toryleadership

Andrew Lansley confirms he won't be standing

It wasn't a great surprise but Shadow Health secretary has confirmed that he will not be seeking the Tory leadership.  I have previously predicted he would be likely to back Ken Clarke but Mr Lansley talked up David Cameron on this afternoon's Andrew Neil programme.

Less forthcoming was Theresa May - earlier in the day on the same programme.  She refused to rule out the possibility of running although a bid seems unlikely.  Edwina Currie has encouraged Mrs May to stand - if only, she said, for the sake of women's status in the party.

A more likely source of another candidate is the Cornerstone group of Tory MPs.  Cornerstone sources have ruled out the possibility of an Ancram candidacy but Edward Leigh may still standard.  Cornerstone MPs meet next Tuesday to discuss their options.

Andrew Lansley: Policies cannot exist in a values vacuum

Talk of Andrew Lansley as a leadership candidate has stopped.  One of the party’s most telegenic performers, Mr Lansley has failed to attract parliamentary support and conservativehome.com expects him to endorse Ken Clarke very soon.  The two men share opposition to the Iraq war and Mr Lansley backed Mr Clarke in his unsuccessful 2001 duel with IDS.

Mr Lansley’s early interventions in the leadership race were not well received.  Floating the idea that ‘Reform Conservatives’ could be a new name for our party was scorned by visitors to this blog and his support for even more liberal sex education upset social conservatives at The Telegraph. 

So why is Mr Lansley featuring on this blog today?

He was the latest leadership candidate to get the ‘Newsnight treatment’.  Jeremy Paxman’s colleagues have been giving every candidate an opportunity to make a short film for the Newsnight audience.  It was Mr Lansley’s turn last night.

We saw him soft-focus-filmed on a beach with his family.  We saw young kids – the Freddie Flintoffs of tomorrow – playing cricket in the sandy background.  Having delivered my gratuitous Ashes reference for the day I can now move on...

Mr Lansley's basic message was that Tories must pay more attention to values and, perhaps, a little less attention to policies.  Clear majorities, he contended, were never that keen on Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation policy but enough voters overlooked that specific policy because they identified with her basic values.  Those values included a sense of Britain’s place in the world and her ambition for an upwardly mobile society.

This values/policy tension may explain his recent suggestion that the Tories’ Patient Passport policy be junked.  The policy, devised by Liam Fox and Iain Duncan Smith, would have paid a proportion of a private healthcare bill to a patient who had already waited for a long period for state-provided care.  Mr Lansley appears to believe it fed a sense that Tories were not committed to the universality of the NHS.  He believes that the Tories should now concentrate singlemindedly on raising standards for every internal user of the NHS.

Andrew Lansley - the Conservative Party needs a new personality

Yesterday was a quiet day in the Tory leadership race. David Davis penned an anti-ID cards article for the Mail on Sunday but Andrew Lansley was the only other leadership candidate in the news and the only one discussing Tory strategy.

Mr Lansley's day began with a GMTV interview and ended on Radio 4's Westminster Hour.

On Radio 4 the Shadow Home Secretary returned to his theme of the party's 'personality'. He said that the Conservative Party was continuing to win the battle of ideas but had lost an emotional connection with the electorate. People liked Conservative ideas, he insisted, but they didn't warm to Conservatives. He pointed to the European debate as an example of where the Tories had won the battle of ideas but had not benefited electorally from doing so.

Mr Lansley, who had previously called for the Tories to change their name and yesterday was rumoured to be in with a chance of receiving Ken Clarke's endorsement, said that the Conservative Party needed to talk about policies like life-work balance to capture the mood of the time.

He also endorsed the idea of an 'A list' of 100 candidates, 50% of whom would be women. He had first proposed this idea four years ago, jointly with Theresa May. She advocated it again recently. Mr Lansley regretted the fact that only six of the new Tory intake were women. He believed that the male-dominated nature of the Conservative Party put it at a significant emotional disadvantage.

He laughed when Radio 4's Andrew Rawnsley noted that one focus group had admiringly compared him to Bill Clinton. Andrew Lansley said that this comparison with The Great Emoter ('I Feel Your Pain') was one that he did not appreciate... for obvious reasons.

Ken Clarke may back Andrew Lansley

Writing in this morning's Sunday Times, David Cracknell and Andrew Porter report claims from aides to Andrew Lansley that Ken Clarke may back the Shadow Health Secretary's leadership campaign.

Andrew Lansley was a strong enthusiast for Ken Clarke's 2001 leadership bid and they share opposition to the Iraq stage of the war on terror.

There is growing concern amongst the Conservative Party's left-modernisers that they have failed to find a champion for their beliefs. Cameron, Clarke, Lansley, Rifkind, Willetts and even Alan Duncan are all bidding to be that champion.

Earlier in the week Andrew Lansley set out the principles underpinning his leadership bid.

He expressed concern that Michael Howard's right-to-choose policies, proposed for the public services, became perceived as part of a "Conservative obsession with markets, efficiency and productivity".

He has warned that the party will be in the wilderness for twenty years if it does not 'reform' and become "united, tolerant, compassionate and honest." Last month he even suggested that Tories should consider renaming themselves as The Reform Conservatives.

Punters raise prospect of Andrew Lansley candidacy

This morning's Telegraph lists the latest betting on the leadership race.

The betting will give particular encouragement to Andrew Lansley. The Shadow Health Secretary has hardly attracted any press attention, and has not shone in the opinion polls, but at 9/1 he is slightly ahead of more talked about candidates like Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Ken Clarke. The full list of odds are:

"David Davis 4/5 from evens
David Cameron 6/1 from 5/1
Andrew Lansley 9/1
Malcolm Rifkind 10/1
Ken Clarke 10/1
Liam Fox 12/1
Tim Yeo 16/1
Alan Duncan 20/1
David Willetts 25/1
Theresa May 33/1
Damian Green 50/1
John Redwood 50/1"

Up until now Mr Lansley's only foray into the campaign was to suggest a more liberal sex education policy and a new branding for for the party - of 'Reform Conservatives'.

Andrew Lansley proposes name change for the Tories

“The point of saying we should describe ourselves as the Reform Conservatives was that it does not require the name of the Conservative Party to change: the Labour Party is still the Labour Party... They called themselves new Labour to indicate to the public that they had changed themselves and therefore were going to change the country. The public needs to be aware that the Conservative Party has reformed itself and is going to reform the country.”

Andrew Lansley proposes the 'Reform Conservatives' title in an interview for The Times.

The anti-Iraq-war Mr Lansley also advocates a liberal approach to sex education.