David Cameron

Tom Griffin (London, OK):Most commentators may see it as a straight fight between Labour and the SNP, but that didn't stop David Cameron making his presence felt in the Glenrothes by-election yesterday: 

"I think it is better for all of us to be in the United Kingdom. However, we won't solve it by frightening the Scots that they cannot make it on their own. I do not believe that. It won't win the argument. One of the first things I will do as Prime Minister is arrange to meet with the First Minister, whoever that may be, and work to further the benefits of the Union for people in Scotland."

Cameron has shown in recent months that he is determined that the Tories should be more than an English party. One aspect of this strategy has been to offset weakness in Scotland through a new relationship with the Ulster Unionists. There are signs that plan may be unravelling.

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.

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.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): As Catherine Reilly continues her terrific series of posts on Irish opinion in the run-up to their Irish referendum, the Sun reports the sad fate of the British political class. David Cameron says voters may not like it but they will have to lump it.

Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Normal Mouth has a piece on a Cameron premiership which appears in the Welsh weekly Golwyg. He reckons that a number of important issues are converging which will force Cameron to devote serious time to constitutional reform:

"With David Cameron on course to win the next General Election questions will now be asked of what kind of Prime Minister he will be. My prediction is that he will be the most constitutionally reforming of any - including Tony Blair.

Sounds daft? Consider the growing list of constitutional topics and crises in Prime Minister Cameron's 2010 in-tray. First will be the looming Scottish independence referendum. Cameron aides last week briefed that the plan was to make nice towards the SNP in a bid to blunt the supposed boost a unrepresentative Tory Westminster government would give the cause of independence. We can assume – we should at least hope - that there is something more imaginative in the pipeline, possibly in the guise of a separate Westminster initiative or an SNP side deal. Either way, Prime Minister Cameron cannot just smile and sit on his hands.

Tom Griffin (London: The Green Ribbon) Some of the proceedings from last week's Inside Devolution 2008 conference at the Constitution Unit are now available online.

They included a fascinating roundtable discussion on the performance of the devolved governments over the past year: Iain MacWhirter, Martin Shipton, and Robin Wilson provided insightful analyses of the political situation in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, respectively. (Audio here)

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:

David (Cambridge, Britology Watch): One of a number of themes that came out in the comments on Anthony Barnett’s First thoughts after Labour’s Debacle, was whether the leader of the opposition is, and whether he himself regards himself as, English or British.

Selina O'Grady (London, author): A letter from the council, a future Prime Minister and the absurdity of officialdom all made for an unusually political moment in my habitually social visits to the shops last weekend. I used to pine a bit for the Starbucks, delicatessens and boutiques full of taps, tiles and Victorian board games that the more fashionable bits of Kensington acquired. Here, we have Tastebuds for colesterol breakfasting, Dar al Hijab for Muslim fashions, Mick and John at Allen Foster Butchers, supplier of Quality Meats and Navneet Kishore at the newsagent/post office.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Over a year ago a Blairite told me he thought that David Cameron would be the Tory Neil Kinnock - the leader who would make his party electable but not get it, or himself, elected. I was unconvinced. But now that the Conservatives under Cameron are about to sweep to local election victories across the country I'm thinking that maybe there is something in it.. The trigger was getting the Political Home Index survey (which is of supposed insiders - declaration of interest, I'm one) on whether Cameron had what it takes. It was completed early this week and reported under the cryptic headline Cameron has not Sealed the Deal Here is the result:

Jon Bright (London, OK): The leaders of both major UK parties, in slightly different ways, promised some kind of "new politics" when they first assumed their respective offices. Brown promised revitalised governance, respect for parliament, an end to spin. Cameron promised an end to "Punch and Judy" politics, called for serious debate rather than points scoring. Today both, in different ways, have admitted abandoning those goals.

Peter Oborne (London, Daily Mail): Is Cameron making a decisive impact as an alternative to Brown? The Sunday Times have just given him a YouGov 16 pt lead in the wake of his family offensive including his ITV package when they let in the cameras to observe the Camerons with their children including their disabled son. Apparently he was not so happy about the picture of him and the pr man Alan Parker swimming together off the golden sands of South Africa, which the Mail on Sunday ran and OK picked up on. Given the lamentable performance of the government, there is still a feeling that Cameron is simply too like New Labour. Basically Cameron is emerging as the heir to Blair with a similar promiscuous affection for the super-rich and their creatures, such as Parker and the Freud pr agent who is married to Elizabeth Murdoch.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): According to today's Mail on Sunday this is a picture taken last month of David Cameron and Alan Parker enjoying a little time off in South Africa. Parker heads Brunswick the leading PR firm that once employed the Prime Minister's wife and his new Chief of Staff Stephan Carter also Gordon Brown is a godfather to one of Parker's children and Parker's sister works in the Cabinet Office where she polishes the PM's image.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Over on Liberal Conspiracy (cross posted from his own blog) Paul Linford has a strong piece about the vicious personalisation of attacks on Brown. He notes the build up and how he is called "strange" by Cameron in the Times. This is a strategy to rile him and see if he will explode in public. My guess is that if it works it is likely to rebound - see Hilary's tears. Brown maybe getting things wrong. But he is a serious political figure in a land steeped in superficiality - if that is not a contradiction in terms. Oddly enough this has proved one of his great advantages - and it goes along with being weird, for example reading books... But, what could be more strange, than modeling yourself on Blair? The fact is that to be a driven politician today demands a personality defect. My guess is that the Brits are still sufficiently not so Americanised that they can live with this, and indeed expect their PMs to be mad. Would you want the regular guy next door to be PM? Would you want a PM live next door? The proof of this is Thatcher. She was respected even though her popular vote always declined. But everyone knew that she was as strange as a bat out of hell. The trouble is that Brown does not have the panache to lean across the dispatch box and saw to Cameron, "I understand that you are concerned about strange people occupying high places in our public life - may I lend you a mirror."

Christopher Harvie (Fife, author and MSP): 'Don't mention the Woman!' could have been the silent sentence in David Cameron's 'ugly stain of separation' speech of Tuesday 11 December in Edinburgh. The days when 'TBW' was a Conservative-generated acronym for 'That Bloody Woman' are long past, but the Scottish Tory party is polling under a third of the UK level. Little improvement in its fortunes will result from Cameron's initiative.

Gareth Young (Lewes, CEP): Imagine if David Cameron made a speech in England in which he pandered to English nationalism by proclaiming "We will not stop fighting to meet England's needs". It's very difficult to imagine him doing that, but it shouldn't be, because I only paraphrase the very pledge he made in his speech to Scotland yesterday.

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): An important day in our immediate history. The Prime Minister touches down in Basra to announce the end of combat duties in Iraq, his key strategic separation from Blair, and then goes on to back the long haul in Afghanistan. At home Ed Balls prepares the roll out of his education strategy designed to show the Blairites how to deliver change. But this double advance of the government's distinction has the headlines stolen from them by a dramatic speech in Edinburgh from the leader of the opposition. Cameron takes up Brown's challenge on Britishness. Already, at Conservative Home there is important coverage of the direction being taken and those interested must also look at comments on it which honestly reveal the waterfront of Tory tension on this issue of issues. A relieved Tory MSP is quoted as saying that the prospect of real power had finally inspired the party's leader into grasping what it means to be the representative of British power:

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): There is a must read, two-page exchange of emails between Henry Porter and David Cameron in today's Observer. Henry P sets out the case against Labour with respect to what it has done over the last ten years to cut away at our freedoms and asks the Tory leader for his views. Cameron squirms yet concedes. It is clear he fears unpopularity and it is quite a coup to unveil the positioning of a likely prime minister in this manner. At a hinge point in the exchange, Cameron makes the classic politician's claim that, "Parliament has been the strongest defender of our rights over the centuries". Not true, of course. But read it for yourself HERE. Europe may get him too in the end.

Jon Bright (London, OK): One of the cleverer aspects of David Cameron's still relatively short tenure as Tory leader has been his use of 'policy reviews'. Commissioned by him, six teams of Tories went out to examine six different policy areas, and report back. Clever, in my opinion, because each of the six reoprts was meaningful enough to breathe some publicity oxygen despite the fact that none of their recommendations automatically turned into Tory policy - Dave can see which policies are going to be popular or not before fully committing to them (he's set up a website for just such a purpose).

Anthony Barnett (London, OK): Just back from Washington DC and awake to the end of the Today programme with Geoffrey Robertson QC and Jack Straw on the Putney Debates. Geoffrey drives home their radicalism as the early but contemporary origins of modern liberty and trial by jury, Jack throws in the peasants revolt, Geoffrey just manages to squeeze in that we are debating principles and welcomes the Prime Minister and Straw for doing the same and the programme is quickly drawn to a close. Debating principles is for another day!