Tag Archives: conservative party

Liberal Unionism in 2012

By William Hobhouse | Published 13th January 2012 - 4:00 pm

There’s no escaping history in our party, and current debates of nationalism, unionism and secession should prompt Liberal Democrats to delve back into the Gladstonian past.

The Liberal Party split over the Union. Gladstone favoured Home Rule for Ireland, Liberal Unionists didn’t, and ultimately joined the Conservative Party. This cemented the Conservative Party as the party of the Union, and it is a position the Conservative Party still holds.

The purpose of this article is, however, to challenge the Conservative Party’s stranglehold over being British.

The existing Conservative argument goes that a Conservative Britain is a Britainthat stands proud and takes no nonsense …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged european union, home rule., scottish independence, snp | 26 Comments

Haggis, Neeps and Liberalism special: Dramatic independence referendum duel in London and Edinburgh

By Caron Lindsay | Published 11th January 2012 - 3:58 pm

It’s been a torrid few days in Scottish politics.

Since the SNP won an overall majority in the Holyrood elections last year, there has been much talk of the independence referendum they pledged to have in the second half of their term. They have been tight-lipped on their plans.

There has been uncertainty on the legality of such a referendum. Even respected legal blogger Lallands Peat Worrier, himself an SNP supporter, has expressed that the terms of the Scotland Act may not allow it. And amid all the bluster of this blog post from senior SNP strategist Stephen Noon is …

Posted in News, Scotland | Also tagged alex salmond, david cameron, haggis neeps liberalism, independence referendum, labour, michael moore, nick clegg, snp | 17 Comments

Opinion: The Tory Party has mutated. It is for us to say Europe is our hope for the future

By Antony Hook | Published 20th December 2011 - 12:53 pm

David Cameron’s renunciation of a Treaty not even yet fully negotiated was the culmination of a process that began around 1992.

In 1992 a small group of Tory ultras, “the Maastricht Rebels”, began fighting their party’s traditional pro-Europeanism. It has taken 19 years to make their fringe views a normal Conservative Party and conservative press position. 1992 has led to 2011 like a river flows to the sea.

Anti-Europeanism’s hold on a major political movement has caused a poorly informed anti-Europeanism to take hold among many of our fellow citizens in the UK, as it has among some of …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged european union | 25 Comments

Nick Clegg – Europe: Britain is stronger, better, greater when we lead

By Helen Duffett | Published 12th December 2011 - 3:17 pm

Nick Clegg has emailed party members this afternoon, following the EU summit last Thursday:

Support for Europe has always been a cornerstone of what our party stands for. Recent days have been tough for pro-Europeans in our country, but I am clear that it is in Britain’s national interest to remain at the heart of Europe.

As I have made clear since Friday, I am bitterly disappointed by the outcome of last weeks summit, which ended with the UK in a minority of one. There is now a real danger that over time the UK will be isolated and marginalised within the

…

Posted in Europe / International, News | Also tagged european union, nick clegg | 22 Comments

Tim Farron MP writes… EU referendum: the Conservatives are not acting out of patriotism

By Tim Farron MP | Published 24th October 2011 - 12:53 pm

This is not likely to win me any votes, but I am proudly pro-Europe and in favour of our continued membership of the EU. That doesn’t make me an apologist for every aspect of the EU: the EU could definitely operate more transparently, efficiently and effectively, and we as Liberal Democrats should say so more often and with more conviction.

Nevertheless, our main challenge has to be to win hearts and minds in favour of our broader membership of the EU, and reverse the completely poisonous anti-European narrative. So many of those who were so indignant this summer about Mr Murdoch’s …

Posted in Europe / International, Op-eds | Also tagged av referendum, referendum, rupert murdoch | 36 Comments

What do you think was the second most important reason why people didn’t vote Tory in the Cotswolds?

By Mark Pack | Published 14th October 2011 - 5:50 pm

Between us, Stephen Tall (he of the Oxford Comma cartoon) and myself (purveyor of news about commas in election law and academic research), appear to be carving out a niche in political punctuation coverage.

I fear it is all going to end in tears when someone puts our own punctuation habits under the microscope, but before it does I have exciting, related news to report.

I have blogged before about the fall-out amongst Cotswold Conservatives following their big losses to the Liberal Democrats in May’s local elections, including their fear that they are seen as “toffs legislating for …

Posted in News, Opposition watch | Also tagged commas, cotswold district council, stephen tall | 3 Comments

Bromley Council pulls a controversial novelty with a lollipop lady petition

By Mark Pack | Published 12th October 2011 - 1:50 pm

Tsk, tsk, Bromley Conservatives.

There is a council by-election campaign underway in Shortlands ward, Bromley where the excellent Anuja Prashar is the Liberal Democrat candidate. (So excellent, I’ll forgive her for organising a raffle once that broke all my Lib Dem raffle rules.) She has been campaigning against council plans to axe the lollipop ladies at two local schools and, as part of that, presented a petition signed by 283 residents to the council.

And then things started being done differently…

For the first time, Bromley Council decided to respond personally and directly to all the signatories on a petition, posting out …

Posted in Local government, London, Opposition watch | Also tagged anuja prashar, bromley council, colin smith | 2 Comments

After the Coalition: A Conservative agenda for Britain

By Mark Pack | Published 11th October 2011 - 10:25 am

Collections of policy essays from new or junior MPs rarely have much of an impact or shelf-life in British politics, but however fallible their predictions for the future they can be illuminating about the current state of the authors’ party and its broad ideological direction.

So it is with After the Coalition which is very different in tone and hope for the future from last year’s Which Way’s Up? by Nick Boles. The contrast is there in the sub-titles for the two books. Boles had “The future for coalition Britain” whilst the five authors behind this volume have gone for …

Posted in Books | Also tagged dominic raab, elizabeth truss, featured, Kwasi Kwarteng, nick boles, Priti Patel | 9 Comments

A very unusual use for a Conservative Party membership card

By Mark Pack | Published 7th August 2011 - 9:54 am

Take a young man, alcohol, a police station, a Conservative Party membership card, a police-issue balaclava and a cup of tea, and what do you get? Why, this story of course (with further details from here).

Hat-tip: Richard Clare

Posted in Opposition watch | 5 Comments

Anonymous Tory MP launches broadside against “hypocritical, immature, manipulative” David Cameron

By Stephen Tall | Published 26th June 2011 - 10:15 am

There’s a quite extraordinary broadside against David Cameron’s leadership in today’s Mail – written it appears by a current Conservative MP who chooses to remain anonymous — accusing him of “cynically manipulating” the party’s candidates’ list to stuff its green benches with “friends who went to the same school or moved in the same social circle”.

Here’s a flavour:

Speeches Cameron made before the Election about a new politics gave us great hope. But before too long, the less appealing side to his character became clear as he displayed an immature tendency to poke fun at certain individuals or groups

…

Posted in News, Opposition watch | Also tagged daily mail, mark pritchard, tim montgomerie | 11 Comments

Do CCHQ staff have to bring their own toilet paper in to work?

By Mark Pack | Published 2nd June 2011 - 8:34 pm

I only ask, you see, because earlier today the Conservative Party’s press team decided to highlight the fact that a Labour MP, Chuka Umunna, claimed £43.12 for “soap, toilet roll etc”.

Toilet paper Well, the claim was for his office where staff work. So quite why would someone want to pick on an employer providing toilet roll (and soap! yes, soap! the sheer luxury!) for his staff?

But perhaps that’s how CCHQ works and the staff there are so used to having to bring their own toilet paper …

Posted in News | Also tagged chuka umunna, mps expenses | 4 Comments

Opinion: Big society or big community?

By Emma Bagley | Published 16th April 2011 - 12:07 pm

We seem to be stuck in a warp of niceties at the moment. In the bad old days the Tory party was the nasty party. Thatcher flexed her muscles and in a previous downturn we all had to get on our bikes. Yet today we seem to get a different flavour of conservatism. It’s all big society, low interest rates and a penny off fuel duty. What is going on?

I’ll let you into a secret. The Lib Dems may have a little something to do with this. We seem …

Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged big society, bloggers takeover, guest editor, paul walter | 4 Comments

Tories run into a treble spot of Scottish bother

By Mark Pack | Published 30th March 2011 - 1:54 pm

The Herald reports,

THE Scottish Conservatives were plunged into a fresh crisis last night after a sacked election candidate said he had been denied natural justice by the party’s “dysfunctional” leadership.

Malcolm Macaskill, who was dumped as the leading candidate in Glasgow last week, said his treatment would cost the party £1 million, because his friend, Tom Coakley, a former footballer who made a fortune in property, had now withdrawn a pledge to give the Tories £100,000 a year for a decade.

It has also been reported that a second major Tory donor, John McGlynn, the airport car park magnate, no longer

…

Posted in Opposition watch, Scotland | Also tagged david meikle, iain whyte, john mcglynn, malcolm macaskill, tom coakley | 8 Comments

Conservative party in Hornsey & Wood Green packs up

By Mark Pack | Published 13th March 2011 - 8:48 am

Conservative Party member and Telegraph journalist Ed West reports,

My local constituency, Hornsey and Wood Green, certainly is closed to new members – it was recently wound up altogether, and I’ve heard that other party organisations in north London are in trouble (admittedly not Tory heartlands). All I get for my party membership are bulk emails from “David Cameron”, “William Hague” and “Baroness Warsi”, all of which now go straight in the junk filter with emails from Nigerian fraudsters.

Posted in Opposition watch | Also tagged hornsey & wood green | Leave a comment

Back from the Brink: the extraordinary fall and rise of the Conservative Party

By Mark Pack | Published 8th February 2011 - 10:25 am

Peter Snowdon’s history of the Conservative Party in opposition, quickly updated last year to include the final stage in their recovery, has four white men on its cover striding towards the reader – Cameron, Osborne, Hague and Clegg. It tells you immediately the sort of book that Back from the Brink: The extraordinary fall and rise of the Conservative Party is: tightly focused in on politics as seen from and carried out in Westminster.

This is an account of senior political figures and their political, policy and media manoeuvrings. The public feature very rarely (unlike in Deborah Mattinson’s memoirs from …

Posted in Books | Also tagged david cameron, featured, john howard, peter snowdon, tim montgomerie, william hague | 18 Comments

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