More progress for David Cameron (at the expense of Ken Clarke)

The Cameron campaign has just announced that it has won the backing of two MPs who backed Ken Clarke's 2001 leadership bid.  Robert Key (who previously had not declared) and Jacqui Lait (who had been one of Sir Malcolm Rifkind's six public supporters) take Mr Cameron's level of parliamentary support up to 34.

Comments

[andy]

I think that in a way it has

[andy]

Only ... I don't get the connection between Henry and Ceasar.

[andy]

Being a person who has never voted in his life, appart from the time when I went down to the tennis club and voted for a liberal MEP, and then procceeded to get totally blasted out of my mind, and end up singing welcome to the hotel california whilst doing a strip tease, politics to me has allways been a side show of a side show.
Maybee Cameron is right, education does matter, and maybee Davis is right aswell, we might have to watch our borders more closely if only to keep out the chicken pox. What the hell Clarke might also be right and we have to listen to our prime minister and beleive him. If I think about it I might also come up with a reason to vote for Fox, which is that at the conference he was the only one with the sense of humour to go down to the local sweat shop and offer a packet of Foxe's glacier mints as his freebee.
I think that what all of the candidates are trying to say in there own way is that we can't continue to to allow Americana to rule our lives. That we are a nation that is still suffering from its empirialist past even though we have accepted that its part of the natural evolution of history. We don't want to be the policeman of the world, and yes because of the mimicary of New Labour we are prepared to learn that we have made mistakes.
If we are going to have a new age conservatism then it will require all of our combined efforts. But we are going to need the people, which I still preffer to affectionatelly refer to as the mob, behind us.

[andy]

Oh sorry I've just got your drift of you reference to Henri.
Nice but dim! is my characterization. I guess it takes one to know one ... not that I'm saying that you're dim ... I'm sure you're very nice aswell ... but this isn't a chat line, or so the rest of the crew insists upon telling anyone that is trying to take over this blog.
But incidentally ... if there are any discenters out there who what to get involved in politics for the first time in there lives and in a way that they can feel that their voice realy matters. Then send in a blogs to this site saying just "RUBBISH"
Next thing you know Americanna will give us a tea-shirt with "Rubbish happens"

[Richard Carey]

"If I think about it I might also come up with a reason to vote for Fox, which is that at the conference he was the only one with the sense of humour to go down to the local sweat shop and offer a packet of Foxe's glacier mints as his freebee."

They have sweat-shops in Blackpool? The broken society must be worse then we thought!

I do apologise for this light-hearted intermission (like I've never made a typo!)but it's been a long day and that strangely struck me as funny...

I think that the comments of Jonathan and others above on the recent tone of debate are spot on. I know it seems to be human nature sometimes to campaign against people, rather than for them. But surely this debate itself is a route for changing the Party. How better to show this than to disagree, sometimes robustly as we do in a democracy, over which of this talented group of candidates have strongest case for the leadership, rather than mounting a rather poor "Stop X at any cost, because my views are more important" campaign.

The leadership campaign is free publicity, if we conduct it correctly. How many people in how many seats would give their eye teeth for good, free media time?

[andy]

I've just realised how true the saying is that power corrupts. Question Time has been substituted with Newsnight because of recent events. Either I'm drunk or old woolfgang is being evicted once more.

[free democrat]

I would hope that once next week is over things should improve with regards to the tone of debate. At the moment you've got MP's trying to persuade other MP's and the real test which is making the general public vote for you is being obscured.

It feels to me as if Fox is pandering to increase his vote on the right to give himself a reasonable total but has little expectation of getting through. How little heat Clarke is getting makes me feel he hasn't got the votes either.

Hopefully with Davis and Cameron in the final two the tone of debate will become better - whichever of them wins (unless Davis does a Brian Gould I suppose) they will certainly need each other.

[pigmalion]

That is a perfect example of what IDS was talking about when he said that the blog could change the world for the better.
After all in the UK there is no constitutial ammendement that gives the press the freedom to do anything that they want.

[pigmalion]

In the UK you can take the press to court just like you can take any PLC to court if you feel that they have sold you short. Namelly if you buy a newspaper that as a newspaper could be argued in a UK court of law that they were under an obligation to supply you with that which they are selling themself as, namely a newssheet, then if that newspapper reports something that is subsequently prooved to be false then you have thr right to take that newspaper back to the vendor and ask for you money back.

[pigmalion]

Ok I was a little excited by that response. Basiccally as the law stands you can sue a newspaper, or a news agents if they don't give you your money back when one of the pieces in the papers turns out to be a falsehood. Which bassically means that you can sue them if the weather forcast is wrong.

[pigmalion]

Ok I'm drunk and QT is on the air but still watching it now I can see how Cameron has flunked it but he is still a great general. Leading the forces forward from the back-benches.
Better having a devil's advocate that having an advocate for prime minister.

[pigmalion]

boy do I hate being right

[pigmalion]

DC is a panic button. He is still agreeing with everyone. DD, KC must be feeling sorry that they didn't try to stop him from being let loose on the public. LF must be feeling that sinking feeling that of a prime minister feels when he realized how stupid his opposition is.

[Ronald Collinson]

"...who fear their right-wing, idealogically-pure vision may not be realised."

Would you care to a) articulate what this vision is and b) who expressed it?

Well, ummm...

Me, for starters. Although, in my defence, I have expressed admiration for all candidates except Cameron. Davis just happens to be ideologically closest to me, and, in my view, has the fewest negatives of four excellent candidates (including Rifkind).

There's nothing wrong with being a moderate. It's something entirely different to be unprincipled, and the balance of evidence is that Cameron has less vision than as a sock puppet.

[wasp]

Sorry but I have not seen a single example of DAvid Cameron being unprincipled.

There will always be a home for you in UKIP, Cameron is going to win this thing and get us back into power.

[Graham D'Amiral]

Going back to Nelson's scorecard, I notice you rate Ken Clarke as the least electable of the candidates. Was it the opinion poll that put him 14 points ahead of cameron amongst the general public you were basing that on or the one that found some 20% of voters would be more likely to vote Conservative if Ken was leader.