toryleadership

Editorial: Easterhouse and Soho Conservatism

In Wednesday's Times Daniel Finkelstein called for a more positive and hopeful Conservative Party.  I couldn't agree more with his premise.  I've long admired the Republican Party and the way it has kept faith with Ronald Reagan's morning in America optimism.

British conservatism has not matched that positivity.  It has inherited Mrs T's handbagging approach to politics.  Daniel Finkelstein, who worked with William Hague from 1997 to 2001, wrote this:

"Without fully realising the choice it was making, the Tory party began to paint the skies black, became the pessimistic party. This country is being strangled by regulation and taxation, criminals are taking over our streets, family life is collapsing, immigration control is a joke, alcoholism and drug abuse is rife, the constitution is crumbling and we are being subsumed in a European super-state. Oh yes, and no one decent can go out after 8 o’clock.  Eight years later it seems clear that this choice was the wrong one. And Mr Cameron’s intervention in the Sky debate suggests that he realises it too."

The intervention in last Thursday's Sky debate was recorded by Clive Davis - but more of that in a moment.  DF thinks the Tory Party needs to be more hopeful about modern Britain:

"A Blue Skies party might say this — that this country is already prosperous but untold opportunities lie ahead for all if we build a flexible low-tax economy; that one of the greatest advances in social policy of the last 30 years is that we now know that crime can be beaten with the right policies and that in other countries this is happening; that immigration can be an immensely positive thing and that assimilated communities have been enormously successful and will continue to be so provided we get the system under control; that many cities outside London are booming and that there is now so much to do after 8 o’clock. I could go on, but you get the idea."

Editorial: Me? Biased?

It's true.  I am biased and throughout today I'll be revealing my many biases (even more starkly than normal some might say!).   But they'll be biases about conservative ideas and policy direction. 

As conservativehome.com develops I want it to be somewhere where the And Theory Of Conservatism is always on full display.  By that theory I mean a combination of those core policy positions most associated with the Conservative Party of recent years (Euroscepticism, a tough approach to crime and lower taxation, for example) with a broader commitment to justice issues (like addressing domestic poverty,  human trafficking and environmental decay).  The party doesn't have to choose between its core beliefs and a more progressive agenda.  The 'And Theory' argues that we can have both if we avoid apeing our political opponents' choice of policy instruments.

On the hour - throughout today - I'll be publishing the two contenders' answers to twelve questions of Conservative belief and strategy.  Alongside every question I'll be writing a very brief editor's note and the exciting new David-O-Meter will be swinging towards DC or DD to indicate which of the contenders has given the best answer.  By the end of the day it will be fairly obvious which of the two candidates has the best policy positions (IMHO) but I will not reveal whether those positions are enough to make me vote for them.  For me beliefs are 80% of the mixture but all of us know that Michael Howard's successor also needs a variety of leadership and personal skills.

ConservativeHome remains an open forum for all Tories and if you want to write a substantial post for the Platform Blog - disagreeing with 'my biases' or proposing an entirely different area for discussion - please email me at [email protected].  And there's always the comments option at the bottom of every post for more libertarian, less hawkish Tories to take issue with my perspective!  I welcome all comments of every worldview but will delete comments that abuse other visitors, use unnecessary bad language or are racist, homophobic or are in other ways offensive.

The David-O-Meter will be swinging into action at 9am...

Editorial: The Cameron Coalitions

There's a superb article in today's New York Times by Nicholas Kristof.  I've reviewed it on the Commentators' Blog.  Mr Kristof notes how America's liberal left and the conservative right are co-operating on issues of international justice - issues like Darfur, human trafficking and religious freedom.  Mr Kristof hopes that such bipartisanship might also lead to better care of prisoners and he highlights the very interesting Second Chance Act. 

We may be entering an era of cross-party alliances.   The IDS-led Tories helped Blair secure passage of 2003's parliamentary motion on Iraq.  IDS and TB joined hands against the red-blue-yellow alliance of Robin Cook, Ken Clarke and Charles Kennedy.

Mr Cameron appears to stand with Mr Kristof's "bleeding hearts" and against the red-blue-yellow-white-flag alliance on Iraq.

One article in today's Sunday newspapers (I forget where) suggests that David Cameron might lend Tony Blair 196 Tory MPs to help pass Ruth Kelly's education reforms.

David Cameron has already said that he wants to run a more consensual approach to politics.  His recent environment policy (attacked by Iain Murray on The Platform) stems from an initiative that Oliver Letwin agreed with his LibDem opposite number, Norman Baker.

Co-operating with Labour on education?  Co-operating with the LibDems on the environment?  What next?

Mr Cameron's enthusiasm for Kyoto and liberal positions on drugs are certainly winning him new friends:

• One libertarian Independent columnist - Johann Hari - has welcomed DC's drugs policies.  Mr Hari has looked at Mr Cameron's views when he was on the Home Affairs Select Committee and, not unreasonably, concludes that he might legalise drugs.
• The leader in yesterday's Independent endorsed Mr Cameron's commitment to "downgrading ecstasy" - describing it as "sensible".  It also welcomed the fact that Mr Cameron was not a "doctrinaire tax cutter" like David Davis.  His "permanent mechanism to force through cuts in emissions" was described as encouraging.
• In today's Independent on Sunday Geoffrey Lean describes Mr Cameron's environment plans as "the most radical yet from a British politician".  Mr Cameron's warmth towards Kyoto comes as Tony Blair cools towards a treaty that has never involved developing nations.

On drugs, tax and the environment Mr Cameron is winning new friends but he is worrying others.

Simon Heffer's opposition to the Cameron candidacy has already been noted on this blog.  Frederick Forsyth has also been ringing alarm bells.  In Friday's Express he complained about the Portillistas that surrounded Mr Cameron, the narrowness of his experience, the vagueness of his policies and the "nervous, timid, cautious" manifesto he wrote for May's General Election.  Stronger criticism comes from Peter Hitchens in today's Mail on Sunday.  Mr Hitchens who has long called Tony Blair Princess Tony has christened DC Princess Tory.  He attacks him as the "drug-takers' friend".

These commentators may be the very kind of people that Michael Portillo wants David Cameron to distance himself from.  Mr Hitchens - who has long argued for the "Useless" Conservative Party to be replaced - may be irreconcilable but the others are friends that a Cameron-led  Conservative Party may need when its fairer weather friends desert it.  Mr Hari may walk away from DC if he delivers on his marriage commitments, for example.  The anti-war Indy may start using its editorialising front pages to attack Mr Cameron if he stays true to his support for the Iraq war.

The building of any external coalition is a daring political enterprise.  Homeland security, nuclear energy and general policy towards the environment are three areas where such coalitions may be worth the risk.  But as he dares Mr Cameron should be careful not to burn bridges with natural allies in the Tory family.  His strong treatment of Simon Heffer and last week's chippy putdown of Quentin Davies by George Osborne should not be repeated.  Matthew d'Ancona offered sound advice in his column of today.  He said that Mr Cameron, if elected leader, must ensure that David Davis sits on the "bridge of the Tory ship".  The offering of such an olive branch should only be the beginning of Mr Cameron's efforts to unite the party behind him.

Editorial: A solid win for David Davis

Guido Fawkes put it well: 'Basher By A Broken Nose'.

I've spoken to three MPs and three journalists since the end of QT.  They all agreed that DD won this contest.  One of my MP contacts is one of DC's top backers.

DD's best attack on David Cameron came near the end of the programme.  David Cameron had been describing his approach to policy-making.  David Davis was unimpressed:

"What you are describing is an approach taken by Tony Blair in the mid-1990s... But the British public have seen three Blair parliaments. They are sick and tired of spin and the era of spin. Frankly, David, this is absolutely the worst moment for the Conservative party to imitate Tony Blair."

Not quite a knockout blow but a very strong and effective attack - without overstepping the line into personal abuse.

As many of this site's visitors noted - Mr Cameron looked uncomfortable throughout the evening.  'Is he ready for prime time?' was a question left playing in my mind.

David Davis always seemed on top of his brief.  His commitments to economy-boosting tax relief and solid opposition to liberal drugs policies were authentically conservative.  David Cameron appeared to suggest that he was willing to introduce a more liberal policy on ecstasy.  He failed to answer DD's charge that his 'sharing the proceeds of growth' soundbite was too elastic to be meaningful.

DD also reassured me about his commitment to a broader conservatism (I noted this concern yesterday at 5pm).  He spoke about a conservatism for the 'bottom 25%' of Britons.  He said that conservatives must pass a "decency test" on all policies.

This programme wasn't transformational for this contest.  I would be very surprised if David Cameron did not still become Tory leader.  There was plenty to like about him from this performance.  His commitment to the traditional family was sound but balanced with an awareness of - and compassion for - other forms of family life.  His commitment to Africa appeared heartfelt.  He was authoritative when it came to his own brief of education (but strangely willing to offer the kind of detail that he suggested was "ridiculous" in other areas).

Paul Goodman (very quick to post about QT on the Platform Blog) has got it about right.  A few more Tory members will be a little less quick to cast their vote for Mr Cameron this morning:

"I believe that many party members will conclude from last night that their vote is too valuable to cast hastily or lightly.  I’m also convinced that they will be right to do so.  David Cameron isn’t entitled to easy votes because of one good conference speech.  And DD isn’t entitled to easy votes because of one good television performance."

There's still a month to go before we need to vote.  Let's keep watching and learning...

PS If DD won by points, ConservativeHome trounced Guido in the battle of live-blogging.  At the time of posting this blog received 147 posts about QT; Guido had received 24.  That's better than BBC Sport used to manage when it went head-to-head with ITV on big sports matches.  You wanted the contest Guido...

Editorial: David Cameron on the back foot on tax

Today has been a good day for David Davis.  He was very confident on Radio 4 this morning and has shifted the debate (at least for one day) onto substance.  He'll never win on style against David Cameron but he can show that his ideas are clearer and, er... potentially more conservative. 

Mr Cameron issued a statement this morning in response to Mr Davis' intervention:

"David Cameron has consistently argued that the proceeds of economic growth should be shared between tax cuts and investment in public services and that a dynamic economy needs competitive tax rates.  It is encouraging to see that David Davis has now confirmed he supports that approach and that there is a lot of common ground between them on this issue.''    

This statement only muddies the position.  On last Friday's Today programme Mr Cameron distanced himself from the 'growth rule' upon which Mr Davis' tax policy is based.  The rule states public spending growth should not exceed growth in the economy so that there is room for tax relief.   

Mr Cameron's formulation has been dismissed as pretty indistinguishable from Gordon Brown's approach.  Carl Emmerson of the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies told last Saturday's FT:

"The Cameron statement doesn't really rule out very much. It encompasses a wide range of possibilities. On its own, it doesn't tell us very much at all.  He could mean increasing public spending more quickly or less quickly... It's not clear they differentiate him from what David Davis said or the situation under Gordon Brown, where incomes after taxes are higher now in real terms than when he became chancellor despite the tax burden being higher."

Oliver Letwin, an early backer of Mr Cameron, has said that he'd prefer for the Tories not to promise any tax cuts at the next election.  Another Cameron supporter, Stephen Dorrell, has just told Radio 4's World at One that he doesn't think tax cuts should be promised until the public services have been reformed.  If Mr Dorrell's advice was followed we could fail to address Britain's competitive tax disadvantage for a decade or more.

This vagueness on tax is all part of the policy weakness at the heart of David Cameron's otherwise impressive leadership bid.

I remain unconvinced by his drugs policy (and almost as disappointed at David Davis' self-imposed silence on this subject).

I'm also very unclear about what David Cameron intends to do about party democracy.  Will he  protect the rights of members to elect the next leader or not?  Up until now he has been silent on this vital issue.

I've have also learnt that David Cameron favours the introduction of a 'gold list' of candidates for the top 100 or so target seats.  The list would include a large number of women and people from ethnic minorities.  Conservative Associations in those target seats would only be allowed to choose from this list - which is based on the Lansley-May model but without a fixed 50/50 split between men and women.  The adoption of such a list - which would partly be filled by headhunting and mentored hi-fliers (see within this interview) - would give the compiler of the list enormous power to reshape the next parliamentary party.  The forthcoming hustings would be a good time to clarify Mr Cameron's intentions on this 'gold list'.  Will Associations be able to choose from the whole list or only from three or four names on that list?  How does this idea fit in with Theresa May's enthusiasm for open primary selections (also advocated earlier this week by Daniel Hannan MEP)?

Postscript: Before the most enthusiastic Cameroons fill the thread below with accusations of bias I should state that I am a floating voter in this contest and my only wish is for some questions to be answered.  It would be great if this blog would focus on the serious policy issues at stake here...

Editorial: Finally, finally, David Davis rises to the occasion

It's been a week since David Cameron topped the parliamentary ballot.  It's been three weeks since the 'boy wonder' deservedly stole the frontrunner status from the uninspirational David Davis.  Throughout this period Mr Davis - and his team - have demonstrated no real awareness of the seriousness of their predicament.  The Davis operation has appeared unable to find a response to the Cameron phenomenon.  Mr Davis has appeared to be sleepingwalking to a massive defeat.  But finally there are signs of life.

Tomorrow Mr Davis will announce tax cut plans equivalent to £1,200 a year for the average family.  This, Team Davis suggests, will be "achieved by reducing overall public spending to 40 per cent of national output – the level advocated by former Chancellor Kenneth Clarke at the party conference earlier this month".  A Davis-led Tory government would introduce a 'growth rule' which would limit spending increases to below the trend rate of economic growth.

Mr Davis will say the following:

“The political sands are shifting.  Gordon Brown’s high tax, high spending experiment is running into trouble.  Every independent forecaster is predicting that his sums do not add up and that he will have to put up taxes again.  It is also increasingly clear that spending without reform has wasted taxpayers’ money by failing to deliver sufficient improvements in public services.

“We will make the gravest mistake if we seek to ape the New Labour project at the moment when it is seen to have failed.  People are yearning for an alternative to New Labour, not a repetition of it.

“The Conservative Party has a choice.  We can either continue to accept the terms of the debate set by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, with ever higher spending and taxes.  Or we can set a distinctive Conservative agenda for the future.

“We can either join the ranks of centre right parties around the world, such as the Republicans in the United States and the Liberals in Australia, which have won by cutting taxes.   Or we can remain frozen in the headlights of a centre left agenda, and continue to lose.”

Mr Davis will point out three killer facts:

1. The UK’s tax burden is rising to a 25-year high
2. Growth is at a 12 year low
3. Britain has dropped to 118th place out of 180 in the world growth league since Labour came to power.

The riskiest path for Britain's public services is the path we are on. It is a path to an uncompetitive, underperforming economy.  Mr Cameron talks about sharing "the proceeds of growth between tax reduction and public service investment" but what will generate growth in his economic programme? Oliver Letwin, a Cameron backer, is reported as being opposed to tax cuts at elections.  Is this the Cameron camp's position?  "Such pledges were a vote loser and there was 'no point' in making them," ThisIsMoney reports Mr Letwin as saying.

Mr Davis' analysis is right.

George W Bush's tax relief package has been hugely successful - restarting the post 9/11 economy and boosting the whole world's economy.  [The US budget deficit, by the way, reflects a failure to control spending].

Mr Davis can only hope to succeed by reframing the tax question.  At present, the British people immediately connect tax policy to spending.  Full stop.  Mr Davis needs to show the British people that tax policy is also a powerful economic weapon.

Mr Davis will be helped in this intellectual battle if he is more careful with his rhetoric.  The term 'tax cuts' should be banned for obvious reasons.   Tax relief is a much better 'Don't think of an Elephant!' term - suggesting respite from an oppressive burden.  By introducing the ideas of stealth taxation and fat government the Tories have already won some battles in the propaganda war with New Labour.

New language will help to tilt the terms of debate towards reduced taxation. Perhaps Conservatives should start their search for new language by rethinking presentation of their goal of ‘low taxation’. Does the ‘low taxation’ phrase do any rhetorical work? No. ‘Economically sustainable taxation’, ‘globally competitive taxation’ or ‘fair taxation’ do, however, send out educational messages.

The idea of targeted tax relief will also help conservatives to win the battle on tax. Rather than the idea of indiscriminate tax cuts for all, targeted tax relief can be crafted to become associated with good causes like family life, charitable giving or poverty reduction.

Mr Davis has not transformed this contest with this initiative.  He'll need to do much more than make one (very good) tax policy announcement.  He deserves to have helped his prospects, however, and he will have done the Conservative Party a great service if Mr Cameron has to clarify his own (rather ambiguous) position.

Paul Goodman MP's second Platform blog addresses DD's tax policy.

Editorial: Portillo argues that Cameron's success should be measured by the blood he spills

A couple of weeks ago this blog noted talk of a 25% strategy.  "One leading supporter" of Mr Cameron was said to be hoping for a war on The 'Hate' Mail and The Mail on Sunday.  The party would be fundamentally changed, the supporter hoped, and in the transition from the old to the new party Tory support might fall to 25% but it would be an interim price - well worth paying.  One visitor to the site - 'AnotherNick' - dismissed the story as "just silly, possibly the work of another campaign, but more likely just an anti-Cameronite".

There's a lot of reasons to believe that 'AnotherNick' might be right.  With the exception of ambiguity on drugs policy Mr Cameron has shown no inclinations to uber-modernisation.  He has said that he wants to use the tax system to support marriage and he has rejected the idea of all-women shortlists.  He has talked much more about poverty (at home and abroad) than lifestyle choice issues during the campaign - suggesting that he's more of an Easterhouse moderniser than a Soho moderniser.

In today's Sunday Telegraph Janet Daley hopes that the modernisers around Mr Cameron will make peace with the Conservative Party's past and abandon what she thinks is a futile search for a Clause IV moment.  She hopes that they will reject 'Tory Modernisation Theology' and realise that there is "nothing in the Tory liturgy that was remotely as fatuous and electorally suicidal as Labour's promise to nationalise every wealth-producing mechanism in the land".

It would appear that Michael Portillo is still a disciple of Tory Modernisation Theology.  Mr Portillo compares Mr Cameron's rise to that of Chauncey Gardiner in Hal Ashby's Being There film: 

"In his film Being There, Peter Sellers played a simpleton, Chance, a gardener. He smiles sweetly and speaks softly. His only conversation is about seeds, plants, seasons and the like. By a series of accidents he is mistaken for a wise man who has chosen to speak only in metaphors. When he says that we reap in the autumn what we plant in the spring, sages nod their heads admiringly. Before long he has become a national hero, a familiar figure on television chat shows, a man whose counsel is sought by the president."

Mr Portillo hopes that Mr Cameron will stick with this Chauncey-like imprecision for the time-being.  Mr Cameron's fundamental task, suggests the defeated 2001 leadership hopeful, is to change the Conservative party as fundamentally as Tony Blair changed the Labour party.  Mr Portillo:

"If tax cuts, stable families and Euroscepticism do not fit the new Conservative project, whatever sentimental attachment Cameron may have to them, they also must be torn up..."

"The Tory benches are full of repellent figures whose faces, demeanour and speech turn voters from the party. They have to be dealt with.  Cameron’s success will not be judged by whether he can lead a quiet life. It will be measured by the blood that he spills. If he is brutal enough, the silly questioning about his policies will go away."

David Davis is the safer bet in this leadership contest.  We know what he believes.  We know that he's an authentic conservative with a powerful personal biography.  He would be a good leader for the party but his uninspirational campaign suggests that he would not be an exceptional leader.  David Cameron could be an exceptional leader.  He, not Mr Davis, appears to be the Heineken candidate with the ability to reach parts of Britain that have long been closed territory for our party.  But he would be a disastrous leader if he ignites the internal feuding that would inevitably result from accepting Mr Portillo's extraordinarily bad counsel.  I do not believe that Mr Cameron is a Portillista but it would be helpful if he soon distanced himself from Mr Portillo's Modernisation Ideology.  Mr Portillo may be happy for Chauncey Gardiner vagueness.  I, for one, would prefer a little more colour in Mr Cameron's Big Picture Conservatism.      

Editorial: My 4.59pm predictions

I fear that a coronation is looking more and more likely.  Here are my reasons...

The Davis camp is in meltdown.  Within the Davis bunker a few members of the Praetorian Guard are prepared to call it a day.   If David Davis does not call it a day they will quickly defect to Camp Cameron - some, perhaps, on the promise of lucrative job offers.

Mr Davis is, I understand, reluctant to quit but may come under intense pressure to do so from within his own camp and from various party high-ups.

Rapid commitments from Fox supporters will be necessary to reinforce the depleted Davis camp but will these come?  The Cornerstone supporters who provided half of Dr Fox's first round vote, for example, resent Mr Davis' 'religious right' attack on them (of the Sunday before the Blackpool Conference).  Many are as likely to back Mr Cameron, as Mr Davis.

Despite the problems in Mr Davis' camp he will probably beat Dr Fox in today's ballot.  Dr Fox was already struggling to win many converts and he has been knocked off course by today's Evening Standard story.  What is more - there is a widespread expectation that Camp Cameron will lend David Davis half-a-dozen votes to ensure he, not Dr Fox, is the run-off candidate.

These are, perhaps, dangerous predictions to make - given that one, at least, could be proved wrong within twenty minutes.  But this is my theory on what is going on.

The way, of course, to have avoided this murky tactical behaviour would have been to have given the rank-and-file membership a choice of three candidates or/and involved them at an earlier stage in the process.  It may well be that Mr Howard may get his way after all: David Cameron as Conservative Party leader and an election by MPs only.

David Davis may be unable to beat Mr Cameron but he should not quit the race.  He would perform a great service to the party if, through the next six weeks of a nationwide democratic election, he probed Mr Cameron's position on key policy issues and consequently refined him.  He may - although it seems unlikely at this stage - beat Mr Cameron!

Mr Cameron could be a great Conservative leader but we don't yet know enough to be sure.  As one Fox-supporting MP told me earlier: We are being asked to put our signature on a blank piece of paper.  The members deserve a contest.  The country needs the Conservative Party to elect a leader after a proper process of scrutiny.  That process of scrutiny has only just begun.  If the Conservative Party fails to scrutinise and substantiate its would-be leader we can be sure that the Downing Street operation soon will...

Editorial: Why I’d vote for Liam Fox in today’s ballot

If I had a vote in today’s ballot of Tory MPs I’d be voting for Liam Fox.  I think he deserves to progress to the final stages of this contest although I fear that the list of public declarations suggests that his campaign will, unfortunately, end within a few hours, or on Thursday.

Here are my reasons for endorsing Dr Fox today:

Liam is an authentic Conservative.  He believes in lower taxation but knows that tax relief can only be part of a wider ‘prosperity agenda’.  He takes an uncompromising approach to crime and drugs.  He is a principled Eurosceptic and has confirmed this Euroscepticism with a commitment to disentangle Tory MEPs from the Old Europeanism of the EPP.  A party led by Liam would be built on the rock of these core Conservative commitments but it wouldn’t stop there.

Liam understands that the core beliefs, described above, and which have characterised conservatism since the Thatcher years, are not enough.  Both Liam and David Cameron have embraced the And Theory Of Conservatism and its belief in a more compassionate politics.  Liam’s idea of mending the ‘broken society’ was unfairly characterised as gloomy by yesterday’s FT.  But for many people - who can’t afford to read Companies & Markets - life is pretty grim.  Ignoring the real problems in British society may be an option for a newspaper that caters to a dwindling number of metropolitan readers but it cannot be an option for a political party that aspires to govern for the whole nation.  Liam’s heart for the socially excluded – particularly for victims of domestic violence and the mentally unwell – could drive the socially just conservatism that could transform the electoral prospects of our party.

Liam is a hawk in the war on terror.  The world has always been full of evil men but, as Peggy Noonan wrote some time before 9/11, it is gravely dangerous today because of the relative ease with which those men can get hold of portable weaponry of devastating power.  Dr Fox understands this risk and the need to pre-empt the danger that rogue regimes – like Saddam’s Iraq - will feed international networks of terror.  He has stood firm on Iraq throughout his brief time as Shadow Foreign Secretary and he could rebuild the Conservative Party’s relationship with the White House that became so sour during Michael Howard’s leadership.  I hope he would use that renewed relationship to combine the USA’s commitment to technology-driven environmentalism with the sense of urgency that Europeans bring to this vital issue.

Liam believes in party democracy.  He was late in declaring his opposition to the planned disenfranchisement of party members – perhaps out of loyalty to his friend Michael Howard – but he eventually came out in favour of an electoral college.  An electoral college falls well short of the open primary, mass connections system of party democracy promoted by Theresa May (and latterly by Francis Maude) but it is better than that offered by his rivals for the Tory crown.  David Davis supports a role for members in the first round(s) of voting but believes that MPs, and MPs only, should make the final decision.  David Cameron hasn’t declared his view.  Ken Clarke’s leading backers first called for the rollback of party democracy and then fell silent when they realised that their man had little chance of prospering amongst Tory MPs.

Liam is pro-life.  An in pro-life I’m not just meaning he opposes abortion and euthanasia.  I mean his commitment to defend the right to life and liberty of everyone.   For Dr Fox a pro-life philosophy includes better care for the mentally ill but also those people in faraway lands whose human rights are abused.  Right-to-die campaigns are gathering pace in Britain and Dr Fox, whilst upholding freedom of conscience on these issues for the parliamentary party, could help public opinion to see how a right-to-die easily becomes a duty-to-die.  Liam’s willingness to raise the issues of abortion and human rights has a wider significance to me.  I doubt focus groups advised him to talk about reducing the number of abortions (nearly 200,000 in Britain last year).  The fact that he still did shows he has the courage and authenticity that British politics needs after the spin’n’squander of the Blair years.

The online poll run by conservativehome suggests that I’m in disagreement with 82% of my readers.  All I can promise is that I’ll keep my opinions to the Editorials and Good Week, Bad Week features and will attempt to keep the news postings as free of bias as humanly possible.  There are, of course, concerns as to whether Liam Fox is experienced and substantial enough to be Tory leader.  I have sympathy with those concerns but they apply to David Davis and David Cameron, too.  Ken Clarke is undoubtedly up to the job but I struggle with his record on Europe and his opposition to the liberation of Iraq.

Editorial: Behaving like one party

I’ve criticised the Davis campaign in a number of ways on a number of occasions.  Only last week I questioned the DD press operation and in ‘Good Week, Bad Week’ I expressed frustration at Mr Davis’ failure to overhaul his whole campaign.  I hope my criticisms of all campaigns have been fair.  I’ve probably directed most scrutiny at the Cameron bid in recent days but the focus has been on policy not personality (a focus missing from almost every single British newspaper).  I justify the focus on David Cameron on the basis that the likeliest next Tory leader deserves a disproportionate amount of examination.

My, perhaps digressive, opening paragraph provides the context for my response to the attacks on DD’s campaign that Cameron supporters have made in the last 24 hours.  I am not a spokesman for Team Davis or a partisan critic of David Cameron.  But supporters of David Cameron have gone over the top.  Yesterday’s Independent on Sunday quoted Nicholas Soames as saying: "Davis has got plenty of form for this sort of thing. When he said people should 'speak no ill of a fellow Conservative' you could hear the sound of people throwing up into buckets at the sheer hypocrisy of the man."  Michael Spencer, a Tory donor backing Mr Cameron, is quoted on the front page of today’s Times as claiming that it was “blatantly preposterous” of Mr Davis to fuel the drugs row by saying (on Saturday’s Morgan & Platell programme) that “recent” use of hard drugs disqualified someone from leading the Conservative Party.  Mr Spencer went on to tell The Times: “The Davis campaign has been threatened by David Cameron and this is the response.  It is bitterly disappointing.  There are bigger issues here.  It is a sad, sad response of the Davis team to Cameron’s Blackpool speech.”

David Davis doesn’t deserve this and Mr Cameron should distance himself from these criticisms.  If Mr Davis’ critics have evidence that Mr Davis has fuelled this row let’s see it.  If they haven’t they should remember that the whole party needs to unite on 6th December and that is going to be easier if this contest doesn’t become poisoned by unfounded allegations.  Journalists didn’t need any prompting to begin their unhealthy digging into Mr Cameron’s university days.  Their behaviour was instinctive and herdlike.

It wasn’t unreasonable for Mr Davis to say that “recent” use of a hard drug disqualified someone from high office.  He is Shadow Home Secretary and he was asked if consumption of an illegal substance raised questions about a legislator's suitability for high office.  It will also be entirely reasonable for David Davis to emphasise his support for a tough line on cannabis in a run-off against Mr Cameron (should they both emerge as the final two contenders).  The row about past use of drugs must not prevent discussion of drugs policy.

I hope the next six or so weeks will probe both of the final leadership contenders on competence, communication skills and policy.  One of the things I will look for, in addition, is how the contenders treat fellow party members who oppose them.  There are common fears that both DD and DC will, if elected, operate from within very exclusive kitchen cabinets.  Mr Cameron has his Notting Hillbillies and their many friends in the metropolitan media.  David Davis has is Old Whips’ Office of Derek Conway, Andrew Mitchell et al.  It is important that both men demonstrate that they are going to be leaders of the whole party – drawing on all talents - and that there will be no settling of old scores once the contest has been concluded.