Free to get on with it

June 3, 2010 — simonashall

Last laugh - The commission spent money countering his activities but is now being cut to size

When the Audit Commission was first envisaged and created in 1982, it fulfilled an important role in centralising and standardising the audit procedures of local and national government bodies. It is, in effect, the public spending watchdog – and as such it carries a great amount of goodwill among the public. It was the Audit Commission that uncovered the fact that between 1987 and 1989 council houses in Westminster were being sold at knock-down prices to potential Tory voters and forced Dame Shirley Porter to cough up £12million in payback to the council.

But since these days of simple auditing, the commission has been given far more wide-ranging powers to assess local authorities based on politically correct criteria that are part of the problem rather than the solution and meaningless targets that often detract from more fruitful work. The commission also requires councils to create its own silly targets – when I was at Surrey Heath Borough Council, I was forced to come up with a contrived way of measuring our media coverage for positive and negative balance in an attempt to find something to assess ourselves against. It wasn’t totally useless or harmful – but it was pretty irrelevant to most people in Surrey Heath and took time and effort away from other things.

Thankfully, Eric Pickles has announced a couple of good things about the Audit Commission in recent days – firstly that the new head of the agency won’t receive £240,000 a year. As far as I’m concerned, no-one in government should earn more than £150,000 – not because I’m a raving socialist but because very few public sector jobs are worth more than that (especially when taking into account other perks) and also because over-egged public sector salaries contribute to wage inflation in the private and public sectors, which ultimately costs the taxpayer money.

Secondly, the new Secretary of State has said that the over-engineered and painstaking Comprehensive Area Assessments will be scrapped forthwith. We don’t know what, if anything, will replace them but the hope has to be that the answer to that question will be “not much”. The Audit Commission exists to ensure that the Shirley Porters of this world aren’t allowed to get away with defrauding the taxpayer and that is a role that it should continue in earnest. But aside from that, local authorities should be entirely free to get on with running their communities in the way that they want to. If the public don’t like how they are doing it or want it done a different way, they have their say at the ballot box – that’s how democracy should work.

Under Labour it was the government, not the people, who dictated to councils how their areas should be run. No more – and that is a reason to be considerably happier today than this time last year.

PS I also ought to mention that Mr Pickles blocked the plans for Norwich’s unitary status within days of appointment. That’s fine – local people didn’t want it - but he does have to address the question of how the mish-mash of district, unitary, metropolitan and county councils in England and Wales can somehow be standardised. It simply doesn’t make sense to have so many different types of authorities.

Posted in Community, politics. Tags: , , . No Comments »

Reality a-tax

May 27, 2010 — simonashall

The Daily Mail is leading the charge for the right wing of the Conservative Party and David Davis suggesting that people with second homes, shares, jewellery and other assets should not face any increase in Capital Gains Tax from 18% to 40% in order to help people on lower incomes (below £10,000) stay out of income tax altogether. There is plenty of talk of “betrayal” and “revolt” among the 1922 hopefuls and a general feeling that a Conservative government doesn’t do this sort of thing.

Firstly, let’s remember that the reason we are in government at all is because we’ve been able to come to an agreement with the Lib Dems. Sure, a Conservative government with a outright majority would probably have steered clear of CGT altogether but we were 18 seats short of where we wanted to be and the result is compromise rather than full implementation of Conservative principles. It’s a little uncomfortable in places but the PM has said that stable government was necessary in this time of national strife and compromise is part of that.

Furthermore, David Davis says that he wants to protect the ”hard-working, responsible, self-reliant middle and working classes”. I’m not sure how many “ordinary” people he feels deal in more than £10,000 of capital gains each year but I suspect the answer is “not many”. You also won’t find in any of the major papers the fact that the current 18% rate was only set by Labour in 1998 and previously had been much higher under the Conservative government during the 80s and 90s.

The fact is that people who have these kinds of assets to make money on need to pay their fair share in helping reduce the deficit – that may be fair to those whose trading helped bring the problems about and unfair on prudent savers. That’s unfortunate, it’s not entirely comfortable and it’s certainly not Conservative; but it’s necessary and hopefully temporary.

What is important is that those who are being helped by this measure by being freed of tax burdens and encouraged to work at the lower end of the pay scale are given a very firm steer in that direction. There is no justice in asking some people to pay for a £10,000 income tax threshold if those benefitting from it are then not working or contributing to society. Just as we need the wealthiest to help the country out of trouble, so we need the bottom-up economy to get working too.

Having taken a centrist view of the CGT issue then, I’m happy to take a more centre-right view on Iain Duncan Smith’s promise to mend our benefits system, which is a national joke. Of course I believe that the poorest in society should have the help they need. But I also firmly believe that thousands and thousands of people routinely abuse our over-complex and under-thought benefits system for their own gain – at the expense of the entire nation and other taxpayers.

So I hope that left-leaning thinkers will see a connection here – between controlling the right-leaning tax tendencies of the Conservative Party but also changing the liberal attitudes to the Welfare State that have cost Britain money and not a little self-respect during the past 20 years.

Posted in Conservatives, Social Justice, Tax. Tags: , , , , , , , , . No Comments »

Tip of the iceberg

May 26, 2010 — simonashall

One suspects that if Nick Clegg had decided after May 6 to take up Campbell and Mandelson’s grubby little offer and a Lib/Lab coalition was in power, the BBC would have reported David Laws – rather than Alistair Darling – delivering £6.2bn cuts. As it happens, no such favours are granted to the Conservatives by a corporation whose very skin has been saved by the votes that denied the PM a majority.

The savings identified by the Treasury include some really good things, such as the austerity measures put in place to stop ministers using cars all the time, the abolition of pointless quangos and renegotiating government contracts. The rest of the news emerging from the details is less welcome but regrettably necessary, not least because it goes further than the public sector. The £690m cut from the DfT means contracts put on hold, which has a knock-on effect in the private sector – the A23 scheme and the third phase of the Birmingham Box Managed Motorways project are both, for example, placed on hold and this means uncertainty for the consultants and contractors employed to deliver them.

So too Communities and Local Government, which loses £830m and will have less to spend on meeting its core objectives but also on schemes and projects that are delivered and help fuel a large – and growing – portion of the private sector. Companies like Atkins, Capita, Serco, Halcrow and Balfour Beatty are major employers and cutbacks in local government spending – further underlined by the £1.165bn in savings being expected of local authorities – will mean tougher times ahead for these businesses. The best, of course, will survive – but those who don’t can expect to shed jobs in addition to those that will be shed by the public sector.

And with an emergency budget in June and a Comprehensive Spending Review in October, the bad news is that £6.2bn is only the tip of the iceberg. The total deficit is £157bn and quite how this will be eradicated is anyone’s guess - even ten times what the government announced on Monday is only a third of what is needed. There is a great deal of pain to come and taking the decisions won’t be easy. Although there is a chink of good news in terms of a rise in GDP, the OECD is putting yet more pressure on George Osborne to raise interest rates and avoid cutting too quickly.

It all goes to demonstrate two things: firstly, that there has been – and will continue to be for a while – no real recovery, merely a plot by a Labour-staffed treasury to pump vast amounts of taxpayers’ existing and new money into the economy to delay the onset of recession and the necessity to make fiscal and spending adjustments until after the election. This may turn out to be more damaging than the recession itself.

Secondly, if you vote in a Labour government, sooner or later it runs out of money from which the only recovery is a Conservative government (or in this case coalition) to administer social and economic shock treatment. The only way Labour gets into power is when it promises to spend money - that is the central ethos of democratic socialism. In good times, it will always look more attractive than the more cautious Conservative within-means alternative. But there’s a catch; and we are about to find out exactly what that entails.

Posted in Economy, Labour, politics. Tags: , , , , , , . No Comments »

Coalition would be grand

May 19, 2010 — simonashall

On May 6, the local elections produced another indecisive result in Woking. There were gains and losses on both sides but despite no Labour representation to consider any more, the political scene in the borough continues to be ambigious. Even in 2007, the first year of overall control since 1998, the result was only 19-17, which when you take account of absences and mayoralty is not really a majority at all.

With the decision of Peter Ankers to go it alone, the numbers have stood at 18-17-1 and so it remains after the local elections. Just 70 more votes across Knaphill and Horsell West could have seen them 20-15-1 and shown a decisive shift – but that is not what the electorate wanted and the council has to listen to that.

It is my personal view therefore that with a Conservative mayor in 2010/11 and the numbers effectively at 17-17-1, the Conservative and Liberal Democrat groups should consider what the parties have done nationally and think about forming a Grand Coalition. 

This could entail three members each on a six-strong executive committee with a Conservative chairman and Lib Dem vice-chairman. Such an arrangement would also have the welcome side-effect – although it is not designed for that purpose – of removing the effective casting vote of the council from one independent councillor. No doubt Peter Ankers would use this reasonably – but how much happier that the total considered view of the council should be involved in the first place rather than just via one person’s judgement?

In normal circumstances, it would be up to the party with the mandate to take responsibility and implement its manifesto. But at present, neither party really has a proper mandate with the numbers that exist and the maths of the mayoralty suggest that unless there is broad agreement about the year ahead, a rather unseemly mess could result. That’s not good for the council, nor more to the point for Woking.

No doubt an agreement could be reached whereby some of the key problems can be tackled together and elements of both parties’ manifestos placed into the work programme. The PM clearly thought that it was silly (although I think “uninspiring” was the word he used) to have a minority administration trying to take decisions in the current climate. It appears that Nick Clegg agreed.

I don’t see how that situation is different in Woking given the close make-up of the council. Whether either side would agree to it is of course a completely different matter.

Posted in Woking Borough Council, politics. Tags: , , , , . 2 Comments »

Centre-Righter’s block

May 14, 2010 — simonashall

So now Gordon and his merry men are out of Downing Street and DC has become PM, what is there left to write about? It wouldn’t be so bad if I could switch attention onto the Lib Dems but they are now our partners so I can’t write anything about them either (plus they are all such nice people, of course).

Thankfully, Woking Borough Council fires up in six days with the first Muslim mayor of Woking, Cllr Mohammed Iqbal, being sworn in. I’ve known Cllr Iqbal for a number of years and he cares about his community. He has worked very hard to bring about positive changes in Maybury and Sheerwater and is a very approachable man with a great sense of humour and humility.

He will make a superb mayor – and it is about time that the Muslim community in our town should be represented among the roll of those who’ve served this town as council Chairman and later Mayor. I’m particularly proud that they should come from the ranks of the Conservative Party, though I know the other parties will share our enthusiasm for this development.

In addition, we wait to see what form the council will take this year. Although the election results produced no net change with 18 Con, 17 LD and one independent, our tenancy of the mayoralty this year means that the numbers are effectively 17-all with Peter Ankers having the casting vote if parties follow the whip. I have my doubts as to how healthy this situation is but perhaps more on this another time.

While I would obviously have preferred to have been sitting in the chamber around the benches on May 20, I was sworn in as a magistrate on Monday afternoon by the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey Sarah Goad, High Sheriff Robert Douglas and Mr Justice Critchlow at Guildford Crown Court in a short but memorable ceremony. I was particularly delighted that my parents were able to be there and I could see Mum welling up as I read the oath!

In all honesty, I have several months of quite intensive training and sitting ahead of me and it would have been ambitious to have combined it with the duties of a councillor. My father thought I was completely mad to have even considered it – perhaps he was right and some things happen for a reason.

That said, I have got a meeting of the Horsell and Woodham Conservatives this evening where I have to explain away our failure to win (joke, they are all extremely supportive) and we have got plenty to do in Horsell to make sure that people’s lives are improved and that they are represented well in council. As I said a week ago, councillor or not, the community is always there to be served.

Posted in Community, Woking Borough Council, news. Tags: , , , , , , , . No Comments »

At long last

May 11, 2010 — simonashall

What we've all waited 13 years to see

The day after my 19th birthday, Tony Blair swept into Number 10 with a silly grin on his face and the nation hypnotised by the promise of hope, panache and plenty. I didn’t think he’d deliver any of these as no Labour PM had ever done so before and six months later, I joined the Conservative Party. I made it my aim as a student activist to try and get rid of Labour but I found a Tory Party unwilling to learn lessons or change and so followed a different path - but the events of May 1, 1997 politicised me in a moment that everyone active in politics experiences.

Today, Labour has finally gone. But unlike 1997, there is no sense of positivity and little hope for short-term prosperity. In 13 years of borrowing from the future, Labour has brought the country to its knees financially and failed to address any of the social issues that people believed it would. Yes, there have been some difficult circumstances not all of its own making but Labour has ruled recklessly – and, worse, in its own self-interest. It has expanded the public sector to bring more people into state pay, opened our borders to bring in voters likely to boost its standing and declined to address benefits dependancy and a lack of social mobility to keep whole sections of society locked into a sense of victimhood.

What has happened since 1997 has been an undermining of our nation far exceeding anything that happened under Margaret Thatcher. Almost every aspect of our daily lives has been made worse by Labour – and that is quite an achievement. From our economy to our overseas interests – our health service to education, Labour has failed to stem decline in all of these areas through a woeful addiction to political dogma and a determination that the country should serve it rather than the other way round.

The Conservative Party needs to accept its share of the blame for the 1997-2005 years. It was a shambles of an opposition during that time, fighting among itself and moving decisively to the right in the wake of John Major’s defeat. William Hague is a fine politician but if Ken Clarke had been appointed leader in 1997, it is quite possible that Labour’s spree of destruction would have ceased in 2005. DC is the person who has turned that situation around – but it is only the beginning.

I long imagined that the sight of DC entering Number 10 would fill me with joy but it gives me no pleasure that a Conservative Prime Minister should be in power once more faced with the bleakest, leanest and most difficult times since the Second World War. But at least at last, at long last, the shadow that the wretched and devisive New Labour project cast over this nation of ours has been lifted and the process of finding our place in the world once more can begin.

But I envy neither the new PM nor our coalition colleagues the Liberal Democrats for the work that has to be done.

Posted in Conservatives, David Cameron, Roll on 2010. Tags: , , , , , . No Comments »

Morning after the long night before

May 9, 2010 — simonashall

The need for electoral reform has indeed been highlighted by the result of the general election. Despite the electoral map turning its bluest since the 1992 election, Labour’s many small inner-city seats, the over-representation of Scotland and in-built majority of 90 have helped Gordon Brown stay in Downing Street three days longer than he should have done.

There is a clear case, not for a proportion system that will deliver permanent hung parliaments and rig the voting system in favour of the Liberal Democrats, but for a refining of the boundaries to ensure that every constituency is the same size and that every vote is worth the same. The Lib Dems suffer from this system only because their vote is evenly spread as they try to be all things to all people – it is not intrinsically more difficult for them to win consistuencies than anyone else, as we saw in Eastbourne and Wells.

It is noticeable that many of DC’s inner circle, who were in many cases picked in seats where they had no connections, fared less well than average. It’s interesting because the Conservative Party is often criticised for lacking diverse MPs. But in this case, black, gay and female candidates have been rejected not by the party, but by the electorate. It’s a shame - but hardly the party’s fault.

I believe that Nick Clegg and DC will do a deal. In a sense, the Lib Dems have little choice. If they prop Brown up, they’ll sink back to the 15% support they enjoyed under Ming. If they refuse a pact with the Conservatives, they can hardly claim to be hard done by in the voting system when they’ve rejected a chance at power. Many Conservative activists will feel a ache in the pit of their stomach at the thought of going into coalition with the Lib Dems, but I don’t. As someone on the left of the party I share many of their social aims and the fact that we spend three months each year tearing strips of each other is simply election politics, nothing else.

During times of crisis, you have to work for the betterment of the nation. I don’t believe a Con-Lib coalition will survive any more than 18 months, but neither party has the resources nor the will for another election in 2010 and we need to work to steady the market and ensure that the financial meltdown that is now potentially on the cards is avoided. The markets want the debt tackled now and as the winners of the election, the Conservative prerogative should be to deliver debt reduction. The Lib Dem influence, as I see it, is to ensure that social issues don’t get left behind in this process and keep our party focussed on economic stability, education and social improvement.

The two most burning issues of difference – electoral reform and Europe – don’t need to have a part to play during this time. I utterly oppose membership of the EU – although that didn’t stop me losing in Horsell West by a fifth of the votes that UKIPpers took off me. But even I wouldn’t argue that the time for a referendum on this is now – it can wait until we have people back in work and the country is back on its feet.

Similarly, if Nick Clegg and his party think that the most pressing issue of the day is the case for PR, he’s sorely mistaken. Sure, the British public will say they want reform in the light of this shambles of an election but when it’s explained to them that PR always delivers a shambles and that it would effectively take from them the option of a Labour or Conservative government governing alone, they soon change their mind – and I know that because I explained it countless times on the doorstep. So this too can wait for another time.

The major problem it presents for the Conservative Party is delivery – will people understand the compromises being made if they are reflected in our ability to do what we said we would do? And if there is another election in October 2011, will the fluidity of our politics have continued and where will it have taken us? Labour’s most dreadful legacy, unfortunately, is leading us to a point where views about the best forward were so utterly polarised.

Uncertain times are these - and the last thing that our damaged nation needs.

Posted in Economy, elections, politics. Tags: , , , , , , . 5 Comments »

Change that works for them

April 28, 2010 — simonashall

During the last few days, the Lib Dems have been playing a clever PR game by trying to link electoral reform – by which they mean proportional representation’s introduction as our voting system – with “new”, post-expenses, politics.

I’m not altogether against electoral reform. I think that the boundaries currently used for our first-past-the-post system are unfair and give Labour a huge advantage by handing them a built-in majority of about 90 seats, according to Electoral Calculus. I want to see those boundaries re-drawn and the number of seats re-calculated to make for a fairer local representative system – and that includes fairer to the Lib Dems as well.

You routinely hear commentators in the press and the BBC say that the FPTP system discriminates against the third party, as if they had done some research on it and drawn a scientific conclusion. That’s rubbish. All that conclusion is based upon is the realities and record of the system – there is no reason why the Liberal Democrats should have any more difficulty in winning constituencies than anyone else.

The reason it is biased against them is quite simple – they pretend to be a centre-right alternative to the Conservatives in London and the South and a hard-left alternative to old Labour in the north and Scotland. Their manifesto for 2010 cleverly leaves either possibility open. But it does mean that such a dual-personality party cannot hold a “core” vote sufficient for it to win constituencies in sufficient numbers to hold power in FPTP. If the Lib Dems decided what they wanted to be – rather than just pitching for whatever they think they can get away with – their vote in some areas would harden and in others soften. It’s their choice to be at a disadvantage in the system.

But they’re quite happy to overlook that. What they want to do is hold the country to ransom by demanding a referendum on proportional representation in return for offering stability in the event of no party receiving a majority. PR, of course, would not only allow them to hold the balance of power, it would help put pay to their biggest weakness – the idea that a vote for the Lib Dems is a “wasted vote”. It would also allow them to pretend to be “savage cutters” in the south and “tax the richers” in the north while scooping the maximum value from each deluded voter.

It’s not a bad strategy for them – but it should be ringing alarm bells with every single previous Conservative supporter who’s thinking of giving Clegg a chance because he came over well on telly. If you give him the chance he wants, he’ll go into coalition with Brown (or more likely Miliband). They’ll embark on a series of tax hikes and spending cuts not witnessed before in the post-war era. That’s not necessarily to their discredit because any government will have to do the same.

But if you decide after four years that you don’t like them, if Clegg turns out to be not quite what you thought (on Europe, immigration and law and order) and you think in 2014/5 that you’re going to give the Conservatives a chance after all – well, you won’t be able to. Because Lib/Lab will have changed the way things are done and neither the Conservative Party nor Labour would ever be able to govern on their own again. And guess who the beneficiaries of this gerrymandering will be? That’s right, the Lib Dems.

They may call themselves Liberal Democrats, but that doesn’t seem very liberal or democratic to me.

Posted in elections, lib dems. Tags: , , , , , , . 6 Comments »

Lesson from JK Rowling

April 14, 2010 — simonashall

JK Rowling with a book containing more truth than the Labour manifesto

I’m not a fan of JK Rowling – I think her books are terrible and the fact she gives money to the Labour Party is borne of an similar level of fantasy. Today she writes in The Times about DC and the party’s manifesto for single mothers and although the Times subs have done their best with it, it’s still a couple of commas short of iambic pentameter.

But depressingly, I find myself agreeing with some of what she says and I think she’s done the party a favour by spelling it out, albeit after the manifesto is published. I’ve written on it before and I’ll say it again – the Conservative Party policy to reward married couples with a (very token) tax break is a step backwards in bringing its attitudes in line with a modern Britain that isn’t interested in recapturing 1950s social norms.

Firstly, the fact is that society will no longer be told by government what it should find acceptable and unacceptable – the role of government in this area is now defunct and no amount of bleating by the right of the party will bring it back. Yes, the family unit is still the single most important building block of society but the family unit can no longer be described as one man married to one woman and their resulting offspring. A government that tries to impose this doctrine through the tax system will not succeed and the party it is formed from will ultimately lose credibility.

Secondly, JK Rowling points out that “it’s not the money, it’s the message” is a deeply misguided view of what single parents go through. For those who have decent independent incomes and families to fall back on when they part, it may just be about the message – although not a very welcome one, I should imagine. But for others who don’t have partners at any time in their parenthood or families able to support them financially following separation, it is very much about the money. And if anything, we should be spending the money otherwise used in this tax break supporting those who need it ie the single-parent families, not married couples.

I believe that DC takes social responsibility and justice seriously but this policy doesn’t back that up. Having said that, much else in the manifesto does. I joined the Conservative Party because I want to see a society where people can get opportunity, work and make a prosperous future for themselves and their families. But if they manage that, they don’t need state subsidy as well. In an ideal world, no-one would.

But this isn’t an ideal world and until it becomes so, that help from the state which exists needs to be focussed on those who need it; married, divorced, single or otherwise.

Posted in Conservatives, Social Justice, Tax. Tags: , , , , , , . No Comments »

From state action to social action

April 13, 2010 — simonashall

Labour’s manifesto yesterday gave a pretty clear message – we are tired and incompetent but we’ve got a few bottom-of-the-barrel ideas left to promise you that we haven’t got around to during our 13 years in government; and more to the point, aren’t you worried about what the Tories will do?

I don’t feel it’s worthy of serious analysis - from the 1930s Soviet-era cover design to the misguided drafting in of @BevaniteEllie to introduce the whole shower, the journalists in the room gave it a cool response. After three terms, a government should either be ready to head off in a clear new direction building on past successes or it should be booted out. In all honesty, that’s what should have happened in 1992 to us.

So today was the Conservatives’ chance to deliver the killer formula for government. My only only real bone of contention with the manifesto is that succinct it ain’t – at 131 pages, it’s going to test the staying power of all but the most political of animals. What Labour did better than us yesterday was to make clear pledges – I still search in vain for the simplified version for use on the doorstep. I refute the idea that there is anything patronising about that and I don’t understand why we’ve dressed the content – which I think is great – up in such a florid and frankly inaccessible way.

Once you get past the presentational difficulties, I’m really excited about what we are promising to do. I like the idea that “Britain needs a new economic model” and that “we need to boost enterprise and creat a low-carbon, hi-tech economy” – we have to adapt to global economic changes and accept the world is never going to be how it was before the recession. The Benchmarks for Britain are a brilliant idea and spell out very strongly our economic priorities, cutting the deficit quicker through a freeze on public sector pay and an end to tax credits for those who don’t need them. The advantage of the detail is that no-one can say we haven’t spelt out our economic policies – not, that is, if they’ve read the manifesto.

I love the idea of the UK being the “number one hi-tech exporter in Europe” and I believe that we can do it. This passage, more than almost anything else, convinces me that I’m fighting for a party concerned about 20 years into the future and not just the election in 2014/5. It won’t be picked up in the media, but I think it is worthy of great credit and re-modelling the economy could sow the seeds for prosperity in the next 20 years.

On employment, “a hand up, not a band out” is the middle ground and where we need to be and improving the skills of the workforce is key. There’s pledges for small businesses and a section on immigration that I know will please the right of the party but that I can live with as well; based, as it is, on getting people who already live here into employment and reducing the state welfare bill.

We are pledging to ensure that the whole of the UK shares in the proceeds of economic prosperity and that is a really important message. Under previous Conservative governments, the south east and London have disproportionally benefitted and while there will inevitably be some inequally favouring the capital in particular, the gap has been too large. “Better and more reliable infrastructure” will help this.

The Big Society is the cornerstone of the social agenda, with funding for those groups “that strengthen communities in deprived areas”  and using the state to “remake” society. “Our ambition is for every adult in the country to be an active member of a neighbourhood group”, says the manifesto – it’s big stuff, strong stuff and “new ways to increase philanthropy” is another thing that really speaks to me. When I joined the Conservative Party in 1997, we were all about Europe, saving the pound and carrying on hunting. I couldn’t see how we would ever get back to the centre ground and so I left in 2001 to concentrate on journalism and give the party the time it needed.

It is so good now to see that we have finally learned we must harness the economic liberalism that we believe in to achieve self-empowerment, opportunity and the fulfillment of aspiration for all of society. I didn’t join the Conservative Party to preserve the privileges of the super-wealthy or protect the interests of any one section of society. I joined because I want to see – and I want it to deliver – a Britain that doesn’t choose between excellence or equality as it has in the past.

I am delighted to see “we have a reform plan to deliver the changes the NHS needs” and that “improving our schools system is the most important thing we can do to make opportunity more equal” (excuse the dodgy grammar there). These are the issues that the 2010 Conservative Party holds dear and when I think about 1997, I cannot help but feel as if DC’s reform of the party is a process that will define politics in this century. A Conservative Party that understands the link between economy and society – who’d have thought it?

The Changing Politics section is interesting – 100,000 signatures on a petition will secure it a debate in Parliament and there is a promise, unsurprisingly, to redress the bias to Labour in the parliamentary boundaries. That’s only equitable, as I’m sure they’d agree; A Future Fair For All political parties. In making politics more local, there is some great reform of the planning system to get more money into infrastructure and some delegation of powers to the local level  that were blindingly obvious when I was a journo.

All in all, it’s a platform to be proud of. My only regret is that there is nothing more manageable for people to digest in their own time. Very occasionally, you will get people on the doorstep saying that they haven’t made up their mind who they will vote for until they have read all the manifestos. Usually, that’s a polite way of saying that they won’t vote for you, or of sounding as if they are discerning voters when they can’t think of anything else to say, or of getting rid of you if they are busy.

For any that do try, they’ll be a while with ours – but, mercifully, it more than rewards the investment.

Posted in Conservatives, Roll on 2010, elections. Tags: , , . No Comments »
« Older posts «
»