Tag Archives: Conservative Party

Notes from the Tory fringe, where everyone is playing nicely – for now, The Conversation, 6 October 2015

Welcome to the Tory Party conference in Manchester – as ever a curious mix of the nerdy, the nutty, the nasty, and the nice and normal. The latter (apologies to anti-austerity protesters everywhere but it’s true) are in the majority. … Continue reading

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He has a beef with David Cameron, but who is Lord Ashcroft?, The Conversation, 23 September 2015

Britain is still reeling from the allegations that surfaced about the university antics of its prime minister, David Cameron. The claims, made in a forthcoming unauthorised biography of the PM, are the work of Conservative peer Michael Ashcroft and journalist … Continue reading

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Labour has moved outside the ‘zone of acceptability’, Prospect, 14 September 2015

Jeremy Corbyn’s victory has to be seen not only as a major advance for a Labour left that once looked entirely moribund. More worryingly for some, it also presents a huge opportunity to influence mainstream politics for much a harder, … Continue reading

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‘The UK general election, 2015: Surprise! Or maybe not….’, Report for German-Southeast Asian Center of Excellence for Public Policy and Good Governance (CPG), July 2015

One  does  not  need  to  be  a  political  scientist,  let  alone  a  rocket scientist,  to  know  why,  broadly  speaking,  the opposition  Labour  Party  lost  the election and why its rival, the Conservative Party, won a second term in office –this … Continue reading

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‘Only 15 per cent of Conservative party members would vote to leave the EU’ (with Paul Webb) Telegraph, 15 June 2015

Europe is already impinging, if only indirectly on Labour’s leadership contest. Andy Burnham in particular has suggested the party needs to be careful it doesn’t ‘do a Scotland’ by associating itself so closely with an all-party campaign that it ruins … Continue reading

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‘What should Cameron do next’, Conservative Home, 17 May 2015

‘The problems of victory’, Winston Churchill told the House of Commons in November 1942, ‘are more agreeable than the problems of defeat, but they are no less difficult.’ As a pragmatist and a realist, David Cameron almost certainly realises this … Continue reading

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‘Cameron looks more like a captive than a captain of his party’, ConservativeHome, 26 April 2015

You don’t have to have succumbed to full-blown “Milifandom” to notice that Labour’s leader seems to be having a better election than his Conservative counterpart. He can’t possibly be as ubiquitous in real life as he’s been on Twitter of … Continue reading

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‘An over-chillaxed David Cameron drops a brick with his bombshell’, FT, 24 March 2015

Either David Cameron is one of the more unusual men ever to have become British prime minister — one of those rare birds in politics (the last was Stanley Baldwin back in 1937) who quit while they are genuinely ahead … Continue reading

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‘UKIP shouldn’t be an option for any true conservative’, ConservativeHome, 29 May 2014

The Conservative Party only has itself to blame for the rise of UKIP – not because it ignored the pet peeves that drive Nigel Farage’s ‘people’s army’ but because, in the electorally-desperate early 2000s, it pushed the populist button itself … Continue reading

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‘How do you solve a problem like…Nigel? What Austria can teach the Conservatives about dealing with UKIP’, LSE British Politics and Policy Blog, 27 May 2011

If UKIP manages to do even half as well at next year’s general election as it has evidently done this time, Britain’s mainstream parties are facing nothing less than a transformation in their competitive environment. Shielded for so long by … Continue reading

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