Politics Watch

Tories back wealth redistribution via BBC News – Politics

In a surprise move that I never expected to see from the Conservative party, Oliver Letwin – who has recently been put in charge of overhauling party policy in the next eighteen months – has said that a future Conservative government should make wealth distribution one of its goals. This is in an interview in the Daily Telegraph no less – a paper whose readership generally sways towards backing the Tories and centre right policies.

More Information

• Tories should aim to cut inequality, says Letwin via Guardian Unlimited – Politics

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the past month, or mentally tuning out any news stories containing the dreaded ‘P’ word, you will have noticed that the beloved Charles ‘Chat Show’ Kennedy has been troubled lately by questions of his leadership aboard the good ship Lib Dem. There have been a number of rumours about senior party members and MPs being unhappy with the way he has run things since the last election, and poor Charles has been running around like a headless chicken trying to reassure everyone that he’s still the right man to lead the party.

Personally, I think Kennedy is safe enough for the time being, due to a number of factors. First and foremost, the Liberal Democrats are generally amicable towards their leader, even if they don’t particularly like him, unlike Labour where there are undoubtably several senior figures just waiting for the right moment to make Blair walk the plank. Kennedy can also take comfort in the fact that his party is nowhere near as predatory as the Conservatives, who fight leadership elections almost as often as they do local and general elections.

Secondly, there aren’t that many people who are capable of mounting a serious and realistic challenge to Kennedy’s leadership. With only 62 MPs as potential successors, the list of candidates is already much shorter than that of the Conservatives or Labour. Again, this situation differs sharply from the Conservatives, who often have four or five candidates throwing their hats into the ring at every leadership election.

The Lib Dems also have little to gain by gunning for a change in leader. Kennedy is reasonably charismatic and seems generally well-liked by the public – a claim that neither Blair nor Howard could honestly make during the last general election campaigns. Sure, he’s probably not going to take the party into number 10 this time round, but then neither is anyone else. At the moment, all a leadership challenge, and the media frenzy that would inevitably surround it, would do is benefit the other two main parties, especially the Tories who would have an opportunity under Cameron to steal back some ground that the Lib Dems have encroached upon.

Assuming for a moment though that the Lib Dems really do want a change at the top, who could be the next leader? BBC News has an article on Lib Dem leadership options, but most of the candidates they present aren’t serious contenders. The only two who really hold enough support in the party to stand on their own are Simon Hughes and Sir Menzies Campbell, both of whom are, in my opinion, unlikely to mount a leadership challenge but would probably put themselves forward for the job if Kennedy stepped down of his own accord. Even then, Cambell is getting on a bit and at 64 might be considered to be to the Lib Dems what Michael Howard was to the Conservatives – a caretaker leader there to stop things falling apart whilst the party looks for a more long term leader.

There’s been a lot of media reporting on this possible ousting of Kennedy, so I’ve provided a number of links to stories from BBC News and Guardian Unlimited if you wish to read further around the subject.

More Information

• Kennedy gets support from deputy via BBC News – Politics
• How bad is it for Kennedy? via BBC News – Politics
• Kennedy pledges to stay as leader via BBC News – Politics
• Under-fire Kennedy meets his MPs via BBC News – Politics
• Kennedy feels the heat as colleagues urge him to go via Guardian Unlimited
• 
  Pledges of loyalty to Kennedy leave the cynics unimpressed via Guardian Unlimited
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  Kennedy threatens to sack frontbench critics via Guardian Unlimited

One of my friends just forwarded me a to this hilarious pledge on PledgeBank. Only 818 people have signed up at the time of writing this post, but I’ve lost count of the number of people who have told me that they’d vote Conservative if Boris was the leader of the party.

It’s unlikely that this pledge will change anything, however we can but hope…

Everyone’s favourite bumbling politician, the Right Honourable Boris Johnson, MP for Henley, has been appointed Shadow Education Minister by the new Conservative leader David Cameron. It’s not the first time Boris has been on the front bench; many of us can still remember the day he was appointed Shadow Arts Minister, only to be sacked later on for failing to disclose details of his personal life – including an extra-marital affair. Hopefully this time he’ll manage to stay in the job for longer, perhaps even making it into the Cabinet itself if the Conservatives win the next general election (something which, until recently, seemed impossible but is now within reach).

Unfortunately the demands of the post mean that Boris will be stepping down from his role as editor of the Spectator, which he has been involved with for over six years. It’s a shame to see him leave the magazine, but I’m sure they’ll appoint a new editor who, whilst perhaps not quite as eccentric a figure as Boris, will do an excellent job of continuing the success it has enjoyed over the past few years.

In the meantime, best of luck to Mr Johnson in his new job, hopefully he’ll give the current Minister for Education, Ruth Kelly (who is MP for Bolton West, not that far away from me) a run for her money over the coming months.

Further coverage

• Cameron brings Boris Johnson back to frontbench via Guardian Unlimited
• Johnson given Tory frontbench job via BBC News
• The return of the blond bombshell via BBC News
• Boris and The Spectator via Boris Johnson MP

A lot of people have been asking me this question lately, mainly because of my old ties with the party and also because I have a keen interest in politics. My answer is generally “I don’t know, and if I did then I’d be down at the bookies placing a large sum of money on said candidate”, but even now I feel unable to even guess as to how the contest will end.

The vast majority of media sources seem to be predicting a win for David Cameron, with up to a 2:1 ratio in votes. Watching the Daily Politics on BBC 2 today showed this to great effect – almost everyone question was along the lines of “so what do you expect Cameron to do when he takes over the leadership?”, and only occasionally was reference made to the fact that the result has not yet been announced.

Going off what the pundits and the media say, perhaps it would be most sensible for me to place my hypothetical money – I generally don’t gamble with cold, hard cash – on Cameron breaking through the finish line with Davis still only half way around the track. However, the Conservative party has a habit of not picking the front runner – a recent example of this can be seen in the result of the last leadership election (discounting when Michael Howard was made leader, as he was uncontested and therefore won by defaul) when a lot of people were backing Michael Portillo, only to have Iain Duncan Smith, who most people had never heard of, granted the leadership by a ratio of three votes to two against Kenneth Clarke.

Overall, I think that the vote is going to be a lot closer than people have been predicting, and it won’t necessarily be all sweetness and roses for young Cameron. I still believe he is more likely than Davis to take the crown of thorns that is the leadership of the Conservative party, but today’s result has the potential to surprise everyone so I’m not coming down from the fence just yet.

Tories set to unveil new leader via BBC News

As the race to become leader of the Conservative party closes, supporters of both candidates must now spend a nervewracking day patiently awaiting for the result of the ballot of around a quarter of a million party members. The votes are currently being counted by the Electoral Reform Commission, and a final result is expected at 1500 GMT today. Until then we can only guess as to what the outcome will be and even then it will be some time before we will see if the Tories have finally chosen a leader who can take them to victory at the next election, or at least make them a half decent Official Opposition to the current Labour government which seems hell bent on pushing through legislation that is generally either impractical or widely unpopular (or in many cases a combination of the two).

Although I haven’t been a member of the Conservatives for some time, I still feel a connection and a sense of dependancy on this leadership contest. It saddens me when I hear a lot of people saying “we want the successful candidate to be someone who will continue to split the Conservative party and ensure that they never win another election”. Not only does this show an unwillingness to accept that things may have changed since Thatcher’s era (ironically this is an accusation that people often level at the party itself), but it also demonstrates a complete lack of understanding about how the political system works.

Even if you utterly hate and despise everything about the Tories, the fact remains that they are the only real opposition to the government. Admittedly the Liberal Democrats are also on the opposition benches, but they hold less than a third of the number of seats currently controlled by the Conservatives, and their party does not contain many political heavyweights, not to mention a large number of people who have served in government in the past. Like it or not, for the time being the Conservatives are the main body of opposition in the House of Commons, and in a democracy it’s vital that you have a strong force keeping a check on the government, regardless of whether you agree with the policies being put forward by either side. Wishing for a further weakened Conservative party is giving more strength to a Labour government which is already showing signs of attempting to use its majority to steamroller through its legislative programme with little or no scrunity.

MP’s marathon speech sinks bill via BBC News

The Right Honourable Andrew Dismore, Labour Member of Parliament for Henmon, has managed to “talk out” the Criminal Law (Amendment) (Protection of Property) Bill by delivering a mammoth speech lasting a grand total of 197 minutes. This practice, often known as filibustering, involves debating a motion or proceedings on a bill up until the “moment of interruption” (the time at which the main business of the Commons day ends), when the business is lost or postponed. In other words, Dismore talked the bill out of the Commons by using up all the time available to debate it, and as such the bill now stands no chance of becoming law.

In delivering such a lengthy speech, Dismore also broke his own previous record for the longest Commons oration this century, which previously stood at 181 minutes. He still fell some way short of the six hour speech delivered by Henry Brougham in 1828 though, and even further behind the eleven hour marathon of John Golding on the Telecommunications Bill in 1983 – although the latter speech was delivered at a standing committee as opposed to in the Commons chamber, and therefore the MP was allowed breaks for meals.

More information

• Andrew Dismore’s web site on ePolitix

Politics Watch is a UK site presenting commentary on UK political news and events, ranging from the weekly Prime Minister’s Questions to EU events that affect the UK.

Politics Watch started as a way for me to publish my political commentaries without filling up my blog with material that causes a lot of people to switch off. Let’s face it, politics is one of those things that you’re either really keen on and like to talk about (although I tend to avoid doing so in most situations because I know it bores people to tears unless they’re interested) or it’s something that makes you fall to sleep.