What are the chances of the Coalition falling apart? Even less now
I was asked last night on LBC radio whether the Coalition is falling apart to the point they might call it off and got for an election before 2015.
Yesterday, even conservative commentators openly ridiculed the Cameron and Clegg ‘relaunch’. The wider public and the media will largely ignore it because they didn’t say anything new. At the Telegraph and Spectator they’re lamenting the duo looking tired and dispirited after just two years.
But shouldn’t growing anger within Conservative and Libdem ranks increase the likelihood of the increasingly dysfunctional Coalition falling apart? No, it does the opposite.
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Cam: ‘Ed Miliband had me on the run’
David Cameron texted Rebekah Brooks to tell her Ed Miliband had him “on the run” in messages revealed by The Times today.
Brooks is due to answer questions at the Leveson inquiry on Friday, and there is speculation that more damaging evidence revelations will be released.
Details of the text messages are revealed in a new book titled ‘Cameron: Practically a Conservative’, by Francis Elliott of The Times and James Hanning of The Independent on Sunday.
The book details how Mr Cameron and Mrs Brooks would often “pop round to one another’s houses” in south Oxfordshire.
The Times reports:
“The wider public might have liked to know too of the text message that Charlie Brooks told friends Cameron sent to Brooks at the beginning of the week in which she resigned, telling her to keep her head up and she’d get through her difficulties,” the authors add.
“Such contact came to an abrupt halt soon afterwards, with Brooks not wanting to embarrass Cameron and he wanting to be able to say, hand on heart, that they had not been in touch.
“But it was claimed that Cameron did send an emissary to Brooks to mitigate his sudden coldness towards her. The gist of the message was, ‘Sorry I couldn’t have been as loyal to you as you have been to me, but Ed Miliband had me on the run’.”
I suspect that phrase will haunt Cameron for quite a while.
The book is due to be serialised in the Times. It also says
- Two meetings between Mr Cameron and Mrs Brooks not included on the Downing Street list of such contacts.
- Mr Cameron is alleged to have asked the Met Police to open a review into the Madeleine McCann case in May 2011 as a favour for Mrs Brooks. The decision left police chiefs furious
It’s going to be an interesting week.
Why the media focus on race in the ‘child grooming’ trial?
A few years ago I was involved in a minor media bun-fight when I opposed attempts by Asian media and activists to prevent a film from being shown. A Channel 4 documentary titled ‘Edge of the City‘ was looked at child grooming and molesting of young girls by men of Asian origin in the town of Bradford.
It was pulled the first time because the BNP exploited it for upcoming local elections. The second time some Asian activists and Eastern Eye newspaper were still opposed on grounds it would inflame racial tensions.
It might have done, but it still needed to be shown, I argued at the time. You can’t sweep these things under the carpet just because people of different races are involved.
In fact a story I wrote at the time even prompted the BNP to organise a march on this issue, but I was unrepentant. It was a heinous crime and shouldn’t be hidden away.
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Play the Tory Right Blame Game!
Want someone to blame for the Conservative Party’s troubles? Will it be gay marriage this week or wind-farms?
Maybe gay wind-farms?
Hugo Hackenbush has made this special graphic just for Liberal Conspiracy to help you play the Tory Right Blame Game.
Don’t forget to follow the instructions.
You can follow Hugo Hackenbush here
‘Cameron will be a half-term premier’
Kelvin MacKenzie has a column in today’s Daily Mail.
Don’t worry, you don’t have to read through all the bile and anti-Scottish stereotyping. I’ve picked up the relevant bit for you:
I like a bet and sensed a killing was to be made when I saw a throwaway line in a Sunday paper. It said Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, was prepared to make public all the texts and emails sent between her and David Cameron.
Considering what might be in this correspondence, I asked Ladbrokes to give me odds on Cameron not being Prime Minister by the end of November. At 10-1, I wagered £1,000.
I always thought he would be a one-term premier; I didn’t realise he would be a half-term premier.
If I win, I will give my jackpot to the Help For Heroes charity. If I lose, though, I will have to stop reading the Sunday papers.
Unlikely, and Kelvin MacKenzie is hardly known for his observations, but still fun to think about.
Cameron to make firing easier in ‘battleplan’
The Sunday Telegraph has a list of Tory policies that will form part of David Cameron’s “battleplan” to rescue his flailing leadership.
Here is that sorry list:
* Make firing underperforming employees easier in an attempt to free up the labour market and create jobs.
* Extend flexible working to anyone with a job, in an attempt to overcome Tory unpopularity among women, which analysts warn could be a serious threat at the next election;
* clamp down on crime with a new “British FBI”, tougher anti-social behaviour measures and community sentences;
* not include a Bill on HS2, which is hugely unpopular with backbenchers. Nor will it contain measures to allow private universities, which had risked a damaging rift with the Liberal Democrats;
* avoid legislation to set a minimum level of foreign aid spending, a plan that has been derided by rebellious backbenchers.
There are more chances of us seeing unicorns than there are of these plans doing anything to create jobs.
In effect, Cameron is beating a retreat.
He knows he can do little about the economy so he has to give large concessions to the right on social issues instead.
Former Tory MP: angry MPs are “pond life”
The in-fighting continues apace today; I’m going to have trouble keeping up at this rate.
Former Conservative MP Jerry Hayes has launched a counter-attack on the ConservativeHome website and Nadine Dorries et al, calling them a trouble-makers and “lower than pond life”.
But the cult of Boris will be used and abused to attack Cameron. He will be the lightening conductor for every embittered, passed over, swivel eyed, green inker, True Tory, Brussels obsessed loon that inhabit the backbenchers by day and the blogosphere at night.
They are the ones, the Bones, the Hollobones, the Jacksons, the Priti Patels, the Pritchards and the Nadine Dorrieses of the political lower pond life who are desperate to destroy the Cameroons.
Of course, Number 10 regard them as a bit of a joke which irritates them even more, but they are given succour by Conservative Home who claim to be the voice of the grass roots but are really a pressure group with an agenda to bring us back to the Halcyon days of Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard. Hardly a week goes by without some survey about how the country is crying out for an in out referendum and how Cameron and his cronies need to listen. They are the ones who are encouraging back benchers to publish their own agenda for change, putting up a slate for the 1922 committee and want the Conservative party to engage with the Kippers.
Now all of this is splendid fun if you are running a sixth form debating society but corrosive if you are trying to keep in power.
Get the popcorn, light up the barbeque, call your friends and grab some chairs. This is going to be a lot of fun.
I said last week that Tory in-fighting was going to explode. I think it just has.
Nadine’s astonishing attack on Cameron
In the Mail on Sunday today, Tory MP Nadine Dorries doesn’t so much as sharpen her knife as much as take out a chainsaw and start hacking effigies of Cameron and Osborne.
She writes (safe link):
Osborne, however, taxes the pasties eaten by working men and women, cuts the 50p tax band – sending out the message that we are the party of the rich – does nothing to reduce the crippling price of petrol and gives the IMF a further £10?billion bung of taxpayers’ money to bail out failing European countries.
Cameron and Osborne should be aware: Conservative MPs will not sleepwalk into losing their seats, in the way Labour MPs did in 2010.
…
According to the rules of the backbench 1922 Committee, in order for David Cameron’s position as leader to be challenged, the chairman of the committee needs to receive 46 signatures from Conservative MPs to signal a vote of no confidence.I would guess that those signatures are already coming in and will reach 46 by Christmas.
If there is a god – please make this happen.
She said the same to BBC 5 Live last night. Listen below.
And on the ‘posh boys’ comment.
Osama Bin Laden: killing OK, lying bad
In 2010, Faisal Shahzad, the failed Times Square car bomber, was asked by the judge during his trial how he could attempt such an attack after he had just sworn a loyalty oath to the USA as a new citizen.
Shahzad told the judge that he had simply lied.
It turns out Osama Bin Laden did not think this was the right thing to do.
In an October 2010 letter to another top Al Qaeda leader, according to files released yesterday, Osama Bin Laden wrote:
Perhaps you monitored the trial of brother Faysal Shahzad. In it he was asked about the oath that he took when he got American citizenship. And he responded by saying that he lied. You should know that it is not permissible in Islam to betray trust and break a covenant. Perhaps the brother was not aware of this.
Please ask the brothers in Taliban Pakistan to explain this point to their members. In one of the pictures, brother Faysal Shahzad was with commander Mahsud; please find out if Mahsud knows that getting the American citizenship requires taking an oath to not harm America. This is a very important matter because we do not want al-Mujahadin to be accused of breaking a covenant.
In one sense I suppose it makes sense.
Nevertheless, there seems to be a deep irony in Osama Bin Laden being OK with indiscriminate killing of Americans, but not lying to them.
Say hello to a new era of Conservative in-fighting
The local elections results have so far been disastrous for the Libdems: they’ve dipped below 3000 councillors for the first time since the party was formed (ht @philipjcowley.
But they were worse for the Conservatives, who were largely shielded last year thanks to the AV referendum. According to the BBC the national vote share was Labour 39%, Tories 31% and Lib Dems 16%. That puts Labour up 10pts on its 2010 result and Libdems roughly higher than their current polling. Only the Conservatives come out worse.
The Conservative leadership will do everything to spin away their losses – but you could see major flashes of Conservative infighting last night.
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