The Debatable Land

Cameronian Unionism

A cynic might say David Cameron has an interest in a strong SNP. After all, a meaningful Tory revival in Scotland seems as far away as ever (though it would be closer if the SNP withered away) and this being so, the Tories have an interest in seeing the nationalists win Labour seats at the next election. In that limited sense then, to vote for the SNP is, in one respect, to express the preference that Cameron, not Gordon Brown be Prime Minister. And, of course, there are plenty of nationalists who think that a Tory victory at Westminster will be Scotland's opportunity. (More on this later). Perhaps. So, a temporary alliance of convenience? Well, only up to a point.

As I say, that's the cynical view of Cameron's comments in Scotland on Thursday. I think there's more to it than that. Campaigning in Fife, Cameron took a commendably broad-minded view of the Union. Of course, he said, an independent Scotland would not immediately or automatically be a basket-case:

"Of course it is possible that Scotland can stand alone – that is true. I just think it would be better off in the United Kingdom. Better off for all of us.

"I don't think we'd ever succeed in saving the Union by frightening Scots to say you couldn't possibly make it on your own. That's not the way I approach it. The Union to me is about generosity – we're stronger together because we share so much together."

The contrast with the kind of sneering, boorish Unionism that stresses economics and presumes some kind of crippling inadequacy that renders Scotland unusually incapable of ordering things is a) significant and b) encouraging. I think it probable that you can win the Unionist argument on economic grounds, but doing so demands that you sour Scotland in order to save her. The country is unlikely to be at ease if the constitutional question is settled by scare tactics. The idea that independence isn't feasible is both infantile and, worse, infantilising. It breeds a chippy sense of resentment in a country already more than well-stocked with the stuff.

No, the case for the Union - and it's a perfectly strong one - needs to be made in terms of culture, not economics. It's a question of temperament, of history, of, yes, values and culture and all the other stuff that's bundled together and covered by the Union Flag. Three hundred years is a lot of water under the bridge.

The other importance of the cultural argument for the Union is that it's a positive argument. Something that people can be proud of, not humiliated into supporting because without it we'll be left destitute in the streets, impoverished and even more malnourished than is currently the case. The economic argument comes too close to being a Unionism of charity; the cultural argument rests upon three centuries of a remarkable partnership. Not just a lesser Scotland without England but a lesser England without Scotland. And so on.

I think Cameron appreciates this. If so then that's to his credit. (And perhaps the influence of Michael Gove too?) It shows Cameron to be a bigger politician than is sometimes supposed and one, moroever, with a sense of the bigger and for that matter longer-term questions of Britain, the Union, Britishness and Unionism. 

UPDATE: As you might expect, Scottish Unionist has more.

Lessons from a Tory Revival

At Culture11 today, I've a piece offering, however impertinently, some advice to the Republican party.That is to say, I suggest five lessons they could learn from the Conservatives' revival in Britain. The extent to which they are applicable, let alone replicable, in the United States, may differ of course. But they are notions, not policy prescriptions, broadly summarised as:

1.  The Base is Not Enough
2.  The Elites Matter
3.  So do Ideas
4.  When the Electrate Moves, You Move
5.  Atonement Needs to be More than Rhetoric; Or, Time is Not Enough

Check the rest out here.

The Littlejohn Vote

As expected, David Cameron's speech has been well received. In the Telegraph, Iain Martin says this was the moment Cameron "came out as a Conservative".  Indeed so. But amidst the sobriety and the resolution, there were moments of populist blue meat too. The BBC's mini-focus group particularly loved this passage:

For Labour there is only the state and the individual, nothing in between. No family to rely on, no friend to depend on, no community to call on. No neighbourhood to grow in, no faith to share in, no charities to work in. No-one but the Minister, nowhere but Whitehall, no such thing as society - just them, and their laws, and their rules, and their arrogance. You cannot run our country like this.

It is why, when we look at what’s happening to our country, we can see that the problem is not the leader; it’s Labour. They end up treating people like children, with a total lack of trust in people’s common sense and decency. This attitude, this whole health and safety, human rights act culture, has infected every part of our life. If you’re a police officer you now cannot pursue an armed criminal without first filling out a risk assessment form. Teachers can’t put a plaster on a child’s grazed knee without calling a first aid officer. Even foreign exchanges for students…you can’t host a school exchange any more without parents going through an Enhanced Criminal Record Bureau Check.

No, when times are tough, it’s not a bigger state we need: it’s better, more efficient government. But even more than that we need a stronger society. That means trusting people.

Exactly. When you hear about this sort of stuff, you do not need to be a Daily Mail reader to scream "What is wrong with this country?"  I'd assumed that this nonsense about criminal record checks had to be made up. But no, it's actually true. Then again, why should I be surprised? This summer a school-teacher told me that "Health and Safety" regulations meant boys could no longer practice in the cricket nets absent adult supervision.

Cameron may have (mistakenly) disavowed libertarianism yesterday, but this is fertile territory for the Tories, appealling to the British version of the Leave Us Alone coalition. There are plenty of votes out there in Why-oh-Why land. Heck, even Tom Harris, Labour MP for Glasgow South, seems to despair of the culture his party's government has fostered. As I say, this is a subject the Tories should return to time and time again. Are you mad as hell? You should be. Are you going to take it anymore? You damn well shouldn't...

The Boy Dave Done Good

It's just like old times, ain't it? The Sun wading in behind the Tory leader. The paper's leader today has a headline Tory HQ would have written themselves: He's Ready. The Sun says:

DAVID Cameron finally stood up yesterday and showed what he is made of.

Gone was the show pony politician. In his place emerged a tough leader, a young but credible statesman with potent ideas for rebuilding our nation.

Mr Cameron said the words his party wanted to hear. He echoed their hero, Margaret Thatcher, calling for “strong defence, sound money and the rule of law”.

The Tory leader insisted there would be “no new dawns, no overnight transformations”.

“I am a man with a plan, not a miracle cure,” he said.

He addressed the concerns of many voters outside the conference hall — State meddling, the welfare culture, the explosion of “senseless, barbaric violence”.

But it will be the reaction of Sun readers that counts in the end.

This speech could have been lifted straight from a Sun editorial — from backing Our Boys on the front-line to mending Britain’s broken society.

Our readers want more classroom discipline, support for families and tax help for married couples. That, said Mr Cameron, is what they will get...

This was a powerful, coherent speech, addressing hard economic questions with sensible solutions.

Is he up to the job? The Labour-leaning BBC was not impressed . . . always a good sign.

Far from looking like a “novice”, Mr Cameron delivered the most confident and compelling speech of the political season.

“You can’t PROVE you are ready to be Prime Minister — it would be arrogant to pretend you can,” said Mr Cameron.

And he’s right. The Tory Party has come a long way under his leadership. There is much still to be done.

But with this nail-hammering performance, he showed he is more than qualified to give it a try.

Newspapers - not even the Currant Bun, despite it's claims otherwise - rarely define elections. But The Sun's backing can't hurt. And, more importantly, it's another sign that Gordon is leading Labour off a cliff.

PS: How effective was Cameron yesterday? Well, even Simon Heffer loved his speech.

Change We Can Believe In?

Ben Brogan suspects the financial crisis is an advantage for Gordon Brown. Perhaps it is. In the short-term. Make that in the very short-term. But in the medium to long-term it's another millstone dragging him to the bottom. Danny Finkelstein is, I believe, correct:

This election will not be fought in the middle of a crisis. It will be fought in the depressed aftermath that results from the crisis. The politics of these two moments are quite different.

In a crisis people will be small 'c' conservatives, clinging to experience. They fear losing what they have got. But the literature on loss aversion suggests that in the depressed aftermath, when things are already bad, they will take a risk, and plump for change.

So even if I were inclined to believe that the electorate are willing to give Brown a second chance - which I am not - I don't think Labour can win using experience against change.

David Cameron's speech to the Tory party conference was many things: sober, calm, astute, sophisticated. But most of all it was the kind of speech that can only be given by a politician who knows he's ready to win. He framed the Experience vs Change argument well, putting it in terms that anyone who has been following the American presidential election closely will understand:

But when it comes to handling a crisis when it comes to really making a difference on the big issues it’s not just about your values. There’s something else people want to know. When people ask: “will you make a difference?” they’re often asking will you – i.e. me – will you make a difference? You can’t prove you’re ready to be Prime Minister – and it would be arrogant to pretend you can. The best you can do is tell people who you are and the way you work; how you make decisions and then live with them...

Thinking before deciding is good. Not deciding because you don’t like the consequences of a decision is bad. Trust your principles, your judgment and your colleagues. Go with your conviction, not calculation. The popular thing may look good for a while. The right thing will be right all the time. Tony Blair used to justify endless short-term initiatives by saying “we live in a 24 hour media world.”

But this is a country not a television station. A good government thinks for the long term. If we win we will inherit a huge deficit and an economy in a mess. We will need to do difficult and unpopular things for the long term good of the country. I know that. I’m ready for that.

And there is a big argument I want to make – about the financial crisis and the economic downturn, yes but about the other issues facing the country too. It’s an argument about experience. To do difficult things for the long-term or even to get us through the financial crisis in the short term what matters more than experience is character and judgment, and what you really believe needs to happen to make things right.  I believe that to rebuild our economy, it’s not more of the same we need, but change. To repair our broken society, it’s not more of the same we need, but change.

Experience is the excuse of the incumbent over the ages. Experience is what they always say when they try to stop change. In 1979, James Callaghan had been Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and Chancellor before he became Prime Minister. He had plenty of experience. But thank God we changed him for Margaret Thatcher.

Just think about it: if we listened to this argument about experience, we’d never change a government, ever. We’d have Gordon Brown as Prime Minister – for ever.

Gordon Brown talks about his economic experience. The problem is, we have actually experienced his experience. We’ve experienced the massive increase in debt. We have experienced the huge rise in taxes. We experienced the folly of pretending that boom and bust could be ended. This is the argument we will make when the election comes. The risk is not in making a change. The risk is sticking with what you’ve got and expecting a different result. There is a simple truth for times like this. When you’ve taken the wrong road, you don’t just keep going. You change direction – and that is what we need to do. So let’s look at how we got here – and how we’re going to get out.

Was it a perfect speech? No. Did he have to be mean (and inaccurately so, to boot) about libertarianism? I wish he hadn't. But then again there's not a great constituency for libertarianism here. Still, overall, it was a fine effort and streets ahead of anything El Gordo (or, for that matter, John McCain) can offer right now. It was, dare one say it, a rather Thatcheresque speech, albeit Thatcherism retooled for the 21st century. Tough, but ambitious; sober yet audacious. Above all, it screamed: it's time for change we can all believe in.

David Cameron: Cad/Bounder/Rapist?

Classy stuff from Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour Party, today. On David Cameron:

There is something not quite right about him.

He's the kind of man your mother used to warn you about.

You know the kind of man I'm talking about.

He'll promise you the world. Promise to make all your dreams come true.
 
But if he got his wicked way with - you in the ballot box - you'd never hear from him again.

Well, all's fair and it's a rough-and-tumble sport ain't it? Still, you can take this as another sign of Labour's desperation.

[Via James Forsyth]

Cameron's Spiffing New Party?

Reihan:

If [David] Cameron embraced an agenda like the one outlined in Grand New Party, he would likely be accused of being a libertarian radical hellbent on destroying the most cherished parts of Britain’s welfare state.

This, alas, is true. Too bad. Which reminds me that I've been lax in not blogging about Messrs Salam and Douthat's new book. Will rectify that shortly. But not today, as the city calls. All of which is to say: buy the book. It's excellent.

PMQs: 42 Days Edition

Here's Cameron vs Brown at Prime Minister's Questions today.

Stick a Fork in Brown...

More and more, it seems that Gordon Brown's government becomes eerily reminiscent of John Major's hapless ministry. Each day brings a fresh wave of damaging stories that sink the government further into the mire, providing material for fresh bouts of recrimination and acres of still more devastating coverage. Major, of course, was more unfortunate in having a smaller majority and a more awkward squad of unhappy, self-centred backbenchers. In fact just about the last people to realise the extent to which the Tories were doomed was the New Labour leadership itself.

Still, the parallels remain strong. Exhausted? Check. Bereft of ideas? Check. A Prime Minister who becomes a figure of fun, not to say open mockery? The parliamentary party unravelling? Check. Local election meltdown? Check. Losing by-elections in previously-safe seat? Probably. "Unhelpful" sniping from the sidelines? In spades.

Why, just today, you have John Prescott calling Brown "annoying and prickly", Lord Levy saying it's inconceivable Broon couldn't have known about Labour's dodgy "loans for Lordships" programme and Cherie Blair complaining about how Brown was always "rattling the [Downing Street] keys" at the Blairs, reminding them their time was up and it was Gordie's turn to have a go at mismanaging the country.

But worse, much worse than this, is Andrew Rawnsley's devastating analysis of a 5,000 strong PoliticsHome tracking poll which demonstrates the extent to which Brown is toast:

The findings expose a level of contempt among the voters for the Prime Minister that must ring alarm bells in the head of every sentient Labour MP.

Respect for Gordon Brown has dropped so calamitously that only one in five voters now reckons the Prime Minister is doing a good job while three-quarters of them think he is doing a bad one...

It is not just the depth of this collapse that is stunning. It is the sheer width of it, the comprehensive shattering of his reputation in all the areas that matter to the public. On every leadership quality that is important, the Prime Minister is now regarded less favourably than David Cameron...

David Cameron is now seen as more competent, more decisive and stronger than Gordon Brown. Voters really can be pitiless when they turn against a leader. They also rate Mr Cameron as more intelligent, an especially wounding finding for a Prime Minister who has always liked to be thought of as clever.

In one of the harshest findings of this survey, fewer than one in 10 voters is willing to call him 'caring'. Fewer than one in 10 will even call him 'fair'. He is beaten in both those categories not just by David Cameron, but also by Nick Clegg, the leader of the Lib Dems.

Rawnsley's conclusion is especially notable, coming as it does from such an astute - and broadly sympathetic - commentator:

The brutal but inescapable truth revealed by this survey is that the voters do not want to change anything about Gordon Brown. They want to change absolutely everything.

Look, it's over. There is something tragic about this but, it's important to remember that, like Othello's or Macbeth's, Brown's downfall is deserved. It's a failure rooted in his own flawed character and grotesque ambition that have trumped his intelligence and "wizardry". He is hoist by his own petard.

Barring a miracle, Brown won't win the next election. But it's hard to see how Labour MPs can get rid of their Velcro Prime Minister and, frankly, perhaps pointless too since it's hard to see how the party could win the election that would, I suspect, have to follow the elevation of a second unelected Prime Minister.

Brutal

Actually, in the circumstances Gordon Brown may have done about as well as he could have at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday. But still, as this edited footage demonstrates, Brown was received a vicious flogging from David Cameron (start from the 2 minute mark):

Will the real Dave Cameron please stand up?

The British political and media classes are, naturally enough, obsessed with and fascinated by the American presidential election process. That leads to the temptation (always yielded to) of trying to find parallels betwene American politicians and their British counterparts (I also do this, obviously).

Sometimes, however, this has comical consequences. Thus this morning, Benedict Brogan asks if David Cameron is a British Jimmy Carter even as Fraser Nelson wonders if he's actually a British Barack Obama.

Now, in fairness both Brogan and Nelson are latching on to Cameron's efforts to "run against Westminster" and offer himself as an uncorrupted "agent of change". I suppose if you think the Tory glass half-empty you might see Cameron as Carter, but if it's half-full then Obama is an obviously more attractive comparison...

Changes in Murdochland

The BBC's excellent Nick Robinson speculates that Rupert Murdoch's decision to hand control of his european interests to his son James is more bad news for Gordon Brown:

the man formerly known as Britain's most powerful tycoon was personally, if not always politically, sympathetic to the prime minister. Rupert Murdoch admires Gordon Brown's personal morality and his commitment to hard work. What's more, initially at least, Murdoch Senior was not taken with David Cameron.

Not so the man we will now have to get used to calling Britain's most powerful media tycoon. James Murdoch does not share his father's admiration for Brown or scepticism about Cameron.

What impact will this have? Murdoch Senior recently claimed that he did not shape the opinions of the Times or Sunday Times but acted as publishers always have towards The Sun and the News of the World. So, could this be the day that "It was Dave wot won it"?

This seems quite plausible to me. The odds on The Sun endorsing the Tories - already shortening - just became tighter still. Of course, The Sun, bless it, isn't quite the force it was in, say, 1992 when it ran this election day splash...

Still, this move ain't chopped liver. As Robinson says, Murdoch's admiration for Brown stems largely from Brown's presbyterian commitment to the redemptive power of work in which methinks Rupert found traces of his own Hebridean grannie.

Tory dander is up (at long last)

Today's Tory poster for the election that never was:

Yesterday's Halloween poster is here.

Cameron vs Brown

Video of yesterday's assault on Gordon Brown. A friend emails:

By god, Cameron destroyed Brown. Michael Howard on the Newnight panel astutely pointed out that Blair would have made a self-deprecating remark that would have admitted the charge, but defused the pressure. It is so true. Remember Blair's remark about Cherie and the allegation that she shouted 'That's a lie' whilst watching GB's speech last year where he paid tribute to TB? Blair came out with the line 'At least I don't have to worry about her running off with the next door neighbour.' It admitted the fundamental truth, but killed the story dead.

They don't like it up 'em, you know

The House of Commons returned today with the first Prime Minister's Questions since the party conference season. And, as expected, it was a corker. Sometimes the Punch and Judy show remains great entertainment - and provides a telling snapshot of the respective health of the major combatants. This was one of those occasions.

The first Tory to ask a question drew attention to his local council's excellent recycling record and asked the Prime Minister if he fancied visiting "some of our bottle banks". Ha! Then it was David Cameron's turn: could he capitalise on the Prime Minister's embarrassment over the election-that-never-was and his pilfering of Tory proposals on inheritance tax?  It turns out he could. Cameron pummelled Gordon Brown mercilessly. Brown didn't like it one bit and his protestation that he would take "no lectures" from the opposition leader looked petulant and weak.

Among Camerons' jabs:

"You are the first prime minister in history to flunk an election because you thought you could win it."

"Do you realise what a phoney you now look? Have you found a single person who believes your excuses for cancelling the election?"

[The Prime Minister] should "find a bit of courage, get a bit of bottle, get into his car, go down to Buckingham Palace and call that election".

"For 10 years you have plotted and schemed to have this job, and for what? No conviction, just calculation. No vision, just a vacuum.

"How long are we going to have to wait before the past makes way for the future?"

You can watch the whole performance here [Video and Audio News: Prime Minister's Questions for the full half hour]. You can tell how bad it was for Brown by the glum faces on the Labour benches. Cameron's challenge is to keep the pressure on through the winter, hitting Labour again and again. Brown's reputation has taken a serious dent, but it's still roadworthy.

PS: I noticed that, unusually, Alex Salmond was present (he remains MP for Banff and Buchan in addition to his duties as First Minister) but, depsite wanting to be, was not called. A deliberate snub from the Speaker, Michael Martin? Quite possibly given that Mr Martin is a Glasgow Labour MP and no friend to the SNP.