Winning elections is not enough

Winning elections is not all that matters.

That may sound like a strange statement from someone who is, as most Tories are, salivating at the prospect of winning a general election for the first time since 1992. But victory alone is not enough.

This is not a plea for us to dispense with a "win-at-all-costs strategy" (not that I believe, I hasten to add, that we are saddled with such an unprincipled strategy - I am more than happy with the current direction of the Party's leadership, especially since last October's Party Conference).

It is, however, a plea for us to remember that governing is campaigning by another means. When we take power - be it in local government, at London City Hall or in Whitehall - we need to remember to campaign forcefully for the manifestos on which we were elected and to position ourselves for re-election from day one.

The stunning victory of Boris Johnson has been followed by some truly superb early decisions ranging from the easy (cancelling subscriptions to left-wing rags and dropping The Londoner newspaper) to the understandably gimmicky (banning drinking on tube trains) to the declaratory (ditching Livingstone's outrageous oil deal with Venezuela). Livingstone has whined about Boris' decision but at the moment there is little appetite among voters or the media to listen to what Red Ken says. At the moment.

In a few short weeks or months, however, the media - manipulated by left-wing pressure groups, activists and self-styled community leaders - will begin to aggressively question Boris' decision-making and leadership. Conservatives must not rest on their laurels, comfortable in the knowledge that Boris is in place until May 2012. It is imperative that ordinary activists, party officers and councillors throughout London vocally support Boris and complement what he is doing as Mayor at local level. Just as Tory councils throughout Britain are a beacon as to what a Cameron-led government will be (or at least should be - too many Tory councils are barely conservative at all), so the same applies with knobs on in the case of Boris as Mayor of London.

We need to keep our eyes on the ball. Just because Labour nationally is imploding we must not be foolish enough to think that the liberal-left coalition that has dominated society since the 1960s is going to give up and implode that easily too.

US Conservatives debate Boris' victory

A very interesting debate on the National Review Corner blog between Iain Murray (British-born think-tank luminary and author), Mark Steyn (Canadian-born bestselling author and columnist) and Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large of National Review Online.

Jonah took issue with Iain's report on Boris' victory. Iain's response to Jonah is succint. Mark Steyn was more skeptical still. Iain's ripostes are here and here.

The debate between these three authors - all of whom have books in the bestseller charts this week - shows the similarities and differences between the different strands of conservatism on both sides of the Pond. I strongly encourage my conservative friends to read and follow this debate closely.

Fink Before You Speak

Danny Finkelstein didn't join the Tories until the SDP, for whom he once stood for Parliament, collapsed. He stood for the Tories in 2001 and lost badly in Harrow West. Since then, like his fellow loser in 2001, Michael Portillo, Finkelstein has spent his time telling anyone who'd listen that the Tories need to modernise and denigrating anyone who didn't subscribe completely to the uber-modernising agenda of which he is self-appointed guardian (which, by his own admission, includes the Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne).

In his column yesterday, Finkelstein was at it again, proclaiming "the modernisers were right. Their critics were wrong". On the day that all Tories (except Michael Portillo and Simon Heffer) were united in delight by the results of the local and mayoral elections, a third voice - that of Danny Finkelstein - could be heard seeking to divide Tories between modernisers and non-modernisers. What's the point, Danny?

Last October - after the Tories narrowly avoided losing a general election thanks to Gordon Brown's cowardice - I said that one of the key things to be learned by the Tory leadership was to avoid gratuitous attacks on the Tory Right. I urged Cameron not to pick any more fights with the Right and said that the Right would now stay on side because there is more than enough meat on the bones. Project Cameron had decontaminated the Tory brand and was, by October, a more balanced offering than had been the case, say, a year ago.

After Thursday, Tories should be united. We can smell victory. Downing Street is not a pipe dream. If the prospect of defeat causes people to fight like ferrets in a sack, the prospect of victory has the remarkable effect of causing people to unite in pursuit of a common purpose. Quite why Danny Finkelstein has felt the need to pick yet another pointless fight with the Right is beyond me. Perhaps he could change the record and talk about something else for a change?

Crime. Immigration. Tax. Three Tory weapons.

Francis Maude and his friends would have us believe that voters don't want the Tories to talk about crime, immigration or tax. Self-proclaimed uber-modernisers will tell us that the Tories lost in 1997, 2001 and 2005 because the party talked too much about crime, immigration and tax and not enough about the issues the public really cared about. If they had their way, the Tories would not mention crime, immigration or tax and, instead, the Tories would only focus on public services, climate change and social issues. Quite why they insist on the pendulum swinging so violently towards these issues and away from crime, immigration and tax is beyond me. Even if they were right in asserting that public services, climate change and social issues were too often ignored by the Tories during the past decade, why does it have to be a case of either/or?

Today's newspapers highlight that the issues of crime, immigration and tax are right back at the forefront of politics - not that they were ever anywhere else.

Boris Johnson has made crime his number one priority issue in the Mayoral election in London, while the rise in stabbings and other violent crime has prompted two prominent ministers - Jacqui Smith and Harriet Harman - to make themselves look ridiculous in the eyes of voters and the media. Decades of excuses are finally coming back to haunt Labour. Prisons are overcrowded, the police are hidebound by political correctness and our justice system rarely seems to dispense what ordinary people would call "justice".

The House of Lords report on immigration should be a turning point in the debate. Coupled with even Trevor Phillips recognising that multiculturalism has caused more harm than good, and David Cameron's powerful opposition to the cultural apartheid that multiculturalism fosters, the immigration debate is clearly of central importance for the fabric of society, the efficacy of the public services and the strength or otherwise of our economy. It cannot be ignored.

On taxes, poll after poll now shows that voters are feeling the squeeze and want lower taxes. While income tax may have fallen, the cost of living - couple with stealth tax after stealth tax - means that voters are struggling to make ends meet. The Tories saw a massive swing in the polls in October when the party proclaimed family-friendly tax-cutting policies and the current global financial crisis presents western nations with the chance to cut taxes to stimulate growth (an opportunity grabbed with both hands by the Americans and shunned by Gordon Brown).

Nobody sensibly suggests that the Tories should only discuss crime, immigration and tax. But the Trappist vow not to mention these issues should, if it still exists, be broken. Crime, immigration and tax are three issues on which the Tories can win and on which voters instinctively trust the party. Labour has no answers for any of them. By campaigning positively and proactively on these issues, the Tories can reconnect with swathes of voters who deserted the party in the 1990s, most notably the C2s to whom Norman Tebbit spoke most eloquently, and whom the Tories need to win a general election.

We don't have to ditch all of the policy changes announced since 2005 - indeed the change in mood music now makes it easier to campaign on so-called traditional Tory themes than before. But the party ignores crime, immigration and tax at its peril. People need positive reasons to vote Conservative. Sitting back and waiting for more errors from this hapless government might work - but it's one hell of a risk with a general election still over a year away.

Educashun

The news that the Tories are planning to put education policy at the heart of their agenda should be greeted with joy by Tory activists of all persuasions. I read Andrew Pierce's piece in the Daily Telegraph today through my fingers and with a sense of trepidation at first but I was delighted by what I read.

It seems that the party is finally prepared to take a radical look at how we educate our nation's children - although with the impressive Michael Gove as Shadow Schools Secretary, that should hardly come as a surprise at all. Gove is undoubtedly one of the most talented members of the Shadow Cabinet.

It is particularly appropriate that Gove is making these remarks during the NUT conference. If there is a reason this nation is now falling behind the rest of the developed world in so many ways, much of it is down to the NUT. Not only does the NUT do an appalling job for its members, many of whom do not share the infantile and divisive approach of their union bosses, but it does an appalling job for parents, children and wider society (of which, as we know, there is now such a thing..!). Freeing teachers to teach, governors to govern and pupils to learn - which will also mean a loss of control for the Department for Education under a Tory government - is surely the only way to rescue the next generation.

Maude the Fraud

The Conservatives' capacity for scoring own goals knows no limits. With a double digit lead in the polls, one might have thought that our MPs would be all pulling in the same direction, working tirelessly to propel the party back to power. Not so Francis Maude. 

Yet again, in today's Daily Telegraph, he repeats the falsehood that the last two elections were lost simply because the Tories promised tax cuts and therefore the electoral calculation is simple: promising tax cuts = inevitable electoral defeat. Putting aside the fact that Maude missed out mentioning the tax cuts promised in 1997 (which are also blamed on the party's landslide defeat that year too), the very notion that a promise of tax cuts per se renders the Tories unelectable is the most arrant piece of dishonest nonsense. One wonders how Maude can sit on the Tory benches. He was, after all, elected time after time on a manifesto where tax cuts were promised and I seem to remember they were popular in 1979, 1983, 1987 and 1992. The reason tax cut promises didn't work in 1997, 2001 or 2005 is that, as Lynton Crosby said, you cannot fatten a calf on market day. 

What makes Maude's hamfisted intervention worse is that it comes at the very time that poll after poll shows that voters recognize, albeit perhaps belatedly, that their taxes are too high and that the government is wasting taxpayers' money. So much for modernising and being on the side of the voters. So much for social justice: if you want to do something socially just, cut the taxes of the power by increasing the nil rate band to, say, £10,000. While this would benefit everyone who pays income tax, it would be of particularly benefit to the most poor. A socially just tax cut. 

Maude is showing that he is nothing more than an egotistical hypocrite. If he believed so much in the notion of women or ethnic minorities entering parliament, he should stand aside in Horsham and allow such a candidate to be selected in his stead. If he is repulsed as much as he seems to be by Tory activists, their beliefs and the values of those millions of people who will vote Tory come what may, maybe he should go elsewhere and ply his trade. If he believes we should pay more tax, he should send in a cheque to HM Paymaster General and I be they will cash it!

The success of Project Cameron - and the reason many of us on the so-called free-market right are happier now than we were last summer - is that the offering to voters and party activists is more balanced than it was a year ago. I do not doubt that much of the sometimes painful process of modernisation advocated in Cameron's first year as leader was necessary to decontaminate the Tory brand and to ensure that the voters would actually listen to what the party had to say - rather than simply refusing to listen to what Maude's ally, Theresa May, said was "the nasty party". 

But as I said in a well-received piece on Conservative Home last October, a key lesson for the party after it had narrowly avoided the catastrophe of an early election last autumn was for the leadership to avoid picking needless fights with the party's activists or the free-marketeers in the party. Given that the principal reason the party recovered in the polls during the party conference in October was because of the party's explicit promises to cut stamp duty and inheritance tax, one wonders how Maude could have got it so wrong yet again. In fact, one wonders whether his real goal is to destabilize the current leadership in the hope that he and his allies can try once again to capture the party's leadership so they can take their self-styled modernization programme even further. 

Francis Maude is anything but a modernizer or a radical. He is not showing leadership. He is trying to learn the lessons of defeat in 1997 and to apply them to 2008. That is a foolish as trying to campaign in 1997 on a manifesto that was right in 1986. 

By choosing this moment to pick a fight with the free-marketeers in the party, he has picked the wrong moment. Only the most pig-headed, out-of-touch and conceited fool would now deny that voters want their taxes reduced. It must be nice to know you will receive a fat cat pension, paid for by the taxpayer, when you do finally leave the House of Commons. But for millions of us, the current economic situation is desperate. We are heavily overtaxed, over-regulated and over-governed. 

If Francis Maude honestly cannot see that to be the case, then perhaps the members of Horsham Conservative Association need to persuade him to do so - or they should find a real Tory to stand in his stead at the next election, instead of being represented by someone who sees his sole goal in politics to appease the BBC and The Guardian and who has long ago given up the fight. 

Stop the War - on drivers

Conservative Way Forward has published a report today entitled Stop The War Against Drivers. It has a number of interesting recommendations including the scrapping of speed cameras, tolls on the Dartford Crossing and so-called traffic calming measures. The report has also called for an increase in the national speed limit on motorways to 80mph and more vehicle-activated signs on the approaches to hazards instead of speed cameras.

This is an excellent contribution to the debate. CWF now needs to campaign for these changes with the same zeal shown by the likes of the TaxPayers' Alliance. Simply publishing a report read by a handful of fellow policy wonks is pointless. Now the hard work begins - and hopefully CWF will show that it is ready to campaign with the same level of purpose and effort as the TPA, otherwise this report will simply gather dust as so many other think-tank reports have done over the past few years.

UPDATE: The report has not been uploaded to the CWF website. Come on guys, wake up!

Sorry Danny: I'd call this appeasement

Danny Finkelstein has written a substantial piece for The Times arguing that Republicans need to modernise and adapt to the changed American landscape or else the GOP will be out of power for a generation. Endorsing former Bush insider David Frum's new book, Comeback, Finkelstein argues that what he calls "the old tunes" no longer resonate. He goes on to assert:

"The realisation that the Right has to change is taking hold in conservative parties all over the world."

He argues that the appeal of small-government rhetoric is "waning" and that the former "automatic crowd-pleaser" of tax-cuts "isn't working quite as reliably as it used to" - claiming that "in Britain, Conservative pledges [to lower taxes] have had mixed results".

I cannot accept Danny Finkelstein - or David Frum's - assertions. The Tories' ascent in the polls since October are as a direct result of populist, and ideologically forged, tax cut pledges. If promises to cut taxes failed to fire up the imaginations of voters in 2001 and 2005 that was because those pledges were only made in the run-up to polling day. As Lynton Crosby observed: "you cannot fatten a calf on market day" - you have to make the case for smaller , better government over a period of months or years prior to an election.

I also do not accept that the choice is between selling-out one's principles in the naked pursuit of the middle ground or standing athwart history yelling stop. This is a false dichotomy. Too much of Finkelstein and Frum's premise is predicated on the "woe is me" strain of conservatism - also known as "me too" conservatism or, to give it its 1930s label, "appeasement".

Conservatism is truly empowering. Conservatives are optimistic about our nation's future while bemoaning what this government has done to our once great country. Conservatives believe in the best of the past and the potential of what is yet to come. We believe in smaller government not because we are selfish, but because big government is inherently illiberal and stifles human innovation. We believe in helping those who truly deserve help but in freeing our fellow citizens from the yoke of the state. We believe in true equality before the law, equality of opportunity and of one, united nation. We believe in pragmatic government based on core principles that evolve as society changes. And we do not believe in power at any price.

In the Diana-esque rush to swoon over Barack Hussein Obama as the probable next President of the United States, those who never believed in Reagan-Thatcher conservatism are busy rewriting history. They have done so pretty successfully in Britain, telling us that the Tories lost in 1997, 2001 and 2005 because the Party was supposedly too right-wing. If only, say I..!

From my reading of Finkelstein and Frum's writings it would seem that the revisionists are already preparing the way to rewrite history and to claim that the GOP is too conservative and that that explains its defeat in 2006 and the likely (as they see it) defeat in 2008. Again - if only. While the GOP may have begun its control of Congress after 1994 as an avowedly conservative legislature, gradually over the next 12 years the Republican Majority moved away from conservatism and towards big government, big business politics. The election of President Bush sealed the deal: government expanded at a rate that would have made even LBJ or FDR blush and in a way that would have been unrecognisable to Ronald Reagan.

Don't get me wrong: President Bush has been a visionary wartime leader who had the guts to stand up to the jihadists in a way that we wish President Clinton could have done (if only he hadn't been so distracted in the Oval Office by his interns). But he has not been a conservative President and the attempt to portray any impending defeat as the fault of too much conservatism must be rebutted with vigour and early - before this flawed rewriting history takes hold of the body politic and becomes the received wisdom.

My Two Cents...on the Nanny State

A lorry driver was fined £260 yesterday. His crime? He was caught smoking in the cab of his lorry. It is, of course, now a criminal offence for workers to smoke in business vehicles.

In Vancouver the local authority has given an exemption to local Arabs who want to smoke their pipes because it is culturally insensitive for the smoking ban to be enforced against them. Of course every other smoker remains obliged to obey the law.

There are a whole host of problems that need to be addressed in both Britain and Canada. I would put crime, taxes, health, education and transport way ahead of dealing with people who smoke. In fact if smoking is that bad, why not ban it altogether?

The fact that it was a council dog warden who reported the lorry driver to his local council sums up what a pathetic attitude is increasingly taken by the overpaid bureaucrats who run our lives.

I attended a reception at the Tory Party Conference earlier this week hosted by the excellent pressure group Forest – which stands for the Freedom of the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco. It was packed to the rafters. The law was obeyed but there was a real sense of anger at the growing nanny state in Britain.

If Cameron is looking for an issue to run on, the expansion of the nanny state is surely one of his strongest. Whether he will stand up to the health fascists who want us to stop smoking, drinking, eating and anything they think is bad for us is another thing.

My Two Cents...on the general election campaign

The polls continue to suggest a general election is imminent and that the Tories will be trounced. I don't want to say "I told you so" to the Cameroons who underestimated Gordon Brown prior to his accession to the Prime Ministership so instead here are my suggestions as to how the Tories might at least be able to stave off Armageddon should an election be called in the next few weeks.

First, play to your strengths. David Cameron successfully decontaminated the Tory brand. While some may see him as shallow, others recognise that he is sincere and compassionate. He also exudes optimism. The Conservative campaign should be optimistic and forward-looking: leave sour, mealy-mouthed and mean-spirited politicking to the Labour Party's attack machine and rise above it.

Second, reconnect with Tory-inclined voters. Having gone out of the way to insult and patronise traditional Tory supporters for the past 2 years, Team Cameron needs to find ways to reconnect with the millions of voters who are crying out for a party that speaks for them on issues such as crime, tax, immigration and Europe. Blair managed to take his party's traditionalists with him when he won in 1997 and no one accused him of lurching to the left. Cameron's difficulties are in large measure due to his refuse to his party's traditionalists with him at all - and worse, to pick unnecessary fights with them whenever he can.

Third, and not in any way contradictory to my previous point, continue to appeal beyond traditional Tory-inclined voters. It needn't be a case of "either/or". But in looking for ways to appeal to centrist voters on issues such as prison reform, societal breakdown and even on environmental policy, continue to make the conservative case for smaller government. The Conservative Party surely stands for freedom or it stands for nothing.

Fourth, don't spend all your money at once. In the closing weeks of the 1997 election campaign, John Major blew millions of pounds on an election he was bound to lose. The result was that the Tory Party was cash strapped for years. Save some money for the rebuilding process after the next election.

Finally, target your policies on elderly voters. They are more likely to turn out to vote and they are more likely to support the Conservative Party than any other group of voters. Moreover their treatment by successive governments has been immoral. Pledge higher pensions for those too old to be expected to generate income from elsewhere. Be the party of dignity in old age, honouring the generation that defeated Nazism. Exempt them from council tax or indeed income tax. Win over elderly voters and maybe - just maybe - a shock might be on the cards when the ballots are counted.

My Two Cents...on freedom of expression

Yesterday Gordon Brown called for British jobs for British workers. The Chief of Dorset Police has singled out immigrant motorists for fuelling a rise in road crashes, in particular saying that their attitudes to drink driving are incompatible with driving in England. On the Isle of Wight, foreigners are being given lessons in how to queue. And last week the Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Police warned that migrants with "different standards" were placing a huge strain on resources.

I agree with all of this. Too many Brits are economically unproductive. Immigrants need to learn that drink driving, queue-barging and failing to integrate into the norms of British society are not acceptable. But had any of this been advanced by a conservative politician, just imagine the outcry.

We live in a thoroughly unpleasant country where only certain people have the right to true freedom of expression. Some of us are only allowed to comment on certain issues such as immigration and integration if the debate is opened up by the politically correct and sanctimonious left-liberal elite that has shaped our culture over the past decades.

At a time when the Burmese are standing up to tyranny and freedom is being spread around the Middle East, that same freedom is being restricted in Britain. A compliant or ignorant British people stand by as ancient freedoms guaranteed and zealously protected for generations are cast aside with barely a murmur in opposition.

The most important right in a free society - the right that is enshrined in America by the first amendment - is the right to freedom of expression. Provided violence and lawlessness are not incited, everyone should have the right to free speech. And yet in modern Britain not only does society frown on the expression of certain views by certain people but the might of the state can be wielded to prevent free expression too.

Conservatism is about freedom. The Labour Party stands for its antithesis. It is probably too late for this coming general election for the Tories to develop a coherent set of policies based on protecting and advancing freedom. But it is what the Tories should return to standing for. It is the principle that unites Churchill, Macmillan, Heath & Thatcher. And freedom is what the British people so desperately deserve to have returned to them - including freedom of expression.

Reflections on calls for a leadership election

The Daily Telegraph reports that up to half-a-dozen Tory MPs have written to Sir Michael Spicer asking for a leadership election. The magic number triggering a ballot is 29. Is the situation as straightforward as everyone is saying today or are there other interpretations?

1. Option One: there is indeed a group of MPs who genuinely think that having a ballot mid-way through a parliament and, they hope, a sixth leader in 10 years will help the Tories win the next election. Whether these MPs are Euroextremists like Ken Clarke, social conservatives in the Cornerstone Group or smaller government Thatcherites, this strikes me as lunacy. While I share the concerns of many that Cameron is policy-lite and that he has spent too much time courting the BBC and The Guardian at the expense of invigorating and inspiring traditional Tory supporters, even I accept that he has decontaminated the Tory brand and at least made it acceptable for people to say they are Tories again.

2. Option Two: the MPs mooting the possibility of a challenge are actually Cameron supporters, seeking to flush out opposition in a John Major-style "back me or sack me" contest. This could be a deliberate attempt to provoke a Clause 4 moment. The Cameroons know full well that Cameron would win at least 70-80% of the vote of MPs and his mandate would be renewed. Indeed, his "change to win" message would be bolstered. This may therefore be a form of double-bluff designed to secure protestations of loyalty from all and sundry. This may be rather too Machiavellian for some to stomach but politics is politics.

3. Option Three: there is no letter-writing process underway at all. Sir Michael Spicer could confirm this very easily by saying so publicly. The fact that he hasn't, however, suggests at least someone has written to him. Maybe if he named the miscreants that might help see off the challenge?

I share much of the editorial analysis on ConservativeHome. If Cameron can finally begin to embrace the concerns and values of those who feel choked by taxes, brow-beaten by bureaucrats, hamstrung by regulations, frustrated by political correctness and cowed by crime then the next election is there for the taking.

This would not require what The Guardian will characterise as "a lurch to the right". Cameron could keep talking about a more imaginative approach to prison reform, climate change, a return to civic values and the other "soft" issues he has made his own in the past 2 years. But if he continues with his current approach - to the detriment of coupling it with a focus on the concerns of those who are disenchanted - he cannot be surprised if the polls, and the mood of Tory MPs, remain gloomy.

My Two Cents...on environmentalism

The environmental debate in Britain is already beset by exaggerated claim and counterclaim. Those who dare to question whether climate change is either happening or is a man-made phenomenon are decried as climate change deniers or, in the words of RFK Junior in Washington this weekend, “traitors”. That said I detect a changing shift in attitudes.

Because environmental wackiness has moved from Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and assorted dope-smoking hippies into the political mainstream – with all the major political parties endorsing tax-imposing, freedom-limiting measures under the guise of combating climate change – I think that people are becoming more and more suspicious of the claims of politicians and left-wing activists. If experts, scientists, politicians, campaigners and big business all agree on something, that doesn’t necessarily mean that it is right. And of course not everyone DOES agree with the analysis that climate change is either happening or is man-made.

After a breathless report on the Today programme this morning in which a climatologist proclaimed that the sun was not responsible for global warming, today’s Guardian reports on moves to cut methane emissions by changing cows’ diets. In an effort to stop burping cows and sheep who contribute a quarter of man-made methane emissions worldwide, taxpayer funded researchers are looking into what types of grass and other foodstuffs are less gas-inducing on farmyard belchers.

I expect that most people in Britain care about the environment they live in. This is, after all, a very beautiful country. People want to conserve the green belt – well, except the Prime Minister who wants to build all over it. People also want to minimize their use of unnecessary packaging and to stop litter louts. But I don’t believe that most of us want to give up our cars, traveling overseas or turning on the heating when it gets cold as some luddites want.

The real tragedy is that the party that has stood for freedom against state control, taxes and regulations so doggedly for generations has become hoodwinked into accepting so many economically illiterate and morally dubious proposals from left-wing environmentalist campaigners. What price some common sense?