So...this week has been like no other that Labour has faced and how do you deal with it, well you laugh it off according to our Prime Minister. The cabinet is in tatters and Blair does not seem interested in doing anything about it. Unfortunatly every day this goes by, more and more voters are being turned off the political process and to be honest I cannot really blame them.

In five days, three cabinet members should have been sacked (Patricia Hewitt, Charles Clarke and John Prescott). And from reading other blogs we are far from finished with the allegations, its a question of when the press decide to stick the final dagger in. This is an absolute joke of a government and it can only be a matter of time until it implodes. Unfortunately it will be the general public’s belief and faith that will be hit hardest.

Oh and can anyone tell me where one of my favourite politicians of all time has gone? In a week when Keele university has had to allocate interim degrees, and most other universities are set to vote upon contingency measures, I want to know where my education secretary has disappeared too? Has she said anything about this crisis? Ah yes I forgot, Ruth Kelly should also have been sacked, she must be keeping her head down too.

Marvellous

This past week has certainly not been good to the Labour party; scandal after scandal has hit the newspapers. The latest, and perhaps most appalling, is Charles Clarke's blunder leading to over 1000 criminals, who were to be deported, being let free in the U.K. These are not simple pick-pockets but foreign murderers, rapists and paedophiles!! Just as disgusting is the Home Secretary's refusal to resign over this inexcusable matter.

Next, we only have to look at Mr. Blair's deputy, who is in the headlines for having an affair with one of his secretaries, to see that the Labour party is certainly not, as Mr. Blair once put it, "whiter than white".

Is the reason for these men’s refusal to resign because our beloved Prime Minister is running low on supporters? Indeed it seems that few 'Blairites' remain.

Just how long now will it be until Mr. Blair realises his time was up many, many months ago.

http://www.backingblair.co.uk/dave/

For those that didn't see the party election broadcast earlier today - Labour have launched a new campaign website to attack Dave Cameron and the Conservatives:

Dave changes from one colour to another, depending on whatever he thinks his audience wants to hear.

To supporters of the blue party, he changes deepest blue and tells them he is 'Conservative to the core'.

To supporters of the red party he changes into finest red, and tells them he is the 'heir to Blair'.

And to supporters of the yellow party, he changes into brightest yellow and says he is a 'liberal Conservative'.


He flip-flops from one position to another, depending on whatever he thinks you want to hear.

But underneath it all David Cameron will always remain true blue through and through.

'I am Conservative to the core of my being, as those who know me best will testify'.
David Cameron, Telegraph, January 23 2006

I must admit to being quite amused at seeing Dave on the TV, I think it just might be an effective strategy against us. However it will be interesting to see whether Labour can continue to run the "Dave is unprincipled" message and the "Dave is still Tory" message in the same attack.

Happy Easter to Everyone!

After Menzies Campbell accused the Tories of still being "right wing and unpleasant", blogs like ConservativeHome and others have been wondering whether the term 'right wing' is now beyond hope, now to be universially used as a form in insult.

Will anyone claim themselves to be right wing nowadays?

Just thought I would update you on some welsh politics. Former Labour AM (assembly member) Alison Halford has joined the Welsh Conservative Party. She became an AM in 1999 after being former Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside Police, but retreated from front line politics in 2003.

This is a wonderful development to the elections next year and she will be assisting Shadow Secretary of State for Wales Cheryl Gillan MP on policing matters, including the Home Secretary's decision to merge the four Welsh police forces. She is also helping Nick Bourne and David Melding on policy development.

It’s nice to hear some good news after some of the negative media responses we have been getting (reference to the Newsnight poll that suggests we may LOSE seats in the May elections). My only hope is that others will follow suit. She said that “Labour has lost its way badly. They have become known as the party of sleaze and weasel speak as power seems to have worked its corrupting influence.”

In Wales especially, one can see that Conservatives are going to do really well in 2007! At last.

Lefty Michael Portillo in the Blairite Sunday Times making some bizarre statements:

His careful choice of subjects makes still more surprising two mistakes that he has made. Early on, he promised that marriage would be recognised within the tax system. The pledge unhelpfully suggests a harking back to the old Tory party. It can offend single parents, people who live together without marrying, gay people and single people, for whom life is particularly expensive.

You utter sellout Michael. Marriage is the most crucial institution in sustaining the family, and if conservatives are not about family what exactly are they about? Perhaps we should take a stand for what we do stand for rather than worrying about who we "offend"? Next he will be arguing against any right wing policies for fear of "offending the left"

The Conservatives are now trying to cobble together a new grouping with fringe right-wing parties. It makes the Tories look ideological and marginal.

Ideological? As in believing something? Heaven forbid anything get in the way of spin, that would obviously be a disaster..

Observing the success of the right-wing tabloids that attract millions of readers, past leaders reasoned that if they could sound like their banner headlines and reactionary leading articles, triumph at the polls must follow. But a paper is entertainment and people enjoy reading there a reflection of their unspeakable prejudices. They expect something better from a party that aspires to govern.

What are these "unspeakable prejudices" hmmm? I agree that parties must attempt to lead while the tabloids usually follow, but the insinuation here is the views all those millions of people who do buy the sorts of newspapers Portillo imagines are not just unfit to be represented by the Conservative Party, but simply unacceptable.

If a political party is not the same as a tabloid newspaper, it is also quite different from a think tank. Brilliant intellectuals are constantly dreaming up solutions to our problems and (who knows?) they might even work. But their ideas are theories that would scare the public rigid and confirm every horrid suspicion that they still harbour about the Tory party.

This is horribly patronising, and displays Portillo's liberal establishment credentials perfectly. But I suppose here at least we get some recognition that there is a broad party consensus and reasons for it, which is better than pretending the public are fools by acting as if real choice is on offer.

Cameron must stamp on such indiscipline, just as he should have obliged his party to announce who had lent it money much faster than it did. He should have ratted on whatever promises he had given during the leadership contest to pull out of the EPP and create a married couple’s allowance. He should have dropped yesterday’s men from the shadow cabinet.

If this is truly representative of the Tory party (which I have doubts that it is), then I may be forced to leave. The party should be encouraging debate on its direction, it should respect the anomity of donors, Cameron should keep the promises he was elected on, and he definately should not drop people like David Davis and William Hague as "yesterday's men" (Portillo not one of them too?). In short, I couldn't disagree more.

Peter Hitchens was right about Michael Portillo in 1999 when he stood against him for Kensington and Chelsea - hes a wishy washy elitist through and through. I sincerely hope this advice is completely ignored, but fear, alas, it will not be.

_________________________


EDIT 11/04: The Telegraph also views Mr. Portillo's advice with great cyncism

"THE FIRE OF HOPE IS BURNING BRIGHT ONCE AGAIN"

Full Speech Here

During a radio interview, Tory Leader David Cameron called the UKIP "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists mostly". Whether this was a calculated move, or a heat-of-the-moment gaffe, we do not know. Now UKIP has written to Cameron demanding he apologise, while consulting their lawyers about suing him for libel.



I am definately of the opinion that Mr Cameron should apologise. If you are a conservative (small "c") you would surely not support his outburst. The race card - highly damaging, intellectually unengaging and lazy, usually blatantly untrue - is a card of the left; and the Tories of all people, with our experience of it being unfairly used against us, should be the last to use it.

The United Kingdom Independence Party does have a serious, perhaps fatal, image problem. I'm sure there are plenty of 'loonies' in the membership too (but then in my opinion voting Labour should be enough for a sectioning). The Tories should know however most of UKIP are alienated conservatives needing a home, and this move if designed to bring them back to the Tories failed - in fact, it will probably be much more effective in the opposite; pushing out alienated conservatives from the Tory party.

In my home constituency of Hereford at the last General Election, the Conservative Party lost to the Liberal Democrats by 2.2%, whereas UKIP gained 2.3% of the vote. This is a pattern we can see all over the country. Why aren't these people voting with us?

Whats more, UKIP appears to want to capitalise on the feeling of alienation by trying to reform itself from a 'nationalist' party to a 'conservative' party. Look at the 'aims' on its website:

- parental choice, equality of opportunity, equal status of academic and vocational abilities, and the freedom of schools to select pupils;

- the ability for our country to conduct our own international trade in the British national interest;

- controlling the volume of immigration with common sense solutions;

- lower taxes in a greatly simplified system;

- solving what is known as the West Lothian Question, and to address a second question: ‘The English Question’.

How LOONEY is that? I fell off my chair. The insanity!

Do not consider Collectivists as "sincere but deluded idealists". The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not "idealistic," no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to "do good" by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

-- Ayn Rand