Cameron: "Fear of Getting Things Wrong Inspires Me More Than the Wonder of Getting Things Right"

Geordie Grieg's interview with David Cameron in today's Evening Standard us well worth a skaz. His tremendous likeability comes across well. You just can't imagine Gordon Brown giving an interview like this.

In the interview Cameron speaks very warmly of Boris and even floats the idea of Boris entering Number Ten...

Mr Cameron gave his most frank insights into his relationship with London's Mayor, insisting he is one of Boris Johnson's biggest fans but that the Mayor also “occasionally puts his size 10 feet in it”.

He admits Boris caused a problem by suggesting on the eve of the Tory party conference that they should have a referendum on Europe. “We managed to extinguish the fuse he lit. What it did not show was a deep split in the Conservative Party. It was more cock-up than division.”

Did Boris apologise? “I do not want to go into private conversations but all is well in the Dave/Boris relationship.”

Is the Mayor too much trouble? “Would I rather have some faceless bureaucrat running London who could not pull a crowd at the Tory conference? Or would I rather have a swashbuckling, charismatic, irresistible character who will, yes, occasionally put his size 10 feet in it? In the end I would rather have the latter.

“He is doing a fabulous job running London. I think what's happened in terms of security on public transport, trees, cutting waste, and the optimism and sense of dynamism he brings to the job, he is doing a fantastic job.”

Are they still on good terms? “We call each other, text each other, have dinner with each other's wives, we get on very well. It's a very good relationship — and a fun relationship. It's got a serious side, but it's light-hearted.” And when people say Boris should be in No 10? “Great! Good! I want people to look at the Conservative Party and say there is a huge amount of talent. It's not a one-man band, a two-man band, a three-man band.

“People who say what next for Boris?', I say the sky's the limit. He has got huge talent. I want the Conservative Party to have big figures in it.”

Perhaps the most revealing sentence, though, was this...

Unusually for a politician seeking to become Prime Minister in six months, he candidly admitted that his greatest driving force was the fear of making a mess. “Fear of getting things wrong inspires me more than the wonder of getting things right,” he said.

I suspect he is not alone in that. In fact, I know he isn't.

Cameron Shows the Way

This afternoon David Cameron is making what I think might be one of the most important speech of his leadership so far. it's a landmark speech in that it sends out a very clear signal about the direction a future Conservative government will take. In fact, it reminds me of a speech I heard Margaret Thatcher make in the autumn of 1978. It was that speech which inspired me to join the Conservative Party. At the time, I was a Liberal. But I watched the speech, realising that I agreed with every word she said. I suspect that many people reading this speech, or watching it, may feel the same. It says the things which need to be said, and demonstrates that he knows what needs to be done. If you want to read the whole speech, it will be on the Tory Party website soon. But here are the most important passages.

Over the next few years, we will have to take some incredibly tough decisions on taxation, spending, borrowing – things that really affect people’s lives. Getting through those difficult decisions will mean sticking together as a country – government and people. That relationship, just as any other, is strengthened by honesty; undermined by dishonesty.

Gordon Brown doesn’t understand how important this is. Despite the gravity of this debt crisis despite the serious consequences of not dealing with it he still can’t stop his politics of spin; smoke and mirrors; treating people as fools.

Remember, two years ago it was the election that never was. He told us he bottled it because he thought he was going to win. This time last year it was the 10p tax con.He taxed the poor for the sake of a headline, claimed that no-one lost out, and then spent billions of pounds compensating them.

Last week it was the U-turn on YouTube.

After telling us to wait for the independent enquiry on MPs’ expenses, he suddenly popped up to announce his own plan. And what was that great new plan? Paying MPs to turn up for their job. No receipts. No questions asked. More taxpayers’ money.Less accountability.

But the most cynical trick yet came in last week’s Budget. Everyone could see through what they were trying to do: “Don’t look at this vast hole in the public finances over there look at this pathetic piece of class war posturing over here.”

When I see Brown and Darling, I’m reminded of those people who come to your door; one pretends to read your gas meter, while the other robs your house. 50p income tax when you have a budget deficit of £175 billion? That’s not responsibility - it’s distraction burglary.

There’s no responsibility left in Labour. They’re already set to have the highest borrowing in the G20. And yet, unbelievably, this Government is planning to spend and borrow even more. They’ve just announced a spending increase - not a cut, but an increase - of £20 billion for next year. They’ve delayed the cuts until after the election. Now I wonder why that could be?

Last week, Labour had their chance to set out their alternative, to show how they would lead us out of this crisis and they completely blew it. And now, I just think people are completely sick of it. Sick of Labour’s cynicism; sick of their incompetence; sick of their irresponsibility...

...So it will fall to this Party to offer the responsible politics the country expects in this age of austerity. But it expects more from us than a hair shirt and a stern lecture...

...Does the age of austerity force us to abandon our ambitions? No. We are not here just to balance the books. There’s more to our mission than coming in like a bunch of flint-faced accountants and sorting out the finances. By the way, I want to make it clear I’ve got nothing against accountants.

The last time I talked about flint-faced accountants I got a letter from the wife of an accountant saying: “Dear David Cameron…my husband isn’t flint-faced – he’s actually very good looking.” The question is: how does government help achieve these wider aims in the age of austerity? And the answer is: by delivering more for less. That in turn means four big changes for government and the role of the state.

First, a return to traditional public spending control. Second, a new culture of thrift in government. Third, curing our big social problems, not just treating them. And fourth, imagination and innovation as we harness the opportunities of technology to transform the way public services are delivered...

...So the first, and most obvious part of delivering more for less is to deliver the ‘less.’ The days of easy money are over, and we have no option but to weed out spending that is not essential.
In opposition that means not making pledges you can’t keep – and we haven’t. It means not signing up to spending plans you can’t afford – and we didn’t.

We’ve made a good start by making sure we won’t arrive in government with a whole bunch of unaffordable commitments. We opposed the £12 billion Labour wasted on the VAT cut. We were against the fiscal stimulus. We said they should reduce their spending plans back in 2008. And now we’re saying they should abandon their irresponsible plan to increase spending in 2010.

Controlling public spending and delivering more for less must start right now. Not next year, not after the election – now. We’ve made it clear that a Conservative government would spend less than Labour.

We’re not frightened of their idiotic ritual chants about “cuts.”

Everybody knows that Labour’s Debt Crisis means public spending cuts. And instead of putting them off, Labour should be making them today. Here’s how they could start – by reversing those extensions of the state that do more harm than good and which Britain would be better off without.

So scrap the ID cards scheme. Cancel the ContactPoint database. And get rid of Regional Assemblies and all that useless regional bureaucracy. Those may be easy choices for Conservatives. But we’ll need to make hard choices too.

It is not easy, or popular, for governments to take money away from people. But when there are still millions of people in this country living in poverty, and when the age of austerity means we must focus on the real priorities can we honestly say it’s right for people earning over £50,000 a year to get state benefits in the form of tax credits?

With a Conservative government, tax credits will be there to help make society fairer, not the state bigger. And we must apply the same discipline throughout government. That means making sure that public sector pay and pensions reflect the realities of the economic situation.

Let me make it clear to everyone who works in the public sector: we will honour existing pay deals, including any three year pay deals. But many of them end next year.

And this is the deal we’ll be offering you then: We will help you by getting rid of the central direction and bureaucracy that undermines your professional autonomy and morale. And in exchange we will ask for your help in solving Labour’s Debt Crisis by keeping the cost of public sector pay only as high as the country can responsibly afford.

Ever since I became leader of this Party in 2005, people have been asking me to tell them, not in general terms but in specific detail what a new Conservative government would do on tax and spending in a Budget in 2010. George and I have resisted that pressure and I believe experience shows we’re right. Detailed plans or shadow budgets would become quickly out of date. But in the weeks and months ahead, the Shadow Cabinet will redouble its efforts to identify wasteful and unnecessary public spending.

Make no mistake: I am very clear about how much more work there is still to be done in order to identify significant future savings. We will carry out this work. We will do so responsibly. And in time, we will set out the hard choices that lie ahead...

...With a Conservative government, if ministers want to impress the boss, they’ll have to make their budgets smaller, not bigger. On my watch it will be simple: if you do more for less you get promoted if you do less for more, you get sacked. If we’d had this approach over the last twelve years, I don’t suppose there’d be a single Labour Minister left.

But this culture of thrift must apply to the civil service too. So we’ll impose a new fiduciary responsibility on senior civil servants – a contractual obligation to save the taxpayer money. And every government department needs a proper finance director.

Some of them today aren’t proper accountants – flint-faced or not. With such huge sums of public money at stake a Conservative government will make sure we have the professional financial controls the taxpayer has a right to expect...

...If a company is failing and new management comes in, transparency is the first thing they demand - opening up the books and seeing how every penny is spent. It’s going to be the same with us.

So today I can announce our ‘People’s Right to Know’ plan – a democratic check on wasteful spending. Every item of government spending over £25,000, nationally and locally, will have to be published online. If you want to see how it could work, look at the Missouri Accountability Portal. It will show you why transparency is such a powerful tool in controlling public spending...

...People have a right to know exactly how much they’re getting. So we’ll publish online all public sector salaries over £150,000. Let’s see which officials have been getting rich at the taxpayer’s expense - and whether they’re worth the money.

Today we’re publishing a list of some we already know about. Ed Richards at OfCom – he earns over £400,000 a year. In fact, if you took the top thirty salaries at Ofcom, the communications watchdog, you could provide the whole of Cheltenham with free broadband access.

And then there’s the British Waterways Board. The salaries of their top four employees – Robin Evans, Nigel Johnson, James Froomberg and Phillip Ridal – add up to £900,000. That’s thirty nurses.

In the age of austerity we’ve got to ask ourselves what we really value in the public sector: and I know what the answer is. It’s not the fat cats but the frontline workers...

...Fifteen years ago, I was in the Treasury as we had to deal with public finances that had got out of control; debt that had got too high. We had to put up taxes, and I hated it. But it was the right thing to do and that lesson has stayed with me. That’s why I’m a fiscal conservative.

That’s why, when it came to that big decision to oppose the VAT cut and the so-called fiscal stimulus, I didn’t consult a focus group or an opinion poll I just knew it was the right thing to do. And there’s something else.

I know that if we win the election, we’ll be judged a successful government if we deal with the debt crisis - and a failure if we don’t. Believe me, I get that.

I think people know by now that I want us to stand up for the poorest in Britain and to show that fiscal responsibility can go hand in hand with a social conscience. And they know I will stand up for the aspiring and the enterprising, kicked in the teeth by a Labour Party reverting to type.

We will show that social responsibility can go hand in hand with personal ambition. But what people also need to know is that I will stand up for responsibility and thrift.Those are values this country needs today.

Labour’s leaders say only they stand for fairness. Fairness? These Labour ministers, saddling future generations with debt? These Labour ministers, making our children pay the price of their incompetence? Their “fairness” is utterly phoney.

So let’s turn our anger into passion ad our passion into action to give Britain the leadership she needs. Yes if we win the election, we may not see the full fruits of our labours in the lifetime of our government. But if we stick together and tackle this crisis our children and grandchildren will thank us for what we did for them and for our country.

Now, I defy anyone to tell me that wasn't an impressive, inspiration and content-loaded speech.

Cameron Apologies for Failure to Break 'Cosy Consenses'

The big political story of the night is David Cameron's apology for taking part in a "cosy economic consensus" over the last twenty years. He admitted the Opposition should have called the government to account far earlier for allowing banking and corporate debt to get out of control. Here's an extract from the BBC report...

In a speech to the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Mr Cameron said politicians
needed to admit past mistakes if they were to build public trust and lead the
economic recovery. "I am sorry we have got some things wrong," he said. "We
were right to call time on government debt but should we have said more about
banking debt, corporate debt? Yes we should have done. Saying sorry was the
"easy bit", Mr Cameron said, adding that it was more "difficult" for politicians
to say where they had gone wrong. "It's that that needs to take place in order
to build trust with the public so that we can get this economy out of recession
and into recovery," he said.

I must admit when I first saw this earlier in the evening I did a double take. But I can see the logic of it. The media in general are interpreting this as a move designed to put more pressure on Gordon Brown to apologise for his own part in the mistakes of the last decade. But I think it goes further than that. Cameron knows that there will be some very difficult decisions to be taken by him and his Chancellor, should they be elected. And he knows that they will be far more palatable with the British people if they trust him to tell the truth about the necessity of those decisions. So I don't interpret this as a decision designed to put Brown in a fix, I think it is more complicated than that. In my interview with Cameron for Total Politics this month, he said he would need to be totally honest with the British people about the future. The speech tonight is designed to be honest about the party's mistakes in the past.

A Day in the Life of David Cameron

Join Sam Coates HERE during today for his feature on A Day in the Life of David Cameron.

Adam Boulton Wants You

Well, he wants your questions, actually. He's got David Cameron on his show on Sunday morning (10-midday on Sky News) and on his blog he's asking for viewers' questions. I think it's what comes under the heading of 'pre-interview' research. What's the betting he gets the Cleggover question. Anyway, click HERE to submit your question.

David Cameron Has a Nice Bum

...so says a Daily Mirror hackette. Firm thighs too, apparently. Anyway, must get back to my Telegraph column...

Labour Alleges BBC Pro Cameron Bias

The complaint to the BBC by some Labour MP I've never heard of is risible. Dawn Butler (for it is she) complains that David Cameron is given an easy ride by the Today Programme interviewers. What utter rubbish. I've heard at least half the interviews she refers to and he's interrupted and challenged just as often as anyone else. Indeed, I would argue that it is Gordon Brown who gets away with an easier time because he's not interrupted as much and answers the question he wanted to be asked rather than the question he was actually asked.

Butler whines that David Cameron is often only interviewed on one subject and then - wait for it - ONLY for eight minutes! Is she complaining he doesn't get enough airtime?

Let's be clear, political parties complain about things like this, not in the expectation that the BBC will hold up its hands and say "yup, you're right". What they do is put in a complaint in the full knowledge that BBC producers will have it in the back of their minds during future interviews.

I was told by a BBC producer that the Labour Party had complained about one of my News 24 appearances where they captioned me as a political blogger, rather than a Conservative blogger. Fair enough, I suppose, but on my next appearance they went so overboard in describing my Conservative leanings it was almost comical. As if the viewers couldn't have worked it out for themselves!

What Dave Can Learn from Barack Obama

Oh dear, I seem to have upset the esteemed readers of COMMENT IS FREE. Last week, my Telegraph column was supposed to have been about what David Cameron can learn from Barack Obama. Sadly, it got overtaken by events and I was asked to write about Andrew Lansley instead. Anyway, rather than let a provocative column go to waste, I thought what better use to make of it than to wind up the Obama supporting fanatics of The Guardian. Judging from the comments beneath the article, I succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. Read the full column HERE.

Portillo Documentary Was a Hit

The Portillo documentary on BBC 4 last night was a gripping 90 minutes of political TV. As regulars know, I'm no great fan of Mr P, but this programme was superb. I think he may have found his niche. Like several of his other TV documentaries he imposed himself on the narrative, and again, it worked. He sought to explain the Thatcherite legacy on the Conservative Party and did it very well. His main theory was that the Party had still to recover from the way Margaret Thatcher was overthrown and that David Cameron is the first leader to look as if he can administer the necessary medicine. His star witnesses all seemed to agree with at least the first part of thatr sentence.

The star of the whole programme was Michael Howard. His cameo appearances showed a self knowledge and analysis of his own limitations which was gripping to watch. He knew the party had to change but knew that his own personality would not let him introduce some of the measures needed to do it.

There were one or two factual howlers - David Mellor was never in Margaret Thatcher's cabinet, for instance - but overall the programme demonstrated how this genre of documentary can work. I'm not sure what appeal it will have had outside the political classes, but they deserve to be catered for too.

As a footnote, it was also interesting that Portillo admitted that his candid interview with William Hague was the first time the two men had spoken since 2001.

You can watch the programme HERE (until 3 March)

'Ere Sonny, Take Your Hands Out of Your Pockets

Earlier this week David Cameron did another one of his days 'spending time in the real world' and headed off to Welsh Wales to kick some Welsh LibDem ass experience life on the beat with the Heddlu. He was in Newtown with a police sergeant finding out exactly how stretched rural police can be. Vast areas are patrolled by one or two officers who only have capacity to respond to one emergency at a time. They are short of cells, meaning endless long drives to bigger towns when they are, all too frequently, full. David Cameron went out on patrol in a pursuit car, heard about planning for a VIP visit, witnessed the endless paperwork, spent a morning visiting a rural outpost as well as seeing the daily operations of a town-centre police station. More on his blog HERE.

This visit followed his day in Birmingham with a muslim family and a day in Hull as a teaching assistant. No doubt the comments will be full of people with negative comments about this kind of thing, but I think it's fantastic he's out on the road doing it. Too many politicians get wedded to the Westminster village and lose touch with the real world. None of these visits are pre-publicised and no press is present, so far as I know. He takes his own cameraman to record small parts of each day and then writes it himself up on the WebCameron Blog. It's not written by one of his gofers - he does it himself. Mock all you like, but in my book this is one of the best things he has done as leader.

Dave Goes to Birmingham

If you have fallen for the myth that David Cameron is shallow, read THIS and you may revise your views. He's spent the last 24 hours in Birmingham. I have rarely read a more thoughtful piece from a politician.

Incidentally, WebCameron is becoming a normal blog as well as a videoblog. David has written three posts in the last six days. It's unrealistics to expect him to write every day but you can see that these are transparently written by him and not by a spin doctor. If he keeps it up he will build up quite an audience . . . bloody hell, he could over take me soon!

Cameron Still Ahead of Brown

An ICM poll in tomorrow's News of the World shows that David Cameron is still a way ahead of Gordon Brown as the voter's choice of future Prime Minister.

Cameron has a five-point lead over Mr Brown (42%-37%), but this is less than the advantage the Tories enjoy over Labour under Tony Blair. It's the first time this has been the case so far as I am aware. Cameron has a healthy advantage in the South East (16%) and the Midlands
(12%) and among the 25- to 34-years-olds (4%) and over-55s (9%) as well as a small 4% lead in Wales and the South West.

Gordon Brown is, however, 28 points ahead in Scotland and one point ahead in the North of England. He also has the backing of 18- to 24-year-olds by 44% to 38% while the remaining age group - those aged 45 to 54 - are split evenly between the two.

A Tale of Two PPBs

These are the Labour and Conservative PPBs which are being shown this week. Do compare and contrast. Labour asks: 'what would you like to say to Gordon and Tony if you met them?'. The Conservative film shows David Cameron meeting real people and actually hearing what they would like to ask him. It shows Cameron at his best. He's totally at ease in any environment and is not afraid to tell people what they don't want to hear. I understand that the film was made by James Fletcher, who made the David Davis documentary on crime last year. He's achieved in the is film what I assume he set out to achieve - to show David Cameron as a good listener and a man of firm views. A very good start.

The most hilarious moment in the Labour broadcast is when Gordon brown gets out of the cab to pay the driver. She tells him the fare is £5, so he hands he some money and says 'keep the change'. So in theory he handed her £10 and gave her a £5 tip. Not exactly prudent was it?!

Book Review: Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative

Last night I finished reading the new biography CAMERON: THE RISE OF THE NEW CONSERVATIVE by Francis Elliott and James Hanning. This is not a book to challenge the reader, but it was never meant to be. Its sole purpose was to delve into the character of David Cameron and enable the reader to find out a little more about a politician who could be the country's next Prime Minister. To eek out 300 pages on someone who has only recently turned forty is an achievement in itself.

This book is best in the chapters detailing Cameron's family background, childhood and marriage. In particular the authors deserve praise for the way they handled the chapter on the Camerons's disabled son Ivan. They write about him in a way which is empathetic and at at times harrowing.

One minor complaint is the chapter on the leadership election, which I didn't feel told us anything that we didn't know before. It should have been the definitive account, but fell some way short. Perhaps I was too close to it to be a good judge, but it could have been rather more colourful than it turned out to be. Similarly I didn't feel the final chapter left us much the wiser about what a Cameron government would do or how it would operate. Perhaps that is being left for the inevitable paperback!



Elliott and Hanning have done what their publishers no doubt wanted. they have written a book aimed at a Daily Mail reader who quite likes what they see of Cameron but wants to know a bit more about him and his character. It is a book which is not really aimed at a political audience, but at the general reader. And as such it ought to sell very well indeed.

TV Review: Tory Toff by Peter Hitchens

As I type this I am watching a recording of last night's Channel 4 'documentary' on David Cameron called TORY TOFF. Of course, having been written and presented by the polemicist Peter Hitchens it is not a documentary, it is a polemic. Some months ago I was approached to be a consultant on the programme. Having toyed with the idea of writing a biography of Cameron last year I was quite interested in co-operating. I thought a balanced profile of Cameron would be a good idea.

What we got last night was what I expected, and the reason why I decided not to play any part in it. It is was unbalanced, at times hysterical and at others verging on the ridiculous. If you were already predisposed to disliking Cameron you would have loved it, as it confirmed your worst prejudices. If you are a Cameron supporter you would have hated it. If you were an undecided voter it would have left you feeling cheated, not having been told much that would have helped you enhance your understanding of the man who wants to be our Prime Minister.

The basic attack on Cameron centred around his alleged 'toffness' and that there are 13 Old Etonians on the Tory front bench. He was also attacked for having changed his mind on some issues and his change of language. Big deal. I suspect everyone has changed their minds on several political issues over the last ten years. I know I have. That's politics. Time moves on, the country moves on and politicians must move on. Those that don't move on with the country are destined never to run it. But moving on does not mean abandoning your basic core principles, and Hitchens' biggest failure in the programme was his inability to prove that Cameron had done any such thing.

Hitchens reckoned that having a windmill on your house and speaking out against a windfarm in your constituency were incompatible and proved Cameron doesn't believe anything at all. The two stances are perfectly compatible and Hitchens knows it. There were plenty of other similar examples.

Cameron's success is that he understands that the country is a different place to the one Peter Hitchens thinks it is. Hitchens harks after a moalistic, socially conservative country which Britain ceased to be in about 1965. Cameron wants to build on Britain as it is today.

As a polemic programme this was well put together, well written and presented in an engaging manner. But for all that it was profoundly unconvincing.

UPDATE: Further reviews of the programme from SKIPPER and ANDREW IAN DODGE.

ALERT: 9pm on Channel 4 on Thursday - MUMMY'S WAR, a programme by Carol Thatcher on her visit to Argentina and the Falklands.

David Cameron's Budget Reply

Seeing as the BBC cut the coverage of David Cameron's speech here are a few extracts, courtesy of PA.

"You have finally given us a tax cut. You normally do that before a General Election but you are in such a deep hole you have had to do it before the leadership election... You can increase spending and you can cut taxes. Yes, you can share the proceeds of growth... It is a bit like Stalin. They are cheering him on now, he'll wipe them out later... Your great experiment in tax and spending has failed. You are an out of date politician wedded to state control. The question everyone is asking is where has the money gone?... You are the Chancellor who has put the tax burden up. You are the Chancellor who has taken one tax down but put 99 taxes up. The average family is paying £1,300 more because of your Budget decisions. I have to say we will check carefully what is happening to the aligning of national insurance because we think it might be hitting middle-income families...

Let me tell you what the Chancellor's real problem is, it is not that he is a Stalinist who holds all his colleagues in contempt - although I have to say that probably doesn't help, it is that he has wasted money on an industrial scale... For 10 years you have been telling us that education is your priority ... but 40% of primary school leavers can't read properly. For 10 years you have been telling us you want a competitive economy but you have given us the biggest tax burden in our history. For 10 years you have been talking about child poverty - you did it again today - but the number of people living in severe poverty is up by 400,000 and Unicef say that Britain is the worst place in the developed world to bring up children. For 10 years you have been telling us about the NHS, today barely a mention. All you have done is
re-announce this year's money which we already knew. You have got the figures
for the future - why won't you tell us?

Let's look at what was in the Budget but didn't get a mention in the speech, that's always an important list. Soon the Chancellor and his allies, they will be going round the country and saying the spin, the distortions, the half-truths of the Blair era are coming to an end. Some of them have started already but actually with you spin will get worse. We've had a bonanza of spending on the NHS but nurses have been sacked. He brags about people's long term security but the pension system's shot to pieces... There are 160,000 people who only keep 10p out of every extra pound they earn. At least the last time we had a 90% marginal tax rate it was the richest that
paid - it's now the poorest.

As Mr Brown and the Prime Minister talked on the front bench, Mr Cameron said "they are having their annual conversation". In a reference to Mr Blair's appearance on Comic Relief with Catherine Tate, he added: "I don't know why he bothers talking to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister's not bovvered anymore." He said the Labour Party were "just realising their next leader has the tendencies of Stalin and the poll ratings of Michael Foot." He added: "The front bench are all standing in the deputy leadership contest, they know from history that's the one way to avoid the Gulag."On Mr Brown he said: "For years he wanted to be the young pretender and now he's ended up as the old man in the Kremlin."

His jibes were met by Mr Brown with a dour expression and folded arms, prompting Mr Cameron to joke about his reported dental treatment and recent meetings with celebrities.
"He has spent all that money on his smile, but he won't even throw us one. He won't win over Kylie like that."

If You Live in Fantasy Land...

Some bloggers really do live in a parallel universe, where the conspiracy theory always takes precedent over the obvious. THIS post today really made me laugh. In it, the UK Daily Pundit (for it is he) asserts that David Davis is going to America this week to get the approval of our empirical rulers, before he ousts David Cameron later this year. Hilarious. Here's the relevant bit...

Which brings me to David Davis and the real reason behind his trip to the US this week. On the face of it Davis is on a fact-finding mission to discuss zero tolerance policing and defence. In reality, he's about to attend the most important job interview he'll ever have. The Shadow Home Secretary will this week face an assessment by the Americans as to his suitability to be Prime Minister. He's being cleared for the top job. If all goes well and Davis gets the nod, at some stage later this year David Cameron will get wind of a draft letter calling for a vote of no confidence in his leadership. At that point he will announce that he is to step down to spend more time with his family.

As Richard Littlejohn might say, you really couldn't make it up. But the UK Daily Pundit has. I haven't had such a good laugh since I almost wet myself at a Frankie Howerd live theatre show.

My Stance on Climate Change & Why I Remain a Tory

I suppose if you stick your head over the political parapet, you deserve to get it shot off from time to time. My post on Al Gore BELOW has caused a certain frisson on some blogs. Tom Watson thinks it very rude. Devil's Kitchen wonders why I remain in the Tory Party. More on that in a moment, but let's just look at what I said...

On Thursday US Climate Change hypocrite Al Gore will address David Cameron's Shadow Cabinet. He will no doubt be instructing them all on the art of preaching climate change religion bollocks while at the same time creating a carbon footprint the size of a mammoth's. I wonder how many of them will find they have a subsequent engagement...

Al Gore is indeed a hypocrite. He tells the rest of the world to reduce their carbon footprint, while living in a house which has a carbon footprint the size of Tennessee. Gore's heating bill is dozens of times higher than that of virtually every other American. It's a little known fact that George W Bush's Texas ranch is very environmentally friendly. Bush just gets on and does it without makign a song and dance about it. Gore, meanwhile, flies to Hollywood and collects his ill-deserved Oscar from celebrities who have arrived at the ceremony in a gas guzzling strech limo.

I used the phrase "preaching climate change religion bollocks" for a reason, one which seems to have passed the ninety or so people by who have commented on the thread. It has indeed become a religion to those people who like to jump on the bandwagon of such causes. Their fervour reflects the CND marchers of the 1990s. If you speak out against their creed you're attacked as a 'denier', putting you on the same level as a holocause denier. I dislike the messianic side of those like Gore who treat Climate Change as a pseudo religion which if you deign to question you're considered a nutter.

I do question it, but I do it out of curiosity, not out of dogma. Let me make my position clear. I do believe climate change is taking place, but I have an open mind on the extent to which it is (if at all) man made. I am unconvinced by both the Stern Report and the IPCC report, which seems to change its eveidence according to the conclusion. I am prepared to listen to the arguments of the climate change sceptics, just as I am to those I respect on the other side of the argument. The reason I railed against Al Gore is that he does not fall into that last category. Sometime soon I will watch his film - I won't yet call it a documentary. I will also watch the Channel 4 programme from last Thursday (repeated tomorrow on More 4 I think) called THE GREAT CLIMATE CHANGE SWINDLE. I'll read more on the subject and then make up my mind. My stance at the moment reflects my annoyance at the climate change protagonists who won't brook any argument at all.

No onto the Devil's Kitchen article. He makes a number of assertions in his article as well as using words I don't allow on this blog. Let me repeat some of them...

Can I be the only one who is wondering precisely why Iain Dale is supporting the Tories? Apart from the fact that they are willing to give him a seat, of course... But Iain is a free-trader who is anti-EU. And yet Cameron is pro-EU, and naive enough to believe that he can change it... Iain is also against the state-funding of parties, whereas Cameron is pro.To state this quite clearly and for the avoidance of doubt, Iain Dale is fundamentally opposed to Cameron and the Conservative Party on all of the major issues that the Tories have deigned to pronounce on. And he is not the only one; very far from it, in fact.So what is the motivation? Does Iain know something that we don't; being something of an insider, does he know that the Tories are going to renege on these ideas once in power?... The second option is that Dale and others are merely trying the Matthew Sinclair tactic: they have decided that it is better to try to persuade the Tories of the rightness of their position from within the party... Which leaves us with the third option: that some people will happily support any policies, no matter how wrong they believe those policies to be, in order to gain power.None of those three alternatives fills me with any hope for the future, frankly.

Where to start?! Devil's Kitchen left the Conservatives to join UKIP over one single issue - Europe. He now finds himself out of tune with the Conservatives on any number of issues. On this blog I think I have made fairly clear that I support David Cameron's policy of building a big tent, in the full knowledge that there will be some policy areas where free market, tax cutting Thatcherites like me will have cause to suck our teeth. DK is right that I oppose state funding for political parties, I'm a free trader and that I am a Euro Sceptic. So does this mean, as he implies, that I should leave the Tories and join UKIP? In his dreams.

All political parties are coalitions. And within those coalitions people argue their case. I will argue my case on the issues I care passionately about even if that means that at times I am at odds with the stance of the party hierarchy. I've never once been asked by anyone to tone down my views on this blog.

DK reckons I sometimes pull my punches because I would like to be a candidate at the next election. What they - and others - don't like is when I praise David Cameron for the progress he has made. If I dish out criticism from time to time, then surely I am also entitled to praise Cameron and his team when I really believe they have got something right. Yes, I would like to be an MP, but if I stand at the next election I want to do it in my own way on my own terms. No one likes someone who constantly greases up to the top of the party, but equally, a constant whine of criticism is equally as tedious.

I would never leave the Tory Party. The Tory Party may, on occasion, leave me, but it's then my duty to stay and argue my case. We all know all politics is temporary. Politicians come and politicians go. Policies come and policies go. The one constant are the members of the Party who have to go out and sell the Party on the doorstep. Just because they might disagree with a few of those policies, it doesn't stop them from believing that the Party they have supported through thick and thin will do a damn sight better job of governing the country that the current lot.

I'm a Conservative, a Tory, a free marketeer and a Euro Sceptic. There can be no other Party for me than the Conservative Party. Not now. Not ever.

And in Breaking News from the Middle East...

You do have to wonder at news values sometimes. Today's Daily Telegraph carries THIS story about David Cameron's visit to Israel. The first two thirds of it revolves around a little girl sticking her tongue out at him. Oh well, guess that's more important than his views on the Middle East Peace Process then. Of course it really would have been a story if he had turned round and stuck his tongue out at the little girl!

Quote of the Day

I'm compiling a book of political quotations which will be published in the Spring by Harriman House. I just came across this quote by Benjamin Disraeli...

I had to prepare the mind of the country and… to educate our Party

Does this not sum up in one sentence what David Cameron is trying to do?

Battens down hatches...