YOU'RE AWAY FOR 2 MONTHS
And all sorts of stuff changes.
David Cameron? Back in late September I argued with someone that theoretically the Tories would be making a comeback soon, but that beyond the theory Cameron was just not cutting it. Now he's kicking polling ass.
Mean while the mighty Gordon Brown has descended into a farce and we've gone from weekly crises to daily ones. At the current rate, will he last a year?
Defence and military equipment has become a serious issue in political debate. Mind, the content of said debate may be still a little lacking, but still.
I've also heard that the BBC is becoming right-wing.
Whatever next?! This blog to appear regularly? Don’t bet on it!

NEOLOGISMS
Politics moves fast these days, and so do the terms used to discuss it. For the fastness see my last posting: they were released the next day, so how up-to-date was that? Anyways . . . . Here's two newies I draw your attention to:
Labrador Conservatism? Read the post it's got a few good points in it. I do wonder though whether it might be too optimistic about Cameron?
Transnationalism, is I think easier than transnational progressivism or indeed Richard North’s description, which is even more accurate: the dual international quasi-legislation/comitology mechanism. No, I don’t see that one catching on either, so transnationalism it is.

SPINELESS TORIES?
Some think the Tories are only doing all this green stuff to get good pr, others fear they're serious. Well, the truth is sort of both. As Conservatives put it privately the just-announced air travel taxes are politics, not policy, and aim at marking their opposition against the government, and with the hope it will increase tension between Brown and Milliband.
But it goes further than that. Whilst there is strong scepticism on the science of global warming, the view appears to be that the public has decided that the debate has been concluded decisively. So, the public wants action. So the politicians should act, despite their own scepticism and possibly better judgement.
Is this spineless? I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand politicians should do what voters want them to do. On the other hand I believe that politicians can and sometimes should provide leadership on important issues. This is one of the things that's been going wrong with the Consevatives under DC I think. On many other issues, Iraq and defence generally, on relations with the US, on public spending and many other issues we are just pandering to received wisdom, and abandoning the positions that are in fact right. If we don't stand for the right policies consistently, won't this make actually governing tremendously difficult as we face an uphill battle with public opinion instead of having built up public support consistently?
I for one, am at least quite doubtful.

TORIES DEFENDING LIBERTY AND ORDER
I am very heartened by the news that the Conservatives are standing by our commitment to oppose id cards and longer detention without trial. The Government’s trying to sound off against this naturally:

Almost beyond satire coming from a member of this current Gov. This has been a government that creates ever more criminal offences and gives the police ever greater powers, but the net result is an increase in disorder (and crime). Perhaps it’ll dawn on them one day, that the two might be connected? Not likely with this bunch.
Let’s face it, we only have so many police, and the more tasks they have, the less well they are going to be able to do them. Not exactly rocket science. The police’s duties should be limited as much as possible to make them as effective as possible. Just imagine what the introduction, management and enforcement of this ID card scheme would waste in terms of resources and time of the police and Home Office. And with absolutely no benefit for us citizens to boot. Good on the Tories to stick the boot in. Let’s just hope they stay at it.

NEW TORY LOGO?
There is news now that "Dave" wants to change our logo. This incidentally reminded me of a little detail. Back in May I wrote a column* suggesting that Cameron was fighting the party's path back to power by the book. I observed then that this was not a metaphorical book, but was quite specifically Nicholas Boys Smith's True Blue. How Fair Conservatism can win the next election. So, what does Nick write about the current logo (p.60):
The current torch looks like a cross between a Stalinist poster and a gym advertisement.
Hmmm.

To be clear, Boys Smith may not be a new Tory super guru, but he's of the same generation and policy milieu as Cameron.
So... accordingly here is the proposed new logo as shown at ConservativeHome.com.
Hmmm.

*Will be put up soon. I promise. . .

ANTI-SEMITIC TORY NUT
Stephen Pollard has a good reminder why it took me so many years to join the Conservative Party. What else can one possibly say about it? I would add that he once also so fit to conjure up images of Nazis-likeness againt the European Central Bank. In fact it might have been more appropriate for him then to say that Israel’s actions are akin to introducing the euro without a referendum. Bizarre? You say!

LOCAL ELECTIONS: SOME GOOD MAY FOLLOW . . .
I was glad to see that my team romped home with a win of about 250 seats, so dragging myself down to the church hall half an hour before closing time was worth after all.
To some extent these results have fuelled the Cabinet reshuffle that was being geared up before. I heaved a sigh of relief on hearing that Jack Straw was leaving Foreign; he was pretty weak and quite rubbish in that post. Then the shock of course that Margaret Beckett takes over. That Straw was never going to be taken serious on Iran is one thing, but Beckett?! I expect this will become so ridiculous that it should be possible for the Tories to cut a positive profile on world affairs; essential for any comeback. Another plus is the elevation of EU affairs to a proper Cabinet level post. The bad news is that the first Secretary of State for Europe will be none other than Geoff Hoon. 'nuff said.

BRITAIN GETS SERIOUS?
I do whine quite often about how the British public is so parochial that it doesn’t care about the serious business of foreign affairs, but here is some encouragement from recent polling:

Personally I would rate the economy and law & order higher schools’n’hospitals, but it is good to see some concern about our place in the world. Now if I can only get people agree with me . . . I wonder though whether David Cameron near complete silence on these issues explains part of his weakened popularity?

TIM MONTGOMERIE ON COOL NEW SPECCIE SITE
I quite like the redesigned Spectator website. There’s a links section, never a bad thing, and there’s a news aggregator bit which collects the most substantive news items around. Whilst I have been sceptical about “oficial” blogs in the past, the Speccie’s blog is quite readable. There’s a good entry there by Tim Montgomerie who normally edits ConservativeHome on the still dire prospects for British conservatism, not just in form of the Tory party, but as a general movement. He points to the relatively more successful right in America. I am particularly pleased that he shares my concern, voiced previously, that the British right is very lacking on the think-tank front. What’s needed is unfortunately more money. That’s not quite so easy to fix I fear. But the more voices point to the problem the better.

THE NEXT PRIME MINISTER: DAVID CAMERON?
Well, so the sunshine kid got it. Good for him. Whether or not this will be good for party and country we will have to wait and see. Far too early to say anything definite I feel. But I do wonder whether he will give up his day job though? Well it does use all the buzzwords:

“. . . progressive and forward looking . . . continuously evolving . . . ask the
right questions so we can really listen . . . . “

You bet.

TIME FOR A CONSERVATIVE ANTI-RACISM APPROACH?
Now I know that the headline alone will give many conservatives the creeps, but I think this is something that requires some thought. That liberals and the left have a somewhat formulaic anti-racism agenda is undeniable. That this agenda is fed by a Gramsci-inspired loathing of “normal” society, which sees a culturally hegemonic group using a discourse of oppression against “the Other” is something I don’t need to point out to anyone who doesn’t share this world view. Often the right, whether conservative or not, has just dismissed anti-racism politics as socialism-by-other-means. There is certainly a point to be made, that particularly the BBC has a tendency to only give treatment to racist incidents in which the perpetrators are native, white and nominally Christian. This has certainly been the view voiced by Laban, DumbJohn and others.
But that can’t be it. We can’t just say, because the left has so far monopolized this field of policy, the right shouldn’t touch it. This is even more indefensible given that the leftwing approach to combating racism is not going to work in the long-run. We are after all an increasingly multi-cultural society, so racism that doesn’t exclusively originate from white English men is going to be an increasing issue. Non-whites can be racist too, you know. And there is no reason to think that this would in any way be directed against whites either. The recent rioting between blacks and Asians in Birmingham is a good case in point. Conservatives can’t just pretend the problem doesn’t exist. It’s time we had something serious to say ourselves.
One thing that got me thinking was this post by Clive Davis that made it clear again, if it ever needed to be, that the left is right when it says that bigotry excludes. If you normally scoff at this sort of thing, think about how you feel at attempts to dilute and distablish any vestiges of traditional Britishness. Then accept that someone of minority background will feel the same when he is confronted by bigotry. What is always happening in these instances is that people are being excluded from the group they belong to. And this is where the Left gets it wrong.
So what group are people being excluded from here? The nation. And what’s the Left’s answer? Destroy the nation. Being polemical here, but there it is. Anti-racism should really be all about national unity, natural conservative territory. Conservatives in future should play more on this point. This is after all a big issue and a great potential strenght. It is something this country seems to long for from time to time. And I think it is fair to say that a lot of racism stems in fact from insecurities about national identity, so this policy approach is effectively coherent as well.
Time to flesh this out then.

SOME NOTES ON THE PAST WEEK
Am I the only one who notices an uncanny resemblance between this EU Referendum posting and this comment piece in the Sunday Times? Ok, well the Sunday Times article mentions the must-read arrse, but otherwise it's hard to see any other ground being covered there. Still, I suppose it's good to see these arguments moving from the blogosphere to the "proper" media.
Staying with defence and the Times, Saturday had a strange comment about the Navy's future:

Yes, the Army is more important, but the RAF? There is, to be clear, only a very limited need for an air force at the moment. What our forces need are deployable and close-in support assets, such as would be ideally provided by aircraft carriers equipped with the Joint Strike Fighter. We could hope . . .
Lot of work in those regards to do for the next Conservative prime minister. From the most recent polling it looks like Cameron will be it. Not that he's spent an awful lot of time on saying what his defence policy would be, but a BBC poll says Party members are going to vote him in. Whether it's Davis or Cameron, I am confident that the Conservatives will carry the day in 2009/2010. Having so far only followed this leadership race in print for the past three months I was pretty amazed at the visual difference between the two Davids. Whereas Cameron always seems to look fresh, healthy and energetic, Davis looks clapped-out and finished. I guess that will shift the balance in Cameron's favour too.
On the other hand perhaps the BBC is still continuing its practice of presenting people it doesn't like in a bad ligh. Evidence for this could be seen on Sunday's The Politics Show when they interviewed noted Eurosceptic Daniel Hannan, he had a sinister menacing shadow over the left half of his face, funny that with all the technology available in terms of make-up, lighting and computer retouching something like that should still happen . . . (Not that these methods are restricted to this side of the Big Pond mind you.)
While we're on the issue of that show, am I the only one who thinks that the presenters' insistence of not wearing ties makes the whole programme look a little tacky and akin to some Sunday afternoon football chat show?
Talking of politics on the BBC though, is it possible that the coverage has actually gotten fairer? For example on Newsnight they had an interview with two American experts (one was Dick Morris) about Bush's remaining years in office after such a week of crisis, all of which was possible without the usual anti-war and Bush-bashing claptrap clouding out sober analysis as used to be the case for the often. And again, on the Politics Show Sunday morning, the Tories interviewed were given proper space to speak and even the appropriate respect. Has the BBC seen the journalistic light? Or is it scared what will happen to its future once the Conservatives are back in power?
If you happen to be curious about the further developments on the German election front, I will be bringing an update soon given the current troubles (includes more demonic lighting, what's going on . . . ?!). I see that the Times seems to agree with my call for a second round of elections. Looking back though I will say that going for another election campaign now will be a better option than it would have been in late September. The leftward shift apparent in Schroeder's social democrats should lead to a workable majority for a Christian-democrat/right-liberal coalition that I have argued here occasionally.
So, David Blunkett has gone from office again. Well, I don't really know my way around the ministerial code of conduct, so I can't say anything useful about that. The only thing I noticed again, is that here was a Labour minister leaving office due to some form of corruption. Whilst that is good in itself, it masks the fact that there has been quite a dearth in the past years when it comes to ministers being sacked or resigning due to incompetence. And to be sure, there's been plenty of it: Geoff Hoon anyone . . . ? In the broader scheme of things I would say that incompetent Government is a bigger problem than incompetent Government and I think we should shift the balance of accountability in back in that direction.
As a side-note, it is quite funny really that Blunkett sat on the board of a company specialising in paternity testing isn't it?
To end this post on a gripe though, I was intermittently watching Sky News during the day. Is David Blunkett's resignation the only event worthy of reporting the whole day?

TORY CHOICES: KEN CLARKE OUT - SO FAR, SO GOOD
I have to say it happens only seldomly, but I am genuinly happy to see that Ken Clarke has been thrown out of the first round of voting. Some "big beast". In so many ways he was so wrong as Conservartive leader I am not even going to bother arguing why; it is all too evident to me.
The real choice will boil down to a match between the two Davids. (I don't see Liam Fox going further from here.) Both present good possible starting points for the Tories to regain power, and I think both would be up to the job in different ways. Anyway, that decision needn't be made yet, so for now we should just be happy that Clarke is out.

TALKING ABOUT CONSERVATIVE FORTUNES . . .
There is a strong belief amongst the so-called “modernisers” that the Tories need to shift leftward, because that’s where Britain and its problems are. Despite seeing a need for some changes in the Conservatives, I tend to disagree quite a lot with this approach because it’s an abandonment of things we know to be right purely for the sake of appearing “nice” and passing the “dinner party test”. But there can be another way. I’ll take today’s story on nurses being priced out of their profession in London as a case in point.
Well, basically the problem is that the amount of money needed for living in London is higher than what a nurse’s salary provides. There are two ways of fixing this situation: lower the living costs or raise the salaries.
The Government’s reaction will undoubtedly be its usual mixture of regulating around in the housing market and otherwise closing their eyes and hoping that somehow some more (illegal) migrant labour will fix the problem. They are lowering the costs of living, in this case housing.
Conservatives meanwhile should advocate raising nurses’ salaries. To avoid this becoming unaffordable the pay rises should be restricted to London and might be complemented by pay cuts in less expensive areas. This would be a sound conservative approach by being realistic about market forces, by limiting red tape and by taking on the redundant pseudo-egalitarian doctrine that prevents Labour and LibDems from advocating such flexible salary arrangements.
Such an approach would solve a public service problem and be recognisably Conservative at the same time. Rather than aping the centre-left, the Tories should argue for such policies that will appeal to voters concerned about public services but that avoid the follies of the centre-left. The Tories don’t need to mimic their opponents, but instead need some confidence that their message can be both right and popular.
And above all they do need to argue this continuously.

OPTIONS FOR A CONSERVATIVE FOREIGN POLICY
This may not be the issue that most Conservatives are thinking of at the moment in terms of making themselves electable again, but it deserves the greatest attention. Charles Moore raised the key points in this respect in yesterday’s Telegraph namely that parties/politicians who don’t seem to have an idea of where to put this country in this world are unelectable, and rightly so too.
I’m not going to go into detail of what I think this should look like, partly because I’m still working on it, but I think in terms of the debate’s dynamics there are xx options on foreign policy for the Conservatives to consider:

Isolationist: This would be a rejection of all international engagement, spurning the relationship with the US, European integration, multi-lateral frameworks, alliance agreements and sceptical about maintaining and defending overseas territories. Sean Gabb is the only bigger name I can think of who fits this bill.
Unilateralist / Isolationist-Plus: Carrying with it a whiff of Empire nostalgia, this sort of approach would retain some elements of the pure isolationist view, but would in constrast be committed to maintaining bilateral support deals with smaller countries such as Belize and to defending overseas territories such as the Falklands. Peter Oborne would fit the bill, for example by opposing European integration, the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, while favouring intervention in Zimbabwe.
America-First: This strand of Tory foreign policy thinking is the one that is currently most widespread in the debate. This approach sees our close relationship to the US as the most important foreign policy goal, and tends to subordinate other issues such as European intregration to maintaining this.
Semi-“neocons”: I definitely used to be one of these, right up from my childhood, but I had a bit of a rethink in late 2000/early 2001 (a story for another day). This is the kind of approach that fuses together the promotion of democracy and human rights with military force and confident Western hegemony. This is strongly interventionist. The signatories of the UK Scoop Jackson fan club would certainly meet the criteria.
Transatlantic bridge: In some respects this would be Blairite world politics in blue. This approach would be a rhetorically hardened and overall more cautious version of Tony Blair’s foreign policy of international engagement.
EUrofederast / Anti-American: I remain to be convinced that this approach, of turning the Tories into dedicated Euroderalists and anti-Americans would work either inside the party or with the potential centre-right electorate the Tories need to win back. The British swing voters may be anti-Bush, but they his intentions to stand as a future Tory leader the most relevant.

(There are a number of options I don’t deal with as they are incompatibly with being a Tory; Pacifism would be an example of that.)

2005 ELECTION LOG: WHAT A NIGHT!
Yeah, yeah, I know that it’s all more complicated and there are many difficulties still ahead. But what fun the night was. I stayed up ‘til 5am and we had a great time watching one constituecy after another turning blue. Fantastic stuff! Let’s hope this is only the beginning.

2005 ELECTION LOG
THE CHOICE BEFORE ME: CHOOSING CONSERVATIVE!
I don’t think it’s much of a surprise that I will recommend to everyone to vote Conservative. Free Democrat has a number of good reasons, as does, in his very own way, the Public Interester.
Now, I have regularly expressed my unhappines with the Conservatives on this blog (see the post below), but as I have also made clear I do not see any alternative to them. I am simply going to mention some policies that I find relevant:
-Opposition to the Euro and the European “Constitution”
-A promise for modest increases in defence spending
-Support for regime change in Iraq
-The likelihood that only a Conservative Government will be able to put a check on the ever expanding state bureaucracy
There are many more arguments to be had, but I’m drawing the line here, vote Conservative!

2005 ELECTION LOG
THE CHOICE BEFORE ME: CHOOSING CONSERVATIVE?
So, all the rest don’t quite pass muster so will I be voting Tory? I’m still quite unhappy about a number of issues of Conservative policy, such as a disappointing stance on immigration or the lack of nerve to have something substantial to say on foreign affairs. Local candidate Edward Heckels certainly has nothing to say about it. Foreign affairs doesn’t exist at all in his leaftlet and the rest is just a collection of boring local issues. Ok, that’s what it’s supposed to be about of course but I’m not really big into that. Well, given that the rest of the candidates are not an option, should I make my cross here then?

2005 ELECTION LOG: ELECTION BROADCASTS
In case you haven’t been guided there by any other means yet, let me point you to these party political broadcasts. The really surprising thing I found about them was the slick quality. You really could easily mistake them for real, and they only go slightly over the top with the message too.

ELECTION LOG 2005: WHO I SHOULD (APPARENTLY) BE VOTING FOR
Thanks to Blimpish for the links to online political surveys (I love these, btw, genuinely).
This one was quite creepy in its result I feel, I mean I am actually not that Eurosceptical at all, and on the rest of the issue I have no idea if they have any policies at all, but this is what the computer tells me how I should vote:

Conservative