Standing together with other parties in a crisis

At a time of financial crisis, we put aside our petty disputes, and form a team with our political opponents to tackle the crisis. I am determined that George Osborne and myself will contribute our ideas to the solution. Nick Clegg and Vince Cable too have their contribution to make. Vince of course was only chief economist at Shell, whereas George here was, er, is, er the Conservative shadow chancellor.

Here's how I see the team's division of labour shaping up:

Alastair Darling will draw up the legislation.

Vince Cable will say what should go in it.

I will cleverly suggest it happens slightly more quickly.

Nick Clegg will put forward relief plans for people in danger of losing their homes.

Gordon Brown will pretend he thought of that.

George Osborne will get the tea and biscuits.


You see this way, everybody's skills get used to the best effect. That's called leadership. I love it!

That's enough greenery for now

The new Conservative Party can take much pride in having talked about the environment and adopting a tree logo. But enough is enough. Having done our bit, and frankly riding so high in the polls as we are, we can forget all that stuff, and revert to form. Mind you, we're not in government yet, so don't think you have seen the half of it.

This is not of course our first u-turn on this issue. So now is the time to revisit those green taxes I proposed, and bring them up to date.

This is what I said last time:

• Tramps and beggars are an eyesore. Our new Tramp Duty of 2.5% will discourage them.
  
• Plebs with their rustly little cars spoil traditional English villages. The Hatchback Tax will put a stop to that.
  
• Windmills ruin the view. Our Fossil Fuel Obligation will reduce them.
  
• Hosepipe bans are a menace to lawns everywhere. We will start a hosepipe incentive scheme.
  
• People who have their cars follow them when they cycle are, er [are you sure about this one, George?]
  

Now you may be asking how one u-turns on a policy that is so vacuous in the first place. Ye of little faith, there is much we can do.

• Cheaper petrol
• More fossil-fuel power stations
• Greater dependence for energy on our Russian friends
• More airports

And it needn't stop there. When you are born smug like me, pissing away other people's future comes naturally. I love it.

Thou shalt not be morbidly obese

Politicians are too afraid to talk about moral issues today. And so we are facing an epidemic of knife, fork and spoon crime. And the poor. Don't get me started. It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to enter the kingdom of heaven.

Some people insist that morality is all about how you treat other people, that you should be free to eat and drink what you want. Not the Conservatives - we believe in damning you for your lifestyle choices. And we've never much liked the idea of treating plebs humanely, so we've got to have something to attach to the label "immoral" we so like using.

Public figures should not be afraid to use the concepts of right and wrong wrongly. Without the wrong idea of right and wrong, people might not always blame the victims. They might want the state to do its bit to give opportunities to people trying to lift themselves up. Don't they understand that we just talk about personal responsibility.

No, people shouldn't believe that the state will even try to solve their problems, because it won't. Not if I have anything to do with it. Personal responsibility means that we successful people can be smug about it. And if you are hard-working and remain poor or fat, there must be some reason for that, that we can still be smug about.

Farewell then, David Davis

Dear David,

Thankyou for all the hard work you have given to this party all these years. We all admire your principled stance on 42 days. A courageous move, as Sir Humphrey would have said.

It was perhaps a bit much for you to suggest that we should promise to repeal the measure once we are elected. You see that would be quite different. If we are in government, then more power for the state is all grist to the mill. It is only under Labour that these powers are dangerous.

You really shouldn't take all that "Liberal Conservative" stuff to heart. The words are opposites, you know; have you not read Hayek?

We wish you all the best in your by-election campaign, and hope to have you back in our parliamentary party soon. Or that MacKenzie fellow.

Best wishes,

Dave

Dave at large #1

Took the words out of my mouth

www.chickyog.net/2008/04/29/cameron-unwilling-to-keep-pmqs-vow/

“I will absolutely hold up my hand…this is a promise I couldn’t be bothered to deliver,” the Tory leader said."

I meant to say that bit under my breath...

A Red Light on Crime

Now listen to me boys and girls, I have had enough of all this talk about my dangerous cycling.

It is vitally important to the health of our democracy that a man can have a private life in the morning before he goes to work in Westminster. We shouldn't have to ask ourselves "shall I be leader of the Conservative Party this afternoon?" No indeed.

One-legged Lithuanian Lesbians

Of course it was not meant to come out quite like that.

My remark about one-legged lithuanian lesbians was not intended to convey and disrespect or hostility towards disabled people, lithuanians or lesbians in particular. No.

You see the modern Conservative party does not, like the Conservative party of old, represent only the interests of some able-bodied, british public school educated, heterosexual elite. We have realised that the electoral arithmetic means we must extend the boundaries of the recognised elite a little, and appear to extend it a lot.

And how do we tell these people that are only disabled, or only lithuanian, or only lesbian, that they might be considered for admission to this elite? By expressing how much better they are than anybody who has the misfortune of being all three!

I love it!

Hat tip: Cicero

You can't make it up

...apparently. Some common school is frightfully upset about this. But I will say this to them. It could have been your school. That sort of thing happens all the time among the unwashed masses, I happen to know, it says so in the Daily Mail.

And of course I know a thing or two about thuggery and vandalism myself. Perhaps this is the cause of the confusion. The boy in question was just angling for membership of the Bullingdon club. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hoo hoo ho ho ha gasp pant.

Rehearsing the unrehearsed look

OK there has been a lot of confusion recently about my speech. When I said that I would be making it up as I go along, I was not referring to the speech itself, which was of course well prepared as usual, but to conservative policies in general.

By policies, I mean of course the positioning exercises and general mood music we use to test the water and refashion our image.

I haven’t got an autocue and I haven’t got a script, I’ve just got a few notes so it might be a bit messy; but it will be me.

I meant of course that I didn't have a script in front of me, not that the speech was unscripted. A clever bit of spin, don't you think? And it was me. I hired the speechwriter after all.

Here was another bit, did you notice? I bet you think I am proposing lower taxes for married couples with children, right? Wrong. What I am proposing "benefits only a quarter of married couples across the board and, of those, less than 40% actually have dependent children."

I am so clever it hurts, sometimes.

That conference speech in full... (again)

Two years ago I stood on this stage and gave a speech about why I wanted to lead the party. Now I want to lead the country.

[10 minutes standing ovation]

20 years ago I was inspired by a trip to Eastern Europe - the dull uniformity, the lack of freedom.

Every generation of Conservatives has to make again the arguments for freedom, free markets and limited government, because the previous generation of conservatives will always have forgotten them once in government.

Our party has campaigned on the NHS, with no sense of shame.

It is not good enough being a one nation party to open the door - we have to drag the ethnics kicking and screaming into the party. But I am proud to have a muslim woman homophobe in my shadow cabinet.

Change, real change, isn't just about the pence in your pocket. It is understanding how to repackage Conservatism - opposition to change - for the modern media. We are not going to lurch to the left or right, we are going to lurch firmly into the past.

This government is always reannouncing old policies. But you won't catch me having any policies. Brown wants to appeal to the 4% in swing seats. How awful. I'm really shocked at that sort of thing.

People want the politics of belief. And we want them to believe us. That's why we're on the same side.

I believe if you really talk about responsibility, common sense and MySpace, for long enough, people won't notice you have not actually said anything.

Please sign up to 'Am I the only person who doesn't like David Cameron' on Facebook.

[Listeners all miss the next 15 minutes of the speech while they go to facebook and invite all their friends to join the group.]

We will say to Vardy and McDonalds, come into the state sector and drive up standards in our schools. But why isn't this working? Because professional teachers are not deferring to my superior judgement on the use of synthetic phonics. Let's get politicians' micromanagement out of education and get teachers to start doing exactly what I say.

One of the aspirations people still have, and rightly so, is the aspiration to own their own home. And we are going to pretend that minor changes to stamp duty will make a noticeable difference.

Oh and hasn't Brown made a mess of the country's pensions? It must be the biggest pensions disaster since the Tory mis-selling scandal of the 80s.

While our economy is getting richer, in many ways we are not going to get far being too optimistic - no we need to hype up the breakdown of society in order to frighten people into voting for us.

There are a million young people with nothing better to do than join groups on Facebook. Why has Labour done nothing about Facebook? Every day you hear some numpty promoting some Facebook group or other.

What are we going to do? Let's look at what works. In states like Wisconsin in America, where single parents are denied benefits unless they travel hours a day for minimum wage work, and hardly ever see their children. This is how we put families first.

The best welfare system of all? The family. If you think about it, it gives us a chance to wash our hands of the problem completely. And by recognising marriage in the tax system, we can further complicate tax credits, and punish widows and the sinful with evangelical zeal.

Anyway, we've got to scrap those top-down targets and trust the professionals in education the NHS.

The other feature of this Brave New World, is the sense of insecurity we feel, the end of the New World Order. When it comes to Iraq, we all want people to forget our culpability in supporting that war. I've been to Afghanistan for photo-ops with the troops. In this world of danger, the old politics is failing, as Mr Blair said when assaulting civil liberties.

I'm very proud to have Milosovic appeaser Pauline Neville Chamberlain in my shadow cabinet.

But we face new threats like climate change. We need to say that we are the party of sensible green leadership. Then people won't notice that we are doing next to nothing.

On crime, we will not be led by the need for headlines on the six o'clock news. This party is not a PR exercise, and I am going to pretend not to be a PR man any more.

So there you have it. I have told you want I believe today. It's about me. Am I up to it? Yes I am. I had inherited wealth, a privileged upbringing and went to a fantastic public school. But am I smug? I will let you be the judge.

After 10 years of Labour, I am as mad as hell and I'm not going to take it any more. Everybody go to your window and shout it. So, Mr Brown, call that election. We will fight, but Britain will win.

Tories to carry on Blair reforms

As reported by the BBC, we intend to continue Blair's policy of reforming the public services, extending target culture and box-ticking to the furthest reaches of public services.

We will

• Issue all junior policy advisers with envelopes and fag packets on which to devise new targets for public services they don't understand
• Bring in new targets for the police, alongside quality payments for officers who advise at least 90% of crime victims to change their locks, lock their cars, and keep their valuables in a safe place.
• Raise standards of street sweeping with key Performance Indicators whereby street sweepers store before and after sample scrapings from each street in question so that cleaning performance can be analysed. All samples will be sent to a new Street Operations Directorate in Slough.
• Ensure satisfaction from teachers, with 5 page progress forms on each child to be sent home every week.
• Ensure that recyclable materials collected are in fact recycled with a system of asset tracking whereby each item of paper, glass, garden waste, etc, is barcoded by the householder.
• Introduce a Politeness Hotline where public servants who fail to smile and say "Have a nice day" can be reported, for re-education.
• And finally we will tackle the tendency of state grammar schools to turn out so many bloody oiks. Can't stand them. Every state grammar school child will be assessed for oikishness on a 100 point scale, with the worst offending schools top of the list for conversion to McVardy creationism academies.
  

I love it!

Where there's a will there's a whippet

I am delighted with the breakthoughs we have made in major northern cities such as Chester, Worksop and Todmorden. There were some, even in our party who thought that the northern cities might never forgive us for the relish with which Margaret ground them underfoot. But that is all over now.

In Sheffield, where we made massive gains of minus one, building a platform for the general election, voters are referring to our huge tally of votes with quaint admiring phrases like 'tha girt lump'.

In Manchester, where, frankly, we are quite irrelevant, we have held our ground. In Liverpool and Leeds we have lost no deposits, and in Blackley and Burnburn we have successfully lulled the other parties into a sense of security.

We are truly a national party once again. I love it.

Why vote Tory on May 3rd?

Why indeed. Let me tell you. Voting for us on May 3rd will maintain the rising tide of the Conservatives. It will give Blair a good kicking. It will give Brown a headache. It will give Ming something to think about. It will give me some reason to look and act as smug as I do.

Never let it be said that I am a vacuous PR man, that when I open my mouth nothing of substance comes out, only comforting noises, positioning and testing the water.

Never let it be said that Michael Howard has been the only Conservative leader of any calibre since Margaret Thatcher.

Never let it be said that you know nothing of real life if you have never been too poor to smash up a restaurant and buy your way out of trouble.

And if all that can't never be said without omitting double negatives, so much the better, or, er, worse.

Anyway, that's enough about me, this election is really about all those young people up and down the country who've had enough of Blair, and spin over substance, and puffed up PR people calling the shots. They want something different, er, anyway, they - we - want a new Britain - children playing in the streets again, motherhood, apple pie, cricket and free love (strictly as part of a normal student experience).

I love it!

Terribly sorry, won't get caught again

Well the stiffs at the Commons standards and privileges committee have given me a bit of a telling off over a bit of harmless influence selling.

Frankly, this is all a bit much. Influence is a limited resource, and the way for the market to allocate it most efficiently is if I sell it to the highest bidder. I'm sure Adam Smith would concur - didn't he say to always trust business people to influence legislation because they will have their own profits in mind at the expense of the common good. Something like that.

The Conservative Party has a long and proud tradition of representing the interests of the wealthy above all others. Yes, in recent years we have had a few leaders with inferior origins - Margaret Thatcher, John Thingy, the Foetus, Michael Howard. But even these plebs knew who to sell influence to.

And now we are back on track, representing in me the best and the smuggest the country has to offer, the little people are whining about standards. It is enough to make one lose one's rag a bit.

Er, terribly sorry, won't happen again, honest to goodness.

hat tip: Liberal Review

Half a million well spent I think

My dear readers,

I hope you have noticed the blog redesign reflecting the new values of the new Conservative Party.

You will find the following new features on the new right hand side of the new page:

• The all-important new mission statement
• New resources for reaching out to Labour and the Lib Dems
• The latest news about the Conservative Party

The green and blue colour scheme represents the fusion of the ideals of the Green Party and the Conservative Party. Where the Green Party would make everybody poor to save the planet, and we used to only care about the rich, the new Conservative Party will keep the poor poor, to keep the planet nice for the rich. Or something like that, we're still consulting, obviously.

Hot air tax

As I explained earlier, the conservative party is making noises about a whole range of new green taxes to combat environmental problems that will still be around when our typical members are dead - in the next 5 years or so.

Anyway, one blogger chappie has issued a challenge for somebody to defend the idea of an escalating tax on hot air, so that we can all enjoy a bit of high altitude verbal diarrhoea once or twice a year, but if we keep doing it the cost ratchets up.

Well you must understand that we all (shut up John) appreciate the threat of global warming caused by so many politicians - yes that means you Mr Blair - talking such complete poo the whole time. We in the conservative party are committed to making perfect sense all the time, thus cooling the planet down again.

Soft on posh thugs, hard on photos of posh thugs

You know I really don't think I will say anything about this, I mean we all did some wild things when we were young, and I think it is only that posh people are entitled to be thugs in their private life without having to worry about whether they will one day go into politics.

Do we really want the sort of politican who spends his youth thinking 'shall I smash up this restaurant? No, it might harm my political career' I should hardly need to ask.

No, we want the sort of peron who will show their mettle. Who knows what privilege is for and puts it to interesting uses. Who isn't afraid of getting a little carried away now and then so long as nobody is hurt who really matters.

For the sake of the children

There is one thing that will raise the life chances of a child more than any other. Something the state needs to be sending a clear signal in support of. Something the tax system should recognise and encourage.

Too long we have allowed political correctness to prevent us trumpeting and rewarding with tax incentives something so cruical to the well-being of children and the cohesiveness of society.

It is a state so positive and wonderful that even people who don’t have children should be incentivised to enter it. Because, frankly, without a few extra quid in their pockets, people might never realize how good it is.

But no longer. The Conservative Party is proud to announce that we think the rich have got it right, and we will be encouraging people to be rich, with extra tax allowances especially for the rich.

Whisper it quietly

Apparently I am "turning down the volume" on the party's core beliefs until they are inaudible. Mr Leigh asks "Why after a year of his leadership are we only one point ahead of where we were at the start?"

Well I am grateful for the opportunity to clarify the situation. You see the Conservatives no longer stand for rampaging ahead in the opinion polls like the nasty, competitive Conservatives of old. We think it would be much better if we could all get along, if we aspired to being a bit more popular than the other parties, but not too much more. We don't want to behave as if we really thought we were right about things.

After all, saying all this centrist rubbish is hard enough, but acting like we thought we were right about it.... no, sorry, that is beneath even me.

Relative Poverty

Hello again. Sorry to have neglected you lately, but I have been awfully busy giving the Conservative Party, or New Con as I like to call it sometimes, a jolly good shake up.

The news is that we are now against relative poverty. Relative poverty is an absolutely frightful thing, even the finest and most noble families in the land can find they have a cousin or two who is actually quite badly off.