Tom Griffin (London, OK): It was as, as Janet Daley notes, a very traditional Conservative speech, and one which paid due obeisance to the legacy of Margaret Thatcher.  Yet David Cameron's conference address this afternoon also contained an interesting inversion of the rhetoric of the 1980s:  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's difficult to avoid the comparison with Mrs Thatcher in 1987: I think we have gone through a period when too many children and people have been given to understand"I have a problem, it is the Government's job to cope with it!" or"I have a problem, I will go and get a grant to cope with it!" "I am homeless, the Government must house me!" and so they are casting their problems on society and who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Lord Trimble seems to have caused some jitters in the Ulster Unionist Party with his suggestion that the Conservatives will fight every seat in the UK at the next general election.  Is he hinting that the talks between the two parties may lead to a full merger? Not everyone in the UUP would be happy about that prospect, as the lively comments thread over on Three Thousand Versts indicates. In an interview with the BBC's Mark Devenport, David Cameron has admitted that the talks face some difficulties. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Over at Comment is Free, Labour MP Jon Cruddas argues that the Conservatives' emphasis on fixing Britain's 'broken society' is at odds with the party's commitment to free market neo-liberalism: New Labour has not been able to exploit these contradictions due to its tone-deaf language, its one-dimensional take on Cameron and its own outdated political economy. While its centralising instincts and micromanagement of people have allowed the Conservatives to strike a chord with their criticism of state control. They have been able to portray state intervention - which has to be part of any redistributive politics - as an undesirable intrusion into people's lives. James Graham believes that Cruddas and his Compass colleagues are the coming force within the Labour Party, but that they have failed to overcome their own 'centralising instincts.' Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): David Cameron has been quick to react to the nationalisation of Bradford & Bingley today, but the progress of the credit crunch leaves him with a more complicated task than he might have anticipated a few weeks ago. Today's poll for the Sunday Telegraph provides more evidence that Gordon Brown's 'no time for novices' argument' has gained some traction. Andrew Rawnsley argues in his Observer column that the Tories have been caught flat-footed by recent events and need to raise their game: Just a few weeks ago, Mr Cameron was planning to leave Labour to stew in its unpopularity and keep the substance to a minimum at his own conference. He won't get away with that now. The country looks for seriousness from the man who wants to be its Prime Minister. If he doesn't have any answers, then David Cameron really will find himself on the conference stage without any clothes on.  

The following article originally appeared in the e-book Is the future Conservative? edited by Jon Cruddas MP and Jonathan Rutherford, produced jointly by Compass, Soundings and Renewal. Phillip Blond (Lancaster, University of Cumbria): The Conservatives are now in a position to define a post-neoliberal direction for Britain. There is nothing left in the left. The liberal left is now dominant; and by any objective ascertainable measure this ascendancy has been a miserable and manifest failure. Inequality is approaching levels last seen in the Edwardian age, social mobility is at pre-war levels, and ordinary workers are getting a lower percentage share of GDP than they did under Macmillan. Everywhere the economy tends to the monopoly benefit of the very few at the expense and dispossession of an increasing many. Furthermore, Labour has pursued ineffective authoritarianism at every opportunity, including its attempts to end habeas corpus and recapitulate the power of the executive over judicial and civic authority - not least, perhaps, because of its clandestine cooperation with foreign powers in acts of torture and extraordinary rendition. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Next week's Tory conference in Birmingham will no doubt have the special buzz associated with what many see as a party on the path back to power. The new e-book Is the Future Conservative? (pdf) edited by Jon Cruddas and Jonathan Rutherford provides some timely insights into where the party might take the country. Alan Finlayson's interview with Oliver Letwin, From economic revolution to social revolution, highlights an interesting difference of emphasis with the Thatcher era.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The Guardian brings us news of the latest edition of Progress magazine, in which Skills Minister David Lammy makes Labour's latest attempt to develop a line of attack against David Cameron: The truth is that the Tories' change in language has touched a nerve, reflecting a big gap in our own political narrative. Yet beneath Cameron's rhetoric lies the basic philosophy that failed Britain in the past. The Tories demand responsibility without offering support; they appeal for fraternity without any real belief in equality; they have finally noticed 'society,' but remain implacably hostile to the state. Over at Comment is Free, David Marquand suggests that the Tory leader won't be so easily pinned down Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, OK): Shadow chancellor George Osborne launched a bold attack on one of Labour's traditional strengths in The Guardian today, charging that the gap in life expectancy between rich and poor in Britain is at its widest since Victorian times: When it comes to developing a policy agenda that delivers fairness and social justice, the Conservative party is leading the political world away from the target-driven, top down, statist approach that Miliband pioneered when he ran the Downing Street policy unit. That approach is failing because it relies on a flawed assumption that only the state can guarantee fairness. Read the rest of this post...

James Graham (Quaequam Blog!): That is certainly the conclusion of Lib Dem blogger and New Statesman columnist Jonathan Calder: "It is now clear that Davis's political suicide bombings damaged his career and - far more important - has made it easier for the enemies of liberty in the Conservative Party (a club with a large and thriving membership) to prevail. "Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity." Why this conclusion? This week the Conservative Shadow Home Secretary has announced proposals to make it easier for the police to access surveillance powers. Reading Davis' campaign website you could certainly be forgiven for thinking that he was opposed to such measures. The key word that Grieve is keen to emphasise is "proportionality," yet there is already growing evidence that the existing RIPA regulations allow public bodies to monitor the public in a completely disproportionate manner. These are powers which are currently being handed out to councils on the nod, for goodness' sake; just how can the police be said to be restrained?  Surely you don't have to be an anti-police paranoiac to think that these are precisely the sort of police powers which should be tightly regulated? I don't automatically condemn Davis in the way that Calder does; it may well be that his decision to resign was spurred by the fact that he had already lost this particular battle in the Shadow Cabinet. He has also given us a pretty colossal stick to beat Cameron with, should we choose to use it. But for the sake of his reputation and the faith in which hundreds of individuals put in him, he really ought to respond to this sooner rather than later.

Tom Griffin (London, OK): The DUP this week sought to undermine Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey by portraying his precedessor David Trimble as the real architect of the party's deal with the Conservatives. Even if that claim is exagerrated, Trimble's former advisor Steven King is a well-placed observer of Conservative-unionist relations. In the Irish Examiner, he suggests that the Tories' move away from English nationalism could actually assist a rapprochement with the SNP. George Osborne, the Tories’ finance spokesman and unofficial deputy leader, in particular, has been asking how it would look if the Conservatives were held responsible for the break-up of the UK, not least if the 1980s were to repeat themselves and the Tories were seen to provoke Scottish nationalist sentiment. Wouldn’t a partnership involving the whole UK (including the north), not just the whole of Great Britain, answer criticisms that the Tories are “the English party”? Furthermore, if the Conservatives were in government at Stormont with the nationalist party par excellence, Sinn Féin, wouldn’t that clear the way for new approaches in Edinburgh and silence doubts about the Tories’ commitment to devolution? 

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Conservatives' link-up with the Ulster Unionists is provoking a great deal of interest around the blogosphere today. Over at Brassneck, Mick Fealty sees the move as a sign that the Tories have finally developed a coherent response to devolution. From a unionist (in the broadest sense of that word) perspective the new arrangements may finally give both parties a purpose beyond the narrow protection of a political union that is no longer under coherent attack from outside, but in grave danger of losing coherence from within. Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): On a day when the Conservatives are expected to be also-rans in Scotland, David Cameron has delivered the clearest possible signal of his commitment to the union. In a joint Telegraph article with Ulster Unionist leader Sir Reg Empey, he calls for a renewal of the historic alliance between the two parties. As leaders we met at Westminster last week and agreed to set up a joint working group to explore the possibilities of closer cooperation leading to the creation of a new political and electoral force in Northern Ireland. That working group will report to us in the autumn Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): In the latest edition of Parliamentary Brief, Arthur Aughey looks at how Ken Clarke's Democracy Task Force has attempted to answer the English Question. Although sceptical on the details, he suggests that Clarke's approach reflects distinctive conservative principles that may point the way to a solution. English nationalism is still a mood, not a movement, if only because the Conservative Party refuses to mobilise it as such. The taskforce’s objective is to prevent that mood becoming a movement, confirming the Unionism of the Conservative Party, something David Cameron has taken every opportunity to confirm since becoming leader. If the report becomes party policy, which seems very likely, then the trajectory of Conservative thinking on the ‘English Question’ since 1997 is from constitutional maximalism to constitutional minimalism. It has gone from tentative support for an English parliament, through ‘English votes on English laws’ and Sir Malcolm Rifkind’s idea of an English grand committee,to this taskforce’s present recommendation of certified English bills being considered and voted on by English MPs only in committee and at the report stage.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The turnout in Haltemprice and Howden may have been better than expected, but it doesn't seems to have shifted the media narrative. The Independent's Open House blog asks whether David Davis' re-election was a hollow victory. The Telegraph confidently concludes that it was. The BBC's Robin Lustig argues that the hoped for national debate on civil liberties never materialised, while his colleague Nick Robinson continues to see Davis's relationship with David Cameron as the real story.  Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): Labour finally selected its candidate for the Glasgow East by-election last night, former Holyrood Minister Margaret Curran Conservatives should be hoping that Curran succeeds in holding off the SNP, according to former Telegraph leader writer Richard Ehrman.   Read the rest of this post...

Moderator: Cross posted from Normal Mouth's blog. Normal Mouth (Rhondda, blogger): At the turn of the nineteenth century the very idea of a “Welsh question” was largely inconceivable. This was not so in Scotland and Ireland, where a strong sense of nationhood was buttressed by the relative novelties of their respective unions with England. Welshness, by contrast was identified with little more than the backward retention of an ancient language, and a wild and uninviting hinterland. Little wonder that the likes of Bishop Basil Jones of St David's declared as late as 1886 that Wales survived only as a "geographical expression".* Industrialisation and Nonconformism gave birth to Wales’s national movement, and franchise reform gave it the means to press itself upon the consciousness of Britain's leaders. With a voice, Welsh sentiment was harder to ignore in Parliament. So emerged the radical Nonconformist wing of the Liberal Party, and through that those essential precursors of devolution - disestablishment, educational reform and Sunday closing. Read the rest of this post...

Bethan Jenkins (Neath, Plaid AM): It is somwhat timely for me to be writing about the Conservatives and their attitudes towards Welsh devolution in the week that Professor Richard Wyn Jones, Director of the Institute of Welsh Politics at Aberystwyth University, has written an open letter to David Cameron emphasising the fact that Cameron "cannot afford to avoid" Welsh devolution and its future progression - especially as he will, more than likely, be the next Prime Minister of the UK.   Read the rest of this post...

Tom Griffin (London, The Green Ribbon): The Crewe and Nantwich by-election will be concentrating many minds on the prospect of a Conservative government, not least in Scotland , where the Tories have only one MP. That position has led some to suggest that the Conservatives would be better off conceding the SNP's case and hiving off Scotland altogether. In a speech to the party's Scottish Conference, Cameron set his face against that approach:  Read the rest of this post...

Scott Kelly, a researcher for the Conservatives, explains why the party should back a written constitution. Scott Kelly (Parliament): I recently joined my students from New York University at a lecture by Professor Vernon Bogdanor on the subject of the British and American Constitutions. The leaflet advertising the event stated that “many in Britain are calling for a Constitution”. The author of this leaflet may be surprised to learn that we already have one. What we lack is a written, or more correctly, codified constitution – most of our constitution is already written in one form or another although it has never been codified in a single document. Although the leaflet may contain factual errors, it is true that the issue of a written constitution has moved up the political agenda. The terrorist attacks of last summer obscured the fact that constitutional reform was central to Gordon Brown’s “big idea”. The Green Paper issued during the first week of his premiership stated that "there is now a growing recognition of the need to clarify not just what it means to be British, but what it means to be the United Kingdom. This may lead to a concordat between the executive and Parliament or a written constitution." Read the rest of this post...

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): As OK readers will know (thanks Doug) Wendy Alexander has turned over her views on a referendum and has now challenged Alex Salmond to "bring it on". I'll leave her motivation and calculation to others closer to the scene. But I have just been reading a fascinating exchange over at ConservativeHome on whether the Tories should back a quick referendum now which they assume supporters of the Union will win, or reject the call as it will become a "neverendum" - ie just the next stage of an SNP campaign that will not take 'no' for an answer. Or, in other words just putting the question will be a kind of official recognition of its legitimacy and even the eventual likelihood that the Scots will say 'why not'. Read the rest of this post...