Conservative Leadership Contest

Six months. Not enough time for RII unless it happens in October (which we would win again), but long enough to replace May.

She won't go until after May 2nd, around three weeks away, and I'm sorry for the decimation of sitting Conservative councillors that will occur, but go she must. Members haven't had the chance to elect a leader since 2005, and given the schism between the parliamentary and ordinary party means there will be many Red Tories who will want another Parliamentary stitch-up to prevent the over 70% Brexit grass-roots party from finally democratically electing our Leader. However, the new leader will welcome the delay of a full election - the process won't be complete in time for the EP elections on 23rd May, which is likely to see both UKIP and the Brexit Party take many of the existing 19 Conservative seats. Thus the inevitable EP wipeout will still be yet another May disaster without tainting her successor.

Usefully also, party members are beginning to realise that the truly dreadful Hague party constitution is in deep need of reform. It is a patrician stitch-up that institutionalises the power of the party grandees and reduces members to the level of dumb leaflet deliverers. A petition of members will need 10,000 signatures to start with just to change the 12-month rule - to twist May's arm if she digs her fingernails into the Number 10 door posts. Where do I sign?  

It's Cameron's cronyism that will be remembered

When Cameron's brief and unremarkable spell as the Conservative Party's leader ends shortly, he will be remembered for one defining quality - his cronyism. It's not just the Eton toff thing, or the incestuous Oxfordshire county-set weekends, but a perception that his loyalties to his 'chums' - in business, parliament or socially - outweigh his obligations to the rest of us. Whilst there are those who wish to be inside the charmed circle, most of us would rather replace Cameron. For whatever reason, the untalented and egregious Maria Miller is part of the PM's circle of protection and is getting the sort of full crony protection that is a gift to UKIP and likely to cost the Tories tens or even hundreds of thousands of votes in 2015. 

Cameron's departure will mark the end of an era for the Conservatives. For the past few years they have been listening to political gurus telling them to 'triangulate' and 'occupy the centre' rather in the manner of a lifestyle coach recommending a Camomile enema and Civet-poo face scrub. No-one has been listening to the grass roots members and Constituency Associations, so they have packed it in. Those such as Norman Tebbit, whom age has endowed with great wisdom, remain unflinchingly loyal to their party, and though never Cameron cronies will go down with the ship.

If the Conservatives want to remain a force in British politics, they must ditch the homeopathic triangles nonsense and be proud to be square rather than hip. And find a leader with the common touch.

Tory Filth, Lies and Corruption

A week ago I wrote, not to critical acclaim elsewhere, under the title 'Tories snub Sid for Tarquin'. Well, I stand not only proven right but even more convinced that Cameron's bent administration is riddled with the stench of nepotism and corruption and the sooner it falls the better. I wrote:

" No. The privatisation is being run by Cameron and Osborne's chums Goldman Sachs, whose brokers will fund their yachts and grouse-shoots from the fat fees. And they've decided that the benefits of the privatisation should be restricted to their chums - bankers, large multinational corporations and the like. So they've restricted the sale of 70% of the RM shares to the Tarquin list - leaving Sid to scrabble about for the remaining 30%. It's like a slap in the face with a wet fish for popular capitalism and a gift for Miliband." 

And although the Sids were restricted to the 30% of shares and had their bids all knocked down to £750 each, with those wanting over £10,000 getting nothing, the same rules clearly didn't apply to those applying for over £1,000,000 of the reserved 'Tarquin' 70%. Now the Telegraph tells us;

Lansdowne Partners, one of the world's biggest hedge funds, has invested in Royal Mail and is said to have a £50million stake in the company. After a day of frantic trading the value of its shares has risen by £18million. Peter Davies, Lansdowne's co-head of developed markets strategy and a member of the hedge fund's management committee, has been friends with the Chancellor since they met at Oxford University. Mr Osborne chose Mr Davies to be his best man when he married Frances Howell in 1998 at St Margaret's Church, next to Westminster Abbey.

So the filthy Tarquins clean up whilst the small trader or retiring professional with just a few tens of thousands to invest gets shat on. If there were ever proof that Cameron hates the middle classes, this is it. 

Give me Farage and all his faults any day rather than those overblown corrupt nepotistic lying Stupid Boys. 

Cameron's Hedgehog Party

Austria, at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, was always destined to carry some dodgy traffic once Schengen kicked in. Most passes through on the superb A roads, through tunnels or over high Alpine passes without incident, but just occasionally a truck comes to grief revealing an illegal cargo. So it was last week, when a vehicle carrying some 2,000 small animals overturned. Most of the cargo obediently permitted themselves to be recaptured by the Animal Welfare (well, this was Austria). The owner optimistically sent a replacement vehicle. The Authorities of course declined; the cargo would be detained whilst procedural irregularities were investigated. At the owners' expense. The irony in all this is that some 80% of the cargo was live-food for pet snakes and the like - small rodents, which the owners were now having to pay to be fed and cared for. The other 20% of the cargo was the exotic pets themselves; snakes, Armadillos and, um, Egyptian Hedgehogs. 

Hedgehogs? Since when did hedgehogs become pets? What was the attraction? I sought out an online guide to hedgehog-keeping. It consisted of page after page of advice aimed at preventing the creatures from killing or seriously injuring themselves. First, they need lots of room. "Without room, a hedgehog will show signs of depression, such as excessive sleeping, refusal to eat, repetitious behaviour, and self-mutilation. Due to their small size obesity is a very dangerous problem and hedgehogs require a fair amount of exercise to avoid liver problems due to excess weight." Uh OK a big wire cage then "Cages with wired floors are dangerous for hedgehogs because they can easily slip and get a limb caught in the wire. Multi-level ferret or rabbit cages can allow a hedgehog more room to explore without taking up extra floorspace, but when using multiple levels, keep in mind that a hedgehog has poor eyesight, can climb easily, but has difficulty descending and often does not seem to understand heights" Hmm a big cage with a safety rubber floor, then. "A wheel is necessary to provide hedgehogs with exercise. When choosing a wheel, it must have a solid floor. If an open-wire wheel is used, the hedgehog will continually fall between the bars and possibly break a leg. Wheels with crossbars can also cause facial injuries as hedgehogs have been known to look sideways out of the wheel while running." The list goes on. They are liable to amputate their own limbs with their bedding, their genitalia may get blocked with cage-dust, they are (unsurprisingly) prone to many diseases, including Wobbly Hedgehog Syndrome and commonly react to stress with vomiting and green faeces.

And then the simile struck me. Hedgehogs are the Tory Party of the pet world - intent on self-destruction, blind, incapable, liable to unintentional self-injury and deliberate self-mutilation. When threatened all they can do is roll up in a prickly ball. Suddenly gay weddings, bloody windmills, state snooping, Europhilia and all the other rubbish came into perspective; it was all Hedgehog behaviour. The party has grown into an endangered creature incapable of flourishing, subject to Wobbly Tory Syndrome and liable to react to stress with vomiting and green faeces.    

May for PM, Farage for Deputy PM?

We all have our dream tickets, and this combination has to be one of mine. 

Theresa May is of the background that yeoman-sorts such as myself know well - she's one of us, vicar's daughter, local grammar, state primary and a million miles away from the Etonian County class. She's only been an MP since 1997, having had a proper job previously, combined with local council experience. Above all as Home Secretary, she's dealt with all the crises that hit the Home Office - so often the graveyard for incompetents, as Blunkett found - with unflappable aplomb. Strongly Eurosceptic and in support of Britain's withdrawal from the ECHR, and having rolled-back many of Labour's more lunatic initiatives she nonetheless also earns the grudging respect of the left, who lack anyone remotely of May's capacity themselves. 

Farage of course is the bloke next door; you'd not feel awkward borrowing a hose from him. His many positive qualities and ability to engage effortlessly with ordinary people outweigh his failings as a party leader - he needs an environment in which he has license to speak the thoughts of the ordinary man. As May's Prescott (and one really hopes he's capable of keeping his trousers on) he can be a hard-hitter and destroy the amateur Marxian dilettantism of the sixth-form Labour front bench. However, unless there's another by-election he won't be in Parliament by 2015 - unless a new Conservative leader persuades one of the party's giant tortoises in the Commons that it's time to move down the corridor.

Cameron is finished unless he pulls some extraordinary rabbit out of the hat. And Boris needs a place in government - though given his sexual incontinence not in a post from which he can't be sacked without collateral damage when the next story breaks. Exciting times.  

Listen to us. We DO know best.

The jaw-jaw politics game is going right to the wire in 2012. With signs that the EU may still implode as a result of its own single-minded federastry, unelected 'dishrag' Herr Von Rumpy this week sought to start re-writing this potential historical outcome by blaming British Euphobia for any collapse. At the time of writing, 1102 furious comments from Telegraph readers say everything worth saying about the contempt in which this silly little man is held by the British public.

On 13th December I reported that Spain's bad-bank was set to launch to market some 89,000 homes and 13m square meters of building land, but that this represented just those holdings worth more than €250,000 that had been transferred from the good-but-bankrupt banks. Ambrose writes today of efforts by the bust banks to offload their residual property holdings before the bad-bank's portfolio hits the market; with a fall in value of 75% from 2008 levels expected, and a potential free-fall that could see some developments worth just 5% of their peak value, offering an attractive investment opportunity for any Germans brave enough to acquire holiday homes at the bottom of the market and proving that everything will sell if the price is low enough.

Meanwhile nearer home Bruce Anderson confirms what we all know already, thereby upholding the great tradition of hindsight exhibited by the MSM;

A generation ago, the populists warned that the abolition of the death penalty would lead to a sharp increase in the murder rate plus the proliferation of gun crime. They feared that if schools abandoned traditional disciplinary methods, many classrooms would become ungovernable. They were also afraid that in practice, comprehensive schools for everyone would mean secondary moderns all round. They were convinced that uncontrolled immigration would undermine the quality of life in our inner cities. They were equally certain that welfare payments which merely subsidised idleness would turn the welfare state into an ill-fare state and condemn its clients to demoralisation. They were perennially suspicious of the EU. To put it mildly, there seems no reason for those who held such views to prostrate themselves in repentance. Not that they are inclined to do so, which helps to explain the Tory party’s poor performance in recent elections: its failure to achieve its demographic potential in an increasingly middle-class society. A lot of potential Tory voters see little point in turning out for a party that persistently ignores their opinions, especially when they believe that they have been proved right.

In the days when the Tory Party formulated policy on the basis of a bottom-up information flow from hundreds upon hundreds of local Conservative Associations to Central Office they wouldn't have missed this. Now there's a new name for this old process - 'crowdsourcing' - which will no doubt be miraculously discovered by the party as a hip, modern replacement to policy wonk tanks and metropolitan gurus - but perhaps discovered too late to do the party any good.

And so as we drift towards a 2013 that few are anticipating with much pleasure we must ask again where are the politicians who will do justice to the wisdom of the people?

Cameron's nemesis

There is a delicious irony in the fact that the Boy, who has done everything he can to position himself in the political centre, abandoning a raft of traditional Conservative beliefs in the process, should be so undone by his transformation in the public mind into a sleazy Nob, a Top Hat Tory of Dickensian traditionality, by the 50p tax and Cruddas events. Hugging the huskies fades rapidly from the public mind and instead Cameron stands exposed as the little rich boy taking care of his chums and lining his pockets. Meanwhile, traditional Tories are looking to a UKIP manifesto that includes 

• Economy - Low tax; flat rate 31% with NI abolished
• Education - School vouchers, abolish OFSTED, support Grammars
• Defence - Spend an extra 1% of GDP, increase army and naval strength, cut Whitehall
• Nationality - Promote uniculturalism, oppose the apartheid system of 'multiculturalism'
• Immigration - Strict immigration controls, safer borders
• Direct democracy - Support triggers for local and national referenda
• Energy - Expand nuclear, end subsidies for wind
• GM foods - compulsory labelling
• Liberty - Defend personal liberty from the State
• Localism - Greater powers locally, less Whitehall control

Nothing there about Health or Welfare, but I daresay UKIP will distance themselves from State nannying and the alcohol price debacle, a move that the IFS estimate will benefit the drinks industry by £850m a year and the consumer not at all. And as Sam Leith pointed out in yesterday's Standard;

If drinks in a club are a fiver a pop, as Lansley pointed out before his conversion, you don’t stop people “pre-loading” at home by sticking a quid or two on a bottle of off-licence vodka. And statistically it is neither the young nor the poor — demonised though they are and targeted by this measure though they will be — whose drinking is the real problem.

We drink not because it’s cheap but because we like it. We drink because we got started and — look! a wrap of speed! —and what the hell, in for a penny. We drink because the agony and tedium of living in this crappy little island is alleviated, and always has been, by our deep rooted traditions of getting plastered and putting a bar stool through a bus shelter. I’d advise Andrew Lansley, if he hasn’t already, to take it up.

Immaturity of the European Right

Sven Sellanraa writes on Brussels Journal of the emergence of a new Anglophone grouping of bloggers, writers and activists termed the 'Orthos', and speculates whether they are responsible for establishing a new philosophical foundation for the Right. I think he accords them far too much printspace; I think they're no more than the English speaking manifestation of the puerile and intellectually barren Euro Catholic Right, lovers of dressing up in silly made-up costumes, reviving (with profound ignorance) mediaeval organisations, awarders of fake and spurious medals, orders and titles and fascist fantasists of the like of Anders Brevik. The Brussels Journal itself leans this way, of course, so perhaps it's hardly surprising that it devotes space to essays of this kind.

By the start of the nineteenth century conservative ideology, the reaction against that villain Rousseau, had branched into those who followed the English tradition of Burke and the hard-core of followers of de Maistre. The Burkean tradition was largely protestant, liberal and democratic, and absorbed the intellectual changes of the first and second enlightenments with ease. Maistrists rejected the enlightenment in its entirety and sought a return to feudalism; Faguet wrote of de Maistre as "a fierce absolutist, a furious theocrat, an intransigent legitimist, apostle of a monstrous trinity composed of pope, king and hangman, always and everywhere the champion of the hardest, narrowest and most inflexible dogmatism, a dark figure out of the Middle Ages, part learned doctor, part inquisitor, part executioner". Yet this freakish man enjoys a renaissance amongst the European Right and its Anglophone shadow today; As Sellanraa states "Their main target is not postmodern relativism, redistributive left-liberalism, Frankfurt School cultural radicalism, or Marxian socialism; for although they deplore these things, they also regard them as mere symptoms of a deeper problem". Indeed, all of us on the Right deplore those things, but those of us in the Burkean tradition would rather debate the muddle-headed leftists over a decent dinner than burn them at the stake. I may pepper this blog with calls for embezzling bankers to have their nostrils slit and shoplifters (except Worral-Thompson, of course) to have their ears cropped but no-one (I hope) takes it very seriously. The difference is, the ideologists of the Euro Right mean it. 

Hungary will be a fascinating laboratory to see how far the ideas of the Euro Right can go in government, restrained by an EU that is overwhelmingly committed to  "postmodern relativism, redistributive left-liberalism, Frankfurt School cultural radicalism, or Marxian socialism".

Remember, Cameron ditched Sir Patrick

The redoubtable Sir Patrick Cormack would no doubt still be going strong in Parliament now, writing his letters longhand with a fountain pen, had Cameron's metropolitan and Statist party evinced the slightest understanding of what he stood for. Sir Patrick told the Guardian in 2007

I've had masses of letters from people who say they vote for me not because I'm Conservative but because they think I'm an independent-minded local parliamentarian. I've always taken the line it's country-constituency-party, in that order.

As Cameron's tame Parliamentary sheep bleat "Leader. Party. Europe" they're a million miles from Sir Patrick's old-fashioned sense of priority, from his sense of service owed, of public duty, of responsibility. Maybe it is time for a new Conservative Party, one that provides a comfortable home for all the Sir Patricks still extant. 

'Hysterical' Cameron goes native

Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, hit a painful spot when he wrote yesterday

David Cameron was therefore wrong to leap forward and order  "a review of the far right", or of the far anything. The hysteria of the moment may require a knee jerk from those in power, but why the national security council was summoned, or "a review of our security at home" needed, is a mystery. To the victims, the killings were an act of random madness, a terrible accident, a car crash, a catastrophe out of the blue. To seek normality in their abnormality only gives them currency, and probably spurious meaning.

But Cameron's reaction was more than merely hysterical. Together with the government's reneging on its pledge to ditch the DNA records of the innocent, the Bowdlerisation of the Localism Bill to leave practically nothing worth having, the debacle in Libya, his poor judgement on Coulson, the pusillanimous mess of the Public Services White Paper and a clutch of other failures, this was the latest indicator that Cameron has gone native. He's always been a lazy man, only motivated to reaction at the last moment, and appears to have allowed Whitehall to run the roost in exchange for an easy life. And Whitehall has led him into the usual mess of error, cock-up and confusion that uniquely brands the inadequate under-performance of the wartime Central State we have. 


The old Cameron of brave words and loud principles would not allow the civil servants at the MOD to spend £1bn on credit cards and then refuse to disclose what they had spent it on. That Cameron would not spinelessly give way to senior police officers - themselves mired in an endemic and institutional corruption - on matters of civil liberty. But that Cameron has gone, to be replaced by an indolent man smug in the trappings of office and looking to the Mandarins to help him secure a second term. He's lost contact with the zeitgeist, as all but the most capable of PMs do, shielded from the real world by the make-believe stage set erected around him by Whitehall, the Mandarins willingly feeding his delusions. 


No Conservative can look to Cameron for any hope of leadership any longer. He's in hock to Europe, in thrall to Whitehall and in cahoots with a hollow Party HQ utterly alienated from the grass roots of conservatism, inward-looking, metropolitan and exclusive. It's time to scrub through his name and write him off. 

Benedict Brogan's sobering take on Cameron's 'Localism'

There is an irresistible veracity about Benedict Brogan's piece in the Telegraph this morning. Wellington, pitted against Napoleon for the first time at Waterloo, remarked in disappointment 'So he's nothing but a slogger after all'; the same old French tactics of attack by infantry column seen off by the same old British line. Today we have to anticipate saying of Cameron 'So he's nothing but a party hack after all'.

For every high-profile and well publicised open primary, there seem to be five seats reserved for Cameron's patronage alone. The Buggin's Turn system of highly rewarded Quango appointments looks ready to replace Labour placemen with Conservative placemen. Third rate Labour peers in the Lords can look forward to being augmented by third rate Conservative peers.

Whilst it's quite right that Labour apparatchiks such as Suzi Leather are sacked, it's clearly not right that they should be immediately replaced with Conservative apparatchiks - yet the temptation for Cameron to do so appears irresistible.

Perhaps between now and next May Mr Cameron can tell me why I, who will gain nothing from Conservative patronage, should vote to enable him to dispense it to others.

Our next government - it could be you!

This blog has devoted many thousand words to excoriating Labour's dismal record on just about everything they've buggered with their clumsy touch. Our international relations, our economy, our society, our people, our children, our security, our democracy and our well being have all been diminished by Labour's zealous stupidity. But there is one thing they cannot foul - our future. Every single inanity and ineptitude of the past eleven years is reversible, even the EU Constitution.

Our future government will throw out a coruscating rainbow of hope and freedom as the drear iron shackles of the Labour State are struck from our wrists and ankles and this country can once again breathe freely in the clear upland air. Bill will follow Bill, tumbling through the legislative stages, rolling back Labour's intrusive State, returning authority to families and intermediate institutions, returning power and accountability to local government, giving communities control of their policing, offering a life and a future to Labour's five million Welfare slaves.

Our future government will heed the hunger for political reform and recognise that central parties allied to a central State have corroded our democracy to the point of failure; around the nation a thousand gardens will bloom as local associations are rejuvenated and invigorated, as career politicians and blow-in apparatchiks are sent packing, and as ordinary people who make a good job of running their own lives take control of formulating policy and pushing it upwards. Instead of fifty party experts in central office, five thousand policy experts in our shires and villages and in our towns and suburbs will try and test, formulate and pilot, policies and processes that can be adopted across the nation.

Our future government will recognise that the core functions of government, maintaining the defence of the nation and a framework of law, are amongst the very few functions that can only be exercised collectively at national level, and that nearly every other collective function must be devolved to the lowest tier that can effectively exercise it. They will recognise that this is not only the most effective and economically efficient, but also the most democratically healthy way of carrying out collective functions.

Our future government will not allow the unrealised potential of our people to be wasted locked into Welfare slavery, deprived of the dignity of work, alienated from the security of belonging. Ours is one nation, and membership is open to all our citizens - rich and poor, black and white, hindu, moslem or athiest; one nation with shared values and with cultural congruence, a rich and nutritious dish in which pinches of subtle spices from around the world are blended with traditional British beef to create a superlative feast.

We have the chance to reform a Britain we don't want and don't like, a Britain that Labour have fouled and damaged with their well-meaning stupidity. We have the chance to trust ourselves, to reverse Labour's utter distrust of anything but the central State to do good. We have the chance to take up the benison of responsibility, and grow in personal stature as we learn that we, and not the State, can do it all.

Before long, we'll have the chance to make these changes at the ballot box. The nation is hungry for reform, ravenous for change. We want our lives back. We want our security back. We want the State out of our bedrooms, our kitchens and our living rooms. We want all that power returned that Labour has stolen like a sneak-thief from us all. We want our nation back.

Localism is the key to Tory success

Simon Jenkins argues convincingly in the Grauniad today:

What Cameron has still not found is a message around which to build his narrative. He remains a child of national politics and central government. His adoption of "social responsibility" as a watchword was bland. His more recent espousal of localism has substance, yet lacks the punch to appeal to party workers or unattached voters who today crave more control over their lives and environment. He has yet to discover a language in which to attack the growth of intrusive government under Brown. Empowering localities and freeing individuals from state intervention remains the single issue most likely to wed the centre and the right of British politics, but Cameron seems unable to perform the marriage.

C'mon Dave. Make Localism the key to the door to Number Ten.

Core Conservative agenda for election-winning manifesto

With the Party's policy reviews moving into their final stages, here's my quick list of the key manifesto points I would like to see emerging:-

• English Parliament - Cameron should honour his pledge for an English 'Grand Committee' or equivalent, whilst being committed to the preservation of the Union
• EU Constitution referendum - whether the socialists have already signed up or not. There is no treaty in the world that can bind a future Parliament.
• Localism - true and massive devolution of power from Whitehall to local communities, including policing, planning, welfare, tax and social governance - only localism will truly start to mend our broken society
• Welfare Reform - to seize Frank Field's initiative and follow Clinton, whose welfare reforms in the States have proven to be a magnificent improvement both for the nation and for former welfare recipients; a welfare system that builds and supports our nation, not one that degrades and destroys it
• Secure Borders - no amnesty for illegals, and action to close Labour's porous borders that have allowed millions of aliens to impose a massive burden on our social fabric
• Party reform - no State funding as proposed. Members of the three main parties make up only 1.4% of the electorate - it is truly iniquitous that the other 98.6% should be refused the choice on their funding

That's my top six. How many will he score?

The sky is overcast, but the Sun is shining for England

I'd be quite useless as a parliamentary candidate; I simply couldn't stay up late enough. Some of us are owls and some of us are larks. One of the advantages of barely being able to keep your eyes open by 11pm is that the dawn after an election always feels like Christmas. This morning was no different. Despite the mealy-mouthed and grudging analysis from the BBC's political department, I have a song in my heart and a spring in my step this day:

CONSERVATIVES 41%
LABOUR 27%
LIB DEM 26%

Excellent!

Where are they now?

The post-war history of minor parties in UK general elections is a fascinating insight into those issues that outraged, inspired or galvanised small but significant proportions of the British electorate. What is perhaps more fascinating is that by the time the stage came when a minor party could field a significant number of candidates, the issue that drove them had all but disappeared; sublimated into the policy of the main parties, overtaken by social developments, made redundant by world events.

The left has a fractured spectrum that includes:

Communist Party of England (Marxist Leninist) - active in 1974, 6 and 8 candidates in that year
Communist Party of Great Britain - fielded 100 candidates in 1950, but only 10 in 1951 and 6 in 2001
Independent Labour party - 5 candidates in 1945, died in 1970 after fielding just a single candidate
International Marxist Group - active in 1974 but just 3 candidates
Labour Independent Group - 1950 and died shortly thereafter
National Labour Party - 1 candidate in 1959
Red Front - 14 candidates in 1987 saw the back of them
Scottish Militant Labour - 1 candidate in 1992
Scottish Socialist Alliance - 16 candidates in 1997
Scottish Socialist Party - 72 candidates in 2001
Socialist Party - 24 candidates in 1997
Socialist Alliance Party - 98 candidates in 2001
Socialist Labour Party - stood in 1997 and 2001 with 64 and 114 candidates
Socialist Party of Great Britain - active from 1945 to 1974 with 1 or 2 candidates
Workers Party - 8 workers stood in 1997
Workers Revolutionary Party - active from 1974 to 2001 and died; a zenith of 52 candidates stood in 1979.

Needless to say, not a single one of them ever gained a seat. Just a vast desert of empty posturing and lost deposits.

On the far right, the National Front were active from 1970 until 2001; their zenith and nadir like so -

1970 - 10
1974 (Feb) -54
1974 (Oct) - 90
1979 - 303
1983 - 60
1992 - 14
1997 - 6
2001 - 5

The BNP never made up for them. They fielded 57 candidates in 1997 but this was down to 33 by 2001.

And of course the great Referendum Party - 547 candidates standing in 1997 and not a single seat.

Now anyone who reads this blog will know how strongly I feel about political reform, localism and other such issues. But I'm also bright enough to realise that votes for the minor parties are wasted votes. And bright enough to know that within the Conservative tent my voice, however small and faint, is heard. And in the polling booth, my cross may be no bigger than the acorn-sized Oak tree beside it, but together our votes can grow a forest of Oaks enough to float Nelson.

Why cutting Council tax is a doddle for the Conservatives

Apologies to Conservative councillors who already know all of this, but I think it's worth a mini-post for anyone who doesn't. The Times reports today on tax-cutting efforts by Conservative councils, in particular the results achieved by Hammersmith and Fulham. It's not rocket science.

Only 20% of a Council's income is raised through Council Tax; around 80% comes from central government through a fixed grant. This 'gearing' discourages high spending by Councils (though that was not why it was implemented). If a Council wants to raise overall spending by 10%, it will need to raise Council Tax by 50%.

Conversely, to give local citizens a 50% cut in Council Tax means only a 10% cut in total spending.

Around 85% of a Council's costs are staff. Given even low levels of churn in local government, a freeze on recruitment for a year for all except statutory qualification jobs (teachers, social workers) will mean all the non-jobs start to disappear as staff are shuffled about to fill functions the public cares about; race advisors find themselves supervising street sweeping, press officers inspect faulty street lights, obesity outreach workers manage grass-cutting teams in the local parks. All achieved without a single redundancy payment or closing a single community centre. A doddle.

That's why ALL local councils should be run by the Conservatives.

Conservatism - real concern, true compassion.

Hatfield Girl presciently remarks that in the blogosphere it seems to be blogs from the Right that express most viscerally genuine concern for all the people of Britain. It's a good observation. The Left are driven by a mechanistic ideology, and would dearly love to be able to say the same for the Right. But Conservatism isn't about ideology - it's about people and community and nation.

I readily admit to being a One Nation, small State Conservative. With a reliance on my own conscience and judgment that doesn't come from any Little Red Party Manual of Glib Answers. I think many who would be reluctant to call themselves Conservatives think as I do.

Right, light blogging this weekend - down on the boat.

Since Simon Jenkins has effectively broken the embargo anyway

Simon Jenkins' column in the Sunday Times today is well worth reading. Of course, given that it agrees wholly with the viewpoint of this blog, I would say that, wouldn't I? The Civitas Press Release on Danny Kruger's new pamphlet 'On Fraternity' is officially embargoed until a minute past midnight tonight, but given that Mr Jenkins has given it prominence in his column I feel no great guilt at being a few hours premature on here:-

CIVITAS PRESS RELEASE
Embargoed to 00.01 0n 26th March 2007

The battle of ideas is not over but entering a new and more interesting phase, according to Danny Kruger, special adviser to Conservative Party leader David Cameron MP. In the late 20th century, politics was the clash between Liberty on one hand and Equality on the other – a battle over the respective roles of the individual and the state. This remains the basic axis of our politics. But rather than a straightforward clash between Liberty and Equality, politics today is a contest for possession of the principle beyond them both: Fraternity. In his booklet On Fraternity, published by the independent think-tank Civitas, Kruger sketches the philosophical framework of the new battle of ideas, drawing on the writings of Locke, Burke and Hegel. He argues that Liberty, not Equality, is the natural ally of Fraternity, and that individual freedom, not state coercion, best protects the institutions of belonging and promotes the habits of solidarity.

Social desertification

Kruger argues that Britain is suffering ‘social desertification’ – a process that began in the 1980s as hundreds of local institutions, non-commercial and quasi-commercial, were swept away in the flood of reform. Small high-street grocers and bakers disappeared. Family-run pubs were subsumed into giant chains. Whitehall desolated local government, and turned a blind eye to the steady erosion of the family and civil society by the cult of individual freedom. He argues that this trend has grown greatly since the Conservatives left office, and is apparent in the rates of family breakdown and the prevalence of drug addiction and violent, alcohol-fuelled crime; in the neglect of the old and the precocious sexuality of children; in the cult of vicarious narcissism which is ‘reality TV’; in the popular addiction to shopping as a means of self-definition, and in the astronomical scale of private debt which is necessary to maintain the shopping habit (pp.2-3).

Kruger identifies three trends which are contributing to social desertification. First, a widening gap between rich and poor; second, ‘a slow but profound collapse of the relationship between the generations’ as ‘the vast army of the retired and soon-to-retire are in conflict with our increasingly strident and alienated youth, not only for material resources and political power, but also – just as important – for cultural airtime and national respect.’; and third, ‘the presence of large communities with different national origins and, therefore, alternative cultural traditions’ (p.5).

Fraternity not equality

What should our response be to these three trends? The answer of the Left is ‘equality’, our common submission to the central state: in Kruger’s words, ‘a great steel citadel to house everyone together and equally’. But the effect is to break up the social contexts and relationships which give meaning to the individual’s life: family, neighbourhood and nation. Kruger argues instead for fraternity: ‘It is not our common submission to the central state that will help us live together, but our various and overlapping memberships of a far larger and more diverse range of associations… Fraternity is the sphere of belonging. It is the sphere of society itself – the space between the liberal individual and the egalitarian state. In an age of big government and unbridled consumerism, people are searching for the local and particular, for a politics beyond power and money.

This is the field of civil society. Here people congregate for all the business and pleasure of life, performing the transactions of love and profit which make the nation grow. These transactions are, or should be, private, mediated where mediation is necessary through independent institutions, constructed and maintained by free people’ (p.3).

Implications for Conservative policy

Kruger sketches the philosophical framework for Conservative policymaking. He argues for further reform of the public services, to ‘change state institutions into social ones by a sort of reverse alchemy – artificial into natural matter’ (p.8). This will mean a larger role for independent organisations, non-profit as well as commercial, in the delivery of public goods.

He writes:‘Rather than the large, uniform outposts of central government, imagine a community populated by small, variable, local institutions, responding not to central direction but to local demand. Imagine a neighbourhood in which the schools, medical centres and welfare agencies are governed by local people; imagine if each county’s police force were accountable not to the Home Office but to the people of the county itself. Imagine if social action were not the responsibility of what Alexis de Tocqueville, writing about the increasingly centralised European states of his day, called ‘a powerful stranger called the government’, but of individuals, families and communities themselves.’ (p.8)

Marriage should be supported and a European constitution resisted

He calls for a recognition of positive family formation in the tax and benefit system, to help people realise their aspirations for durable relationships through the active promotion of marriage, social (rather than statutory) support for singe parents, and stronger measures to compel paternal responsibility:‘The nuclear family… requires civil recognition and protection to keep it safe in wider society. And that is what marriage is for… statutory recognition of marriage … actually helps keep the state away from families… for not only do intact families tend to rely less on state support, but even those families that do need help suffer less intrusion if the parents are married… Marriage deserves approbation in the fiscal and legal codes, to change incentives, and make it in men’s interests to do the right thing. The opposite of marriage – abandoning mother and child – deserves harsh disapprobation’.(pp.77-79)

He also calls for a revival of the principle of national self-determination in the face of globalisation, arguing that the process of European political integration threatens the peaceful settlement between the nation and the government:‘The European Union … poses a serious threat to liberty. The attempt to impose on Britain, for the first time in our history, a written Constitution – written in Brussels, no less, under the supervision of a Frenchman – was not simply an exercise in duplicity by the elected government. It is an attempt to undo the Revolution Settlement of 1688-89… and revert to the totalitarian concept of statehood urged by Thomas Hobbes.’ (p.86)