backbenchers want a mandate referendum now, and still more of them want to write the In-Out referendum into law? There is no simple answer, but a number of different factors have come together. One is the passion that the EU has excited within the Conservative Party since Bruges. Another is fear of UKIP. Still another is the belief, common among Tory MPs, that Cameron is very unlikely to lead a majority Conservative Government after 2015. But, above all perhaps, there is, at worst, a distrust of the Prime Minister over Europe and, at best, the conviction among Tory MPs that on the issue he will follow rather than lead.
Cameron's gambit yesterday evening was crafted to ward off accusations of followership after a day in which party debate over the Baron/Bone amendment to the Queen's Speech, and over the EU itself, threatened to run out of control. The device of a Private Member's Bill is the best he can do to regain the initiative - since Nick Clegg will not concede a Government Bill, even on a free vote, and there is nothing the Prime Minister can do to master him, short of breaking up the Coalition altogether. Such a Bill is unlikely to deliver the goods, since such measures are vulnerable to being talked out. Ed Miliband's main aim will be to obscure his party's own differences on the EU, and to out-manoevre Cameron when MPs vote in the Commons - in alliance, probably, with the Liberal Democrats.
Continue reading "A failure of leadership that leaves Cameron as a latter-day John Major" »
By Paul Goodman
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"'Cause we made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender"
Together with Daniel Finkelstein, Alice Thomson and Sarah Vine (Mrs Michael Gove) from the Times, Robert Hardman of the Daily Mail and Xan Smiley of his own journal, the Economist, Christopher Lockwood was identified last year by David Cameron as one of six close friends who are journalists. As I write, parts of the lobby and commentariat are whooping it up about closed circles, public schoolboys, a chummocracy, Old Etonians, and all the rest of it - since James Forsyth has broken the news that Lockwood is leaving his post as the Economist's U.S Editor to join the Prime Minister's Policy Unit. The bright side, for those worried about this sort of thing, is that Lockwood is not an Old Etonian. The less bright side, for the same lot, is that he was educated at St Paul's. I used to work with Lockwood at the Daily Telegraph, and remember him as quirky, funny, well-briefed, sometimes gloomy, always sharp - and highly intelligent.
He will do whatever he's asked to with distinction, though the fun poked at his appointment is entirely predictable. So why has Cameron gone ahead? Number 10 will argue that it is not a preserve of white privately-educated men, and cite Ameet Gill and Rohan Silva - as well as Gaby Bertin and Liz Sugg and Clare Foges. Perhaps: but the Prime Minister clearly does a lot of his recruiting on the basis of friendship and trust - more so than George Osborne (who originally recruited Silva) or Boris Johnson (who tends to select on merit, on the whole with good results.) At any rate, I can't help considering this move alongside my recent experience of travelling with the Prime Minister while he campaigned for a day, mulling over Cameron's general impatience with some of his critics - and reading this as a No Surrender appointment. The upside is that I don't read Lockwood as a man who will simply tell the Prime Minister what he wants to hear.
"'Cause we made a promise we swore we'd always remember
No retreat, baby, no surrender
Blood brothers in the stormy night
With a vow to defend
No retreat, baby, no surrender".
By Paul Goodman
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I'm in a position to offer this morning to offer an insight into current thinking in Number 10. Tim Montgomerie touched on its current charm offensive yesterday, of which the Jo Johnson appointment was a part. I'm not going to comment on this thinking - though I will certainly return to the subject soon - but relay it as straightforwardly as I can.
By Andrew Gimson
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How astute of David Cameron to make Jo Johnson the head of his policy unit, and to ask some other backbenchers to contribute to policy. As Tim Montgomerie noted here earlier today, the Prime Minister may at last be starting to get his Downing Street machine into shape.
The 2010 Tory intake is exceptionally gifted, which for the long-term health of the party, and of Parliament, is a very good thing. It is more than likely that the next or next-but-one leader of the Conservatives will be chosen from among these men and women of ability.
But, in the short term, it is very difficult to find enough for these newcomers to do. As an MP, it is easy to fill or overfill your time with engagements of small importance, but can be hard to find work of real significance. Westminster is full of men and women who have taken great trouble to get there, and discover on arrival that they do not matter at all.