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Cameron should be above dissing his internal critics

David Cameron launches his National Citizen Service idea today.  I think it's a great idea but this morning's BBC News bulletins were giving at least as much attention to Mr Cameron's putdown of Michael Ancram.  This is what the Conservative leader told The Sun (my emphasis):

“I want all Conservatives to think carefully before they open their mouths... When you make changes you’ll get blasts from the past who signify nothing.  Political leadership is about taking a long-term approach. It’s about ignoring noises off stage.  I don’t think when Tony Blair was trying to change the Labour Party he spent his whole time worrying about what Tony Benn was saying.  I set a clear course that has already reaped huge benefits. Look at our local election results."

'Blasts from the past who signify nothing'?  Mr Ancram's intervention was ill-timed - as ConservativeHome argued on Tuesday morning - but Mr Cameron really must stop trashing his critics.  His frustration is understandable but his behaviour is not statesmanlike.  It's a reminder of the time when he attacked critics of his grammar schools policy as "delusional" or when he criticised Ali Miraj and Stanley Kalms in a Today programme interview.   Mr Cameron should allow others to deal with his critics.  He must be a unifying figure and he's only given a 11th hour burst of life to the nearly dead Ancram story.

Cameron's office still needs to do much more to build better links with the parliamentary and wider party.   This is what Anne McElvoy wrote in yesterday's Evening Standard: "I have been struck in the past two months by the fact that many Tories who defended the new leader in effusive, not to say excessive, terms last year, have become sour and negative now.  Too many of them feel neglected by him and his team... There are frequent complaints from people who thought they had an 'in' with him being treated coolly or even haughtily by his office, or letters written by people who have been kind to him, returned unsigned or ignored."  I hear many, many similar stories.

Cameron questions Miraj's motives

Interviewed on this morning's Today programme David Cameron made it clear that he would be sticking to his programme of modernisation.  The Conservative leader was quizzed first on Ali Miraj's overnight attack (read it in full here) for his alleged obsession with PR.  Mr Cameron responded with a direct questioning of his critic's motives:

"I think listeners will draw their own conclusions about someone who one day asks for a peerage, to be elevated to the House of Lords, and the next minute launches a great attack on the leader of the Conservative Party."

I think we can safely say that Ali won't be joining the green or red benches any time soon as a Conservative.  Tune into Radio 4's World at One for Ali Miraj's response.

Mr Cameron was also asked about other criticisms from Graham Brady, Lord Saatchi and Lord Kalms.  Eschewing bridge-building he said that Mr Brady's views had to be understood in light of his resignation over grammar schools and Lord Kalms had backward-looking views and had never supported him as leader.  He said that he understood many of his reforms had been unpopular but that there would be no U-turns:

"When you make changes to the party as I have done, when you put it in the centre ground, when you change the policy on the NHS and say it there for everyone not opt-outs for a few, when you are as clear as I am that you have got to have economic stability before tax cuts, not everyone is going to agree."

He said that opinion polls come and go but the fundamentals of Labour failure would soon reassert themselves.

"When you look at the fundamentals, what's going wrong in our NHS, the fact that there isn't proper discipline in schools, the fact that the Government said 'we would give you a referendum on Europe' and now won't.  When you look at the fundamentals I don't think we are seeing real change in this Government and I don't think Gordon Brown can be the change the country needs."

1.15pm update: Speaking on the World at One Ali Miraj accused David Cameron of attempting to smear him and of a complete lack of integrity.  He pointed a finger at Andy Coulson and reminded readers of the royal phone bugging scandal that the new Tory Communications guru was associated with when he edited the News of the World.  He now seems on a mission to cause as much damage to Team Cameron as possible.

Tory Chairman attacks "pathetic" briefing against David Cameron

''I think it really is barmy to be jetting off to do this in the middle of the local election campaign. There will be Conservatives all over the country knocking on doors, and where is he? He's off looking at glaciers in Norway. I'm afraid he's missing the target - it just has the feel of a gimmick..."

That was what "a senior member of Mr Cameron's shadow cabinet" told last Monday's Daily Telegraph about the Tory leader's visit to a Norwegian glacier (for which Mr Cameron left London this afternoon).

In an interview with The Parliamentary Monitor Francis Maude described the "unattributable briefing" as "pathetic":

"It is obviously very unhelpful if anyone in a senior position in the party makes disobliging remarks to the media. That is a habit we thought we had grown out of and we need to grow out of it... They should just shut up, get on with the job or perhaps even better leave. If they don't like what is being done then being a backbench Member of Parliament is a perfectly honourable thing to do."

Mr Maude, who recently acknowledged the electoral mountain that the Tories still had to climb, also used the interview to insist that David Cameron's honeymoon was not over:

"Ok we are not far enough ahead in the polls to win an election but we have significantly improved from where we were flatlining for 14 years. So are we in better shape? Yes we emphatically are... I think David still attracts an extraordinary amount of attention, he's still a very interesting figure for the media and the public and he does reflect and represent change. There'll be much more from him."

Editor's comment: "Francis Maude is absolutely right to insist that shadow cabinet ministers do not brief against the leader.  "Unattributable briefings" from the Blair and Brown camps are damaging Labour in the way they once damaged the Conservative Party.  We must not lose the discipline that was the key achievement of Michael Howard's time as leader.  Choosing to go public with his concerns was not necessarily such a wise move, however, by the Conservative Chairman unless he is trying to pre-empt further frontbench disloyalty."

Tim Yeo questions David Cameron's marriage policy

Tim Yeo MP is quoted in Sunday newspapers suggesting that David Cameron should abandon his commitment to support marriage through the tax system.  "There are lots of families who are families in every meaningful respect, but don't happen to have parents who are married," he is reported as saying, but "I think a tax break which effectively discriminates against such people and their children would be seen as wrong."

Tim Yeo frets about discriminating against unmarried couples but he is out of touch with the real problem.  The current system discriminates against married couples.  One aspect of this discrimination was recently highlighted by LibDem MP David Laws.

Mr Yeo's remarks appear to substantiate suggestions by CPS author Janet Daley - in today's Sunday Times - that a large number of Conservative MPs believe that any commitment to marriage is "politically unacceptable".

Mr Cameron made a commitment to support marriage as one of the first acts of his Tory leadership bid.  This commitment and that to quit the EPP were the two bankable pledges that helped earn him the support of right-wing MPs (like those belonging to the socially conservative Cornerstone Group).

Mr Cameron sees support for marriage as a way of fighting social exclusion.  All of the evidence suggests that family breakdown hurts the poorest children most.  For that reason he has given Iain Duncan Smith's social justice policy group the job of formulating a family policy.   That group may recommend action in the tax and benefits system that will eliminate the marriage penalty.  It is likely to recommend a much broader set of pro-family initiatives, however.  Healthy marriages education and family impact statements may be part of the policy toolkit that IDS' team recommends.

Tebbit attacks Cameron for trying to "purge the memory of Thatcherism"

It may be David Cameron's big speech day but Norman Tebbit is determined to grab a bit of attention for himself.

In a speech to the Bow Group the former Tory Chairman and self-appointed keeper of the Thatcherite flame will "compare the Tory leader to the communist dictator Pol Pot over the way in which he has tried to "purge the memory of Thatcherism"" (Telegraph).

This is the second time this month that Lord Tebbit - who backed David Davis for the Tory leadership - has questioned the new leader's strategy.  Lord Tebbit told today's Telegraph that UK elections "are won by the party that gets its own traditional supporters out and discourages those of the other parties from doing the same".  Lord Tebbit clearly believes that Mr Cameron's eschewal of tax cuts and refusal to talk about Europe, crime or immigration will demotivate the party's core supporters.

Lord Tebbit's wide-ranging speech will ask the following questions:

"Is he really 'New Labour Lite', a Tory wolf in Lib Dem sheep's clothing, or a Lib Dem sheep leading a pack of Tory wolves?  Or is he the partys Chairman Mao or Pol Pot intent on purging even the memory of Thatcherism before building a New Modern Compassionate Green Globally Aware Party somewhere on the Left side of the middle ground?"

Mr Cameron also comes under fire from the party's Europhile wing.  Edward McMillan-Scott, former leader of the Tories' MEPs, has told The Scotsman that "Mr Cameron seems to be working towards the centre at home and yet moving to the extreme right abroad as fast as he can."  William Hague will be visiting Brussels today as he seeks to implement his leader's decision to leave the EPP.  The decision may be controversial amongst the party's Old Europeans but it won the agreement of 76% of party members in last week's survey of the ConservativeHome Members' Panel.

Portillo's regress

I enjoyed my Newsnight outing yesterday and it was good to see the BBC giving airtime for the Tory Party to be scrutinised from the right (or should I say from a conservative perspective?).  The Today programme could take some notes from the team behind Mr Paxman and Ms Wark...

There are all sorts of things that could be mentioned from last night's discussion but I was struck by the extent to which Michael Portillo seems to almost despise the right.  Clipped for the programme the 'who dares wins ideologue' - who, in the 1990s, ignored those of us seeking a more one nation Conservatism - encouraged David Cameron to pick a (Blairite) fight with the forces of conservatism.  He sees Mr Blair's abolition of Clause IV as a model for the new Tory leadership with right-wing (and undoubtedly pin-striped) MPs taking the place of nationalisation.  Never mind that traditional Tory positions on Europe, crime and immigration etc resonate with the electorate in a way that Michael Footisms never did...

Mr Portillo's dislike of the right has been evident in previous of his columns (see here for example) and was on show again in the most recent Sunday Times.  Here are three quotes from his 15 January op-ed:

"Michael Howard displayed the memory of a goldfish when in 2005 he campaigned with the same attitudes that had brought the party crushing defeat in 2001."  Memory of a goldfish?  Is this a way to speak of a former cabinet colleague?

"The Conservatives’ mean-spirited stupidity in the last two elections has denied the public an alternative to Labour."  Wasn't he Shadow Chancellor for the first of those mean-spirited campaigns?

"I was worried that Cameron had populated his shadow cabinet with reactionaries such as David Davis and William Hague."  Didn't MP almost endorse DD in one of his many endorsements of the leadership election?

And my biggest question of all... Why does The Sunday Times continue to employ this man?  He's reinvented himself more times than any politician worthy of serious respect.  Let's all hope and pray that MP's chum Andrew Neil doesn't make him editor of The Spectator.

Tebbit demands more beef from Cameron

Simon Heffer, Melanie Phillips, Peter Hitchens, Jeff Randall, Irwin Stelzer, Fraser Nelson, Geoffrey Wheatcroft... and now Norman Tebbit.

Former Tory Chairman Lord Tebbit is the latest right-of-centre/ conservative thought leader to express concerns about the direction of 'Cameron's Conservatives'.  In an article for The Sunday Telegraph, Lord Tebbit writes:

"Of course Mr Cameron is right to see that the Conservative Party has to change. Margaret Thatcher saw that too. Nor are all Mr Cameron's changes ill advised. I had been trying to bring Conservative environmentalists on board the party for a long time and I am pleased to see Zac Goldsmith joining, despite his opposition to nuclear power.  Nor should Tories be ashamed of Mr Cameron's concern with world poverty, but throwing money at corrupt dictators because they have ruined their economies will help neither poor Africans nor poor British.

The trouble is that we have other problems here at home. With selection on ability (but not ability to pay) and vouchers ruled out, how will we improve our schools? If the Treasury alone can finance hospitals, how can they be run for patients and not for the Treasury?  New Labour has all but destroyed occupational pension schemes. Would Chancellor Osborne take the Treasury's greedy hands out of pension funds?  How would Cameron deal with multiculturalism, which threatens social stability? Would he encourage marriage and stable families? Could he free us from our masters in Brussels?"

Tebbit criticises move to abolish October Conference

The Independent: "Lord Tebbit, the former party chairman, who was injured with his wife, Margaret, when a Brighton conference hotel was bombed in 1984, said he would be saddened by the move.  "I am sad about it because it does seem to me an attempt by the leadership to put distance between itself and the party membership. I think it is another part of the centralising approach to minimise the contact with the grassroots, who tend to be old, which is a sin, and tend to be right-wing, which is also a sin."  Lord Tebbit said the week-long conference was a great social event for the ordinary members to rub shoulders with cabinet ministers in the fuggy atmosphere of the conference hotel bars, or the banquets and dinner-dances organised by the seaside."

Rifkind returns to backbenches

As some visitors have started to discuss on this earlier thread, Sir Malcolm Rifkind, John Major's last Foreign Secretary, has decided to return to the backbenches.  Sir Malcolm has issued the following statement:

"I am delighted that David Cameron has been elected Leader of the Conservative  Party. He will have my full and unqualified support.

Two weeks ago I indicated to him that it was my intention, over the next two or three years, to concentrate, in Parliament, on foreign policy and on Britain's relations with Europe, with the United States, and with the wider international community. It is essential that the Conservative Party develops a strong, attractive and forward-looking policy on these issues.

I informed David that, in the event of him becoming Leader of the Party, I would be very happy to concentrate on foreign policy from within the Shadow Cabinet if that would be helpful. If, however, he had other plans in regard to this and other senior positions in the Shadow Cabinet, it would be my intention to work for the Party from the backbenches. This is what I now intend to do over the period ahead."

Editor's Comment: "In other words Sir Malcolm wanted to be Shadow Foreign Secretary and has quit the frontbench when the job was given to William Hague.  He cannot realistically have expected to get this job, however.  David Cameron is a supporter of the war in Iraq and he could not have put an opponent of that necessary stage of the war on terror in such a position.  It would have been a recipe for conflict or deadlock.  Sir Malcolm's expectations of such a post were as unrealistic as his leadership bid.  Sir Malcolm has a great brain and he promises to be loyal but I expect him to become a leading critic of Team Cameron's policies on Iraq etc.  With Hague (Foreign Affairs), Fox (Defence), Osborne (Chancellor) and Davis (Home Affairs) there is going to be no retreat on Iraq etc from Cameron's Tories."