Author Archives: Jasper Gerard

Opinion: The modern Conservative party – how very Reckless

By Jasper Gerard | Wed 2nd November 2011 - 10:05 am

If Dickens had invented a character called “Mark Reckless”, it might have looked a little contrived. The Conservative MP for Strood and Rochester has argued that Britain should withdraw from the EU, and claims that over half his Conservative colleagues support him.

And not since such Dickensian figures as Sir Leicester Dedlock or Artful Dodger has a character lived up to his name with such enthusiasm. For think how reckless it would be if Britain were to withdraw from the EU, a scenario which even Margaret Thatcher considered suicidal and which was once the lonely position of the lunatic, Bennite left.

Amid …

Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Tagged european union, featured and mark reckless | 10 Comments

Jasper Gerard writes… The truth about David Cameron’s relations with Liam Fox

By Jasper Gerard | Fri 21st October 2011 - 9:25 am

Rarely can a ministerial resignation be less mourned than Liam Fox’s. An intriguing aspect of his fall is explained in my book The Clegg Coup. Senior Lib Dems and Tories told me repeatedly how Cameron and Fox loathed each other. Indeed, Cameron would often ring our Nick Harvey rather than his Fox to the extent that Harvey became known as “Cameron’s man at the MoD”.

“Fox sees himself as the prince across the water,” I was told. “He thinks Cameron never faced a proper challenge for the leadership because he was edged out in the first round by David Davis, whom he considers flaky. Liam is not going to blow his shot too early and it’s a good way off, but I do think he wants to challenge Cameron for the leadership.”

Posted in Books and Op-eds | Tagged david cameron, liam fox and nick clegg | 2 Comments

Jasper Gerard writes… The Clegg Coup – and the serialisation horror

By Jasper Gerard | Wed 19th October 2011 - 9:25 am

To those who fear the future marching over the horizon, this must feel suspiciously like enemy occupation. Liberal Democrats, with their new and sinister continental ways, have seized power. If conservative opinion believed it had the measure of Labour, it can’t quite get to grips with Britain’s newest rulers. For not only are Liberal Democrats in office for the first time, they have given us an apparently foreign form of government, a coalition.

Traditionalists have to trawl back more than a century for the homely comfort of precise precedent. Such has been the opposition to peacetime partnership, where two united parties …

Posted in Books and Op-eds | Tagged featured, nick clegg and nick harvey | 37 Comments