Bagshawe To The Rescue

Louise Bagshawe is the adopted Conservative Parliamentary candidate for Corby, and also writes a regular weekly cheerleading column for the party leadership on ConservativeHome.

In her latest article, Louise attempts to give readers ten ‘good’ reasons to vote Conservative at the next General Election. Unfortunately, she makes a few glaring mistakes in the process.

Firstly, the very fact that most people who read ConservativeHome are already Conservative party members or voters makes you wonder why she has chosen to write a piece extolling the supposed virtues of Cameron’s ideas and urging members to vote Conservative – unless she and the leadership believe that support among it’s own members needs firming up? Either that of course, or she just had nothing more interesting to write about.

The article is, in places, frankly hilarious – or at least it would be if Ms Bagshawe were not such a high-ranking party candidate with very close connections to the party’s hierarchy and leadership. She could also easily be the next Member of Parliament for Corby.

For example, when remarking upon the Conservative’s ‘Vote Blue, Go Green’ drive, where David Cameron has said a Conservative government will increases taxes on airlines and pollutants, she writes, ‘Yes, I used to be a sceptic on climate change. Then I went out into my garden last Christmas and my rosebush was in bud. I’m not a sceptic now’. Eh?

Click here to continue reading the article…

Cameron Launches Fightback

David Cameron has reaffirmed his commitment to economic stability in an interview on the BBC this morning, in which he actually came off rather well.

With the prospect of an early election in the autumn, Mr Cameron has to regain the initiative and political advantage he had enjoyed under Tony Blair if he has any hope of winning and forming a fresh Government capable of real and lasting change.

Despite the fact that Mr Cameron says he had not underestimated Gordon Brown, I think that he and his team privately know that they have. The Conservatives have allowed themselves to be panicked unnecessarily.

However, all is not lost. If Mr Cameron really wants to improve the Conservatives’ polling figures, then he needs to make a concerted fight back on policy issues. At a General Election the general public do not care what the Conservative party has done to change itself internally, but what the Conservative party is proposing to do for them.

It’s that which Mr Cameron and his frontbench team must now focus upon - that, and mercilessly attacking the record of Gordon Brown; the co-architect of the New Labour social experiment and direct cause of so many of Britain’s problems in the past decade.

Redwood Economic Proposals

John Redwood’s policy review on economic competitiveness has now been officially released today. The report recommends that the Conservative party pledge to cut £14bn worth of red tape.

Naturally Labour, with ample help from their colleagues at the BBC have heavily criticised these proposals as ‘a lurch to the right’ – but then they would, wouldn’t they.

The proposals in Mr Redwood’s report suggest that corporation tax should be cut to 25p, that taxes including capital gains should be reformed, and that many EU laws should be unilaterally dis-applied in the UK. The BBC license fee, which Mr Redwood described as an unnecessary ‘poll tax’, also came in for criticism.

The policy review report was broadly welcomed this morning by George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor – but crucially not endorsed yet.

Much like the previous Iain Duncan Smith policy review on Social Justice, David Cameron does not have to endorse any of its findings or introduce them as party policy. Therefore, as seems to be the case, if the Conservative leadership are just going to ignore the vast majority of the proposals made by their own policy review groups, exactly what purpose do they serve?