Tories arguing for extra borrowing shock
On the evening of Thursday 24 September, click here and you’ll be able to watch Conservatives arguing hard for additional borrowing.
Sounds unlikely? Well, it’s true.
The venue for this bizarre reversal of Conservative orthodoxy will be the Council Chamber in Preston, where Lancashire’s new Conservative administration will argue for an additional £10million in immediate borrowing to cover additional revenue costs, £9 million of this for ‘highways works’, and a further £39 million over three years to cover a range of capital costs. See press coverage for a quick overview.
A Tory council spending massively beyond its means? A Tory council making future generations hostage to fortune? What’s going on?
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An open letter to David Cameron
An open letter by Heydon Prowse, who filmed the secret video of Alan Duncan that got him fired from the Tory front bench.
——
Dear David,
Well done for demoting Alan. As head of the Tory PR machine – sorry I mean party – you have demonstrated real leadership. Because you can’t just have MPs going around speaking their real minds all the time, can you Dave, or the Tories would never get elected.
Of course Alan was not the person to lead expenses reform in the Tory party, but you knew his views. Much more importantly, the man lacks the basic credential needed to be a member of your inner circle – sufficient guile to successfully deceive people. Perhaps his PR people should go too. After all, it was their idea to say to the press that Alan would like to have a drink with me to show that he really was a jolly good sport after he had initially threatened to set the police on us for the free gardening we gave him. Backfired that one eh?
Much better to have experienced lobbyists and public relations executives ‘representing’ the people, like George Eustice, your former press secretary who’ll be standing in Camborne and Redruth in Cornwall at the next election, or Priti Patel, director of PR firm Weber Shandwick, which represents hedge funds and investment banks, who is standing in the constituency of Witham. Eh wot?!
Thank god you didn’t fire Alan ages ago when it emerged that while shadow business secretary with responsibility for energy policy, his private office was funded by the decidedly dodgy oil company Vitol, or people might have thought you were actually serious about reform. I for one feel completely reassured of your inclination to represent the interests of a tiny financial elite, rather than the hard working people of Britain.
Yes – with tycoons and financiers flocking to you with their totally expectation free donations and your shadow ministers hobnobbing around the Med on the yachts of Russian oligarchs, you’re fast becoming Blair mark II, which is exactly what the country needs. Here’s hoping you win the next election so that you can disappoint us all as profoundly as he did. Hurrah!
Hope you feel rested enough after your three month summer holiday for your return to parliament in October.
All the best going forward,
Heydon Prowse
Sun apologises again over fake ‘hit list’
The Sun Newspaper published a small apology yesterday, tucked away somewhere in the paper. It read:
OUR story on January 7 about a ‘hit list’ of top British Jews on the website Ummah.com was based on claims by Glen Jenvey who last week confessed to duping several newspapers and Tory MP Patrick Mercer by fabricating stories about Islamic fundamentalism.
Following Mr Jenvey’s confession, we apologise to Ummah.com for the article which we now accept was inaccurate.
The apology was most likely forced by the Press Complaints Commission and followed another half-apology by the Sun last week.
As Liberal Conspiracy has pointed out in the past, the Sun has yet to apologise to Tim Ireland from Bloggerheads, who took apart the story and faced months of abuse and stalking while doing so.
The Media Guardian quoted Sajid Pandore from Ummah.com:
I would like to pay tribute to two bloggers, Tim Ireland and Richard Bartholomew that made the discovery that it was Glen Jenvey who made the comments themselves and also the Press Complaints Commission for investigating.
Actually, Tim made the discovery and took the heat – I just did some follow-up and background stuff. The above quote will doubtless be used by Dominic Wightman, a former associate of Jenvey who tried to manipulate Tim and me (and to some extent succeeded) into writing about a third person that Wightman had a grudge against. When Wightman’s deception came to light, he defended himself by suggesting that because Sajid had helped us with tracking some IP addresses, Tim (and to a lesser extent, me) were colluding with Islamic extremists as part of a “Black Red Alliance”.
Septicisle also comments:
The whole incident is though instructive of how the tabloids deal with such complaints. Even when an article which appeared on tje front page and made such startling accusations and claims is shown to have been completely inaccurate, the only thing the paper has had to do in any form of reparation is publish the pathetic “clarification” at the top of this post, which was printed in the paper itself on page 12. Any casual reader would think that the Sun was the victim of Jenvey as much as Ummah.com was, when this could not be further from the actuality.
Trident: Brown’s no peacenik
UNILATERAL nuclear disarmament formed part of the manifesto on which Gordon Brown was first elected to the House of Commons. I do not know whether he was ever an individual member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, but back in the early 1980s, such an affiliation was certainly no hindrance to ambitious young backbenchers. Just ask Tony Blair.
The trouble is, Labour’s peacenik credentials have certainly been somewhat tarnished since then. What, then, are we to make of the news that the prime minister will offer to scrap one of Britain’s four Trident nuclear submarines at a forthcoming session of the United Nations Security Council?
The most striking aspect of the announcement is the sheer lack of underlying logical coherence. Either this country needs weapons of mass destruction that enable it to nuke other nations at all times, or it doesn’t.
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Lessons in spending from Norway
It is common wisdom that back in the 1970s and 1980s the Hard Left in the Labour Party, led by Tony Benn, made Labour unelectable with their extremist ideas.
One of Tony Benn’s extremist left-wing ideas was that the British government should keep the North Sea oil money ring-fenced for specific projects and ensure that the government planned to ensure maximum benefit from the revenues from the oilfields.
Maggie Thatcher, of course, opposed this and spent the oil money on tax cuts for the rich, profits for private companies, closing down coal mines and out of work benefits for millions of people.
In contrast, Norway decided on the same approach as Tony Benn recommended, and have built up a multi hundred billion dollar State Petroleum Fund.
As a result, in 2009, the Norwegian political debate is ‘how shall we spend the vast sums of money that we have’, and the British political debate is ‘how savagely can we cut spending and raise taxes’. And last week, our comrades in the Norwegian Labour Party were re-elected, increasing their share of the vote compared to 2005.
But, y’know, thank goodness Maggie Thatcher ‘saved’ Britain from the loony left who wanted Britain to have its own sovereign wealth fund.
We hereby resign from PoliticsHome… (updated)
Following Andrew Rawnsley’s resignation today from PoliticsHome, we also feel that the decision to sell a majority stake in PoliticsHome to Michael Ashcroft, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, will not ensure the continuing political independence of the website.
PoliticsHome has a panel of 100 ‘opinion formers’ that it polls every morning, and then publishes the results of. We have decided to resign from this panel.
Sunny Hundal, Liberal Conspiracy
Tom Watson MP
Denis Macshane MP
Anthony Barnett, ourKingdom
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, columnist
Sunder Katwala, Fabian Society
Neal Lawson, Compass
Sian Berry, Green Party
Lynne Featherstone MP
Catherine Mayer, Time magazine
Martin Bright, journalist
Polly Toynbee, The Guardian
Hillary Wainwright, Red Pepper
Catherine Fieschi, British Council
Stuart White, Oxford University
Rafael Behr, The Observer
Kitty Ussher MP
Sir Jeremy Beecham
Others who have also resigned of their own accord:
Charles Clarke MP
Matthew Taylor, RSA
Nick Cohen, columnist
Tom Harris MP
Nick Assinder
Stryker McGuire, Newsweek
Paul Webster, newspaper executive
This list of names will be updated on an ongoing basis.
If you would like to resign too, please post a comment below or email us.
Update: A follow-up article is here.
Sold! ConHome & PolHome valued at £2.3m
Lord Michael Ashcroft spent £1.3 million pounds to buy 57.5% of ConservativeHome, Liberal Conspiracy can reveal.
That would value ConservativeHome, PoliticsHome and ConservativeIntelligence at around £2.26 million.
The figure was confirmed to Sunder Katwala by Freddie Sayers from PoliticsHome.
He said in an email:
The new company will receive a capital injection of £1.3m. It will enable us to improve and expand the site hugely and I am really exicted about it.
Today Andrew Rawnsley, a columnist at the Observer said he had resigned from PoliticsHome due to Lord Ashcroft’s majority-stake buyout.
More at Next Left.
Rawnsley quits PoliticsHome over Ashcroft
Andrew Rawnsley, the Observer columnist, has quit as editor-in-chief of the news aggregator site PoliticsHome.
He released a statement (via Next Left):
I have today resigned as Editor-in-Chief of PoliticsHome.co.uk.
Thanks to the dedication and flair of the team, PoliticsHome has been an outstanding editorial success. The site has attracted plaudits from many other media organisations and across the political spectrum.
That praise has been generated by its ground-breaking methods of surveying opinion at Westminster, Whitehall and beyond along with its impartial reporting of all strands of news and commentary.
It has been both professionally and personally satisfying to work with the talented people who have achieved this in the eighteen months since the inauguration of PoliticsHome.
I therefore greatly regret the decision made by Stephan Shakespeare, the chairman, to do a deal which places PoliticsHome under the ownership of Michael Ashcroft, the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. The site has been folded along with ConservativeHome into a new entity in which Lord Ashcroft is the majority shareholder.
I became Editor-in-Chief on the basis that PoliticsHome was dedicated to being a non-partisan site clearly independent of any party both editorially and financially.
It was essential for users of the site that they could feel absolute confidence in the political independence of PoliticsHome.
I do not believe that can be compatible with being under the ownership of the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party.
Politics Home have also issued a statement saying:
It will form a distinct unit within a new media company, owned jointly by Stephan Shakespeare and Lord Ashcroft, who will take a 57.5% stake in the holding company. ConservativeHome and ConservativeIntelligence will continue to be part of the same group of companies but as before they operate in completely different spheres and there will be no editorial crossover whatsoever.
PoliticsHome takes great pride in its non-partisan coverage, and its complete editorial independence. As before, Stephan Shakespeare retains the casting vote on the board. Freddie Sayers will continue to be Editor of the site, and Nick Assinder will continue on the editorial board. The news team will remain unchanged.
Sunder at Next Left adds:
I am asking PoliticsHome whether the amount invested by Lord Ashcroft will be made public. I am also putting the same question to Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome. This seems to me to be one small step in the direction of transparency. I will report back on any response.
Paul Sagar at Bad Conscience adds:
This all shows that the internet is being taken extremely seriously by top Tories, not just marginal geeks like Iain Dale and Paul Staines (who kid themselves that they are of profound political importance, but aren’t).
Ashcroft no doubt smells a profit. But just as importantly he thinks the on-line frontier is an important one for his party to fight on.When blogs cease to become the preserve of nerdy losers, and real power-players like Ashcroft move in, it matters.
The right is attempting to consolidate and extend its grip on the internet political discourse. The significance of such moves should not be missed by the left.
Watch: Yes Men spoof newspaper on climate
The Associated Press reports:
A day before a U.N. summit on climate change, an activist prankster group distributed copies of a fake newspaper mimicking the New York Post to draw attention to global warming. The front-page story in the newspaper parody Monday warned of “massive climate catastrophes” and “public health disasters.”
Volunteers for The Yes Men distributed the free parody outside busy commuter hubs in Manhattan and Brooklyn, including one of the city’s main train stations, Penn Station.
They also launched a website here.
Clegg will only have himself to blame
Yesterday, David Cameron wrote a piece for The Observer, making a pitch to Lib Dem voters to desert to the Tories join a ‘national movement that can bring real change’. After rattling off a list of areas (e.g. the environment, civil liberties, ID cards) in which the Tories and Lib Dems supposedly speak with one voice, he said there was “barely a cigarette paper between us” in various policy areas.
Responding to the Cameron article, the Lib Dems took the only path realistically open to them: angry denial. Sunny Hundal says that “Nick Clegg… to his credit, is not touching Cameron with a bargepole.”
But it’s not really a reason to praise Clegg that he rebuffed Cameron – he couldn’t have done anything else. Despite the pretense that he was offering genuine rapprochement, Cameron’s claim that, on many issues, there’s no difference between the two parties was really just code for: ‘Look Lib Dem voters, these days we cater to your pet issues too. So how about you find out what it feels like to be part of the winning side for a change, eh?’. That message was seen by the Lib Dems for what it was: profoundly threatening. Hence the vehement rebuttal.
The Lib Dems, though, would idiots if they didn’t see this threat brewing.
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