Graham Brady Elected Chairman Of 1922

The 1922 Committee has been in the news a lot this week, particularly amongst the conservative press, after Cameron’s attempted putsch and subsequent retreat on the matter was followed by outrage from the party.

The problem occurred when the committee, which gives a voice to Conservative backbenchers, was forced to hold a snap vote on whether frontbenchers would be allowed to vote and attend meetings, although crucially the frontbenchers could vote on the matter. Unsurprisingly they won the ballot but the numbers who voted against the change suggested that most backbenchers voted against it. The speed of this vote indicated that Cameron wanted to give his ministers the vote before a crucial election for Committee chairman today, though after mounting fury within the party he realised that he was only helping to widen the rift within the party and backed down.

The result was that Graham Brady was elected Chairman today, who was the more right wing of the two candidates and not Cameron’s choice. This will deliver a blow to Cameron. However it is not the major upset that many people think. Brady, while not afraid to question and challenge Cameron when necessary, will not launch a war against him in which the whole Conservative Party will lose.

I would suggest that the biggest damage has already been caused by Cameron himself, in the way he has treated the party for the last four years and in particular the recent abandonment of core conservative principles in exchange for power in Westminster. The attempted coup is just the latest in a series of battles that Cameron has picked with his own backbench MPs.

If this government does split then it will not be as a result of the coalition falling apart. Indeed the Liberal Democrat and Conservative ministers, after years of squabbling and fighting, have suddenly realised that they’re actually remarkably similar and the speed in which they have joined together is both remarkable and frightening. It will be the split within his own party that Cameron needs to be watchful of. But his bully-boy tactics of trying to silence all discontent within the party (perhaps he is trying to emulate Blair again) will be the thing that could break apart the coalition.

The Surrender Of Power

I really don’t understand politicians. After four years of fighting to become Prime Minister, and destroying his own party in the process, some of Cameron’s first decisions are to devolve more powers to Holyrood and offer a referendum on devolving more powers to the Welsh Assembly. Of course he has no intentions on giving the country his promised referendum on the EU Constitution Lisbon Treaty.

I would expect a Conservative Prime Minister to support the Union (of Great Britain and Northern Ireland I mean) and therefore oppose any further devolution of power from Westminster. If anything I’d expect a Conservative PM to claw some powers back with the long term aim of dismantling the two assemblies. By giving up more powers we will now have a situation whereby Scottish and Welsh MPs are not voting on UK matters but on English matters, which is unacceptable. England is the largest nation in the Union and for it to be disallowed a say in the smaller nations governance but for those same countries to be allowed a say in the governance of England is preposterous.

Inevitably the English will become angered and demand only English MPs sit in Westminster and Scottish and Welsh MPs sit in their respective parliaments. This is one short step from the two countries deciding to go it alone and leave the Union. At the moment there is no major appetite for that to happen but it seems David Cameron is doing all that he can to fuel that, just like his Labour predecessors.

For once it would be nice to have a Prime Minister who actually cared about the country, as opposed to pursuing his own party-political agendas.

The Silent Tories

There is an excellent article on Eursoc today which points out the lack of triumphalism amongst Tories since the new government came to power. After all after 13 years in opposition, they have finally ousted one of the most unpopular governments in recent history. But the article quotes some members of the Lib Dem negotiating team telling of how eager Cameron was to throw out traditional Tory policies and realign his party to the Centre-Left.

Just days into a new Tory government there are already mutterings of unrest in the Conservative Party from those backbenchers who are unwilling to change their political alignment. In particular there are those hundred or so new MPs, commonly called Thatcher’s children, who will be unwilling to abandon the pledges they made to their voters when elected, particularly after being elected on a promise for change. MPs abandoning principles to grab on to power is clearly more of the same old politics. It will be interesting to see when the inevitable rift starts to appear within the Conservative Party, and whether Cameron can control it or whether it will lead to defections from the party and possibly the collapse of the coalition.

New Best Friends

Ever since the announcement about the new coalition government the papers have been fawning over Britain’s newest power couple. Most of the media are hailing the coalition as a huge success, and are confident it will remain intact, though most agree there will be some scrapes along the way.

I’m not so sure. There has been huge uproar from both parties’ activists over the arrangement. The Tory Right are fuming that so many concessions have been given to the Liberal Democrats: Not much remains of the Conservative manifesto. Similarly most Liberal Democrats are furious at Clegg cosying up to Cameron. I know of many who have said they will not vote for the party again and it will cause an exodus into the arms of Labour and the Greens. Clegg may have secured a massive amount of concessions from the Tories but most Lib Dems still think of the Tories as their natural enemies – forming a government with them is unthinkable.

So what are going to be the policies of this new government then? Well one of the first things to be announced by the coalition was fixed 5 year Parliaments, which was never discussed by the Tories or indeed any party that I know of in the run up to the election. It is a blatant attempt to hold on to power for a full 5 year term rather than face the possibility of being cast out again in another election that might have happened next year. This means that the multitude of voters who are unsatisfied with the current coalition government (which I think is fair to say no one even imagined let alone voted for) then they will not be given the right to vote again for another 5 years. I imagine this coalition being fairly rocky after the honeymoon period has worn off and already anticipate a Labour victory at the next election as voters abandon the Tories and Liberal Democrats.

The other big policy which has already been enacted is the scrapping of the planned third runway for Heathrow. They have also ruled out runways at Stansted and Gatwick. A new airport in the Thames Estuary, favoured by Mayor Boris Johnson, is not being considered at the moment either. The “green” argument for this is absurd. The aircraft will simply use other European airports that are big enough to take them. These aircraft bring a lot of revenue to the country. A third runway is estimated to bring in an extra 220,000 flights and £9bn to the UK economy. At a time when the economy needs everything it can get it seems madness to rule it out straight away without any sort of discussion.

A summary of some of the coalition’s policies are:

Tax Rises Despite a major focus of their campaign being the scrapping of the proposed rise in National Insurance contributions and cutting the deficit through spending cuts, the Tories have conceded a tax rise to the Liberal Democrats. Capital Gains Tax will be increased from 18% to a maximum of 40%. This will affect many traditional Tory voters.

Reform Of The Lords A committee will be set up to examine a wholly or partially elected House of Lords. I have already discussed the danger in reforming the Lords so I will not repeat myself. But I will say that although it was in the original Conservative manifesto I do not imagine that it will be that popular amongst traditional Tories. Labour has already taken a wrecking ball to our constitution and The Tories seem to want to knock down the remnants.

The EU This should be a highly contentious issue for the coalition, after all the Conservatives are meant to be Eurosceptic and the Liberal Democrats have always been Eurofanatic. But the coalition deal promises Britain will be a “positive partner”, which hardly seems to add up to Cameron’s promise of seizing back powers from Brussels. But then Cameron has broken his promises on Europe in the past and his façade as a Eurosceptic has been broken. In truth he is very much in favour of our membership of the EU and this could be an issue that splits the Tories.

Voting System This was the key concession to the Lib Dems, a referendum on the Alternative Vote system. The parties have agreed to allow each other to campaign for or against a change to AV. However this has still angered many Tories, particularly the right wing of the party. Many believe a change to AV will keep the Tories out of power for a generation so to concede a referendum on the issue is unforgivable for many.

ID Cards This will be one of the few popular policies, the scrapping of the planned ID cards.

Defence The main policy announced is that Britain will keep Trident though the Lib Dems have been allowed to look into cost-cutting measures. The big question for me is whether the Tories will continue their previous policy to scrap the 2 new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy and the Joint Strike Fighters for the Royal Air Force that will fly from them. Despite what our politicians would have us believe Britain is still a major world power with one of the best navies in the world, albeit much smaller after the savage reduction in numbers made by Labour. The new aircraft carriers are essential to maintaining and indeed extending Britain’s capability to project air power on the other side of the world at a moment’s notice.

Most of these policies concern me and I think will concern many Tory voters. I debated with myself for a long time whether to vote Conservative or not in this election. The outcome has made me glad I did not and I find myself in the surreal position of wishing that Labour had won this election, or at least formed a coalition government with the Lib Dems. At least then Cameron’s head would have been demanded and a new, real conservative would have been able to move the party away from the centre ground it currently occupies back to traditional conservatism.

Exit Brown, Enter ...

At last after months of pushing, prodding and failed assassinations, Gordon Brown has announced he will resign as leader of the Labour Party.

The timing of this seems significant to me as any possible deal with the Liberal Democrats is said to require the resignation of Brown to attempt to stifle criticism of allying themselves with a failed government. Labour will argue that Brown’s resignation will be proof for the Lib Dems that they are serious with their promises.

Of course many pundits still think that Clegg is close to an agreement with Cameron. I would be very much surprised if this is true as Clegg will require the support of his party who generally despise the Tories. With Brown out of the way they will look to Labour to see if they can get a better deal.

So who is likely to succeed Brown as leader of the Labour Party, and possibly Prime Minister? Well David Miliband is a name that has always been thrown about when talking about Brown’s successor. He’s one of the more popular members of the party (which admittedly isn’t saying much) and is a lot more photogenic than Brown was.

Mandelson has also been suggested before, but I get the feeling that he prefers pulling the strings behind the scenes. Besides if Brown’s successor did succeed him as PM that would cause enough of a stink, but for him to be followed by someone who has not even been elected as an MP let alone PM would cause huge problems for the legitimacy of the government and precede a drubbing at the next General Election.

There are other names like Alan Johnson or Ed Miliband floating around but David Miliband seems like the most likely successor. Whoever takes charge will have to deal with a lot of public anger if the Lib Dems decide to form a coalition with Labour, thereby bringing in another unelected Prime Minister after an election for change. It took Brown just over a year to reach the spectacular lows of popularity with Michael Foot, but his successor may have to start with the setback of even lower popularity.

Clegg The Kingmaker

As was predicted this has been a tight election and no party has gained an overall majority. The Conservatives secured the most votes but will be disappointed nonetheless, despite their talks of success, given the party’s high approval rating even a few months back.

However there have been some surprising results. Labour has been criticised for performing badly but personally I think this is a huge success story for Labour, bearing in mind that last year the Conservatives were miles ahead in the polls and some pundits were claiming that we could see Labour lose power for a generation. Instead, although 48 seats behind the Conservatives, they have a chance of clinging on to power if they can make a deal with the Liberal Democrats, which has already been dubbed a “Coalition of Losers”.

The other big surprise was a loss in votes for the Liberal Democrats despite a recent surge in the polls. Nevertheless because of the Conservatives failure to win an outright majority they have turned out to be the kingmakers in this election. Nick Clegg now has a difficult choice of who to support to form a government.

David Cameron has been trying to woo Nick Clegg much to the dismay of many members of the Conservative Party. A Conservative-Lib Dem coalition seems to be the option the media thinks most likely. However I’d be amazed if an agreement was reached. The key issue the Lib Dems would want in a coalition is a referendum on the voting system, but  the Conservatives would never allow that given that it favours both Labour and the Lib Dems. On other key issues like Europe there are vast differences between the parties and it would show how desperate Cameron is for power if he sacrifices some of his party’s key issues to the Lib Dems. Nick Clegg for his part would alienate many of his own voters who are anti-Conservative.

Clegg would have problems if he supported the Labour Party as well. After all his talk of change he will not want to be seen to be propping up a failed and unpopular government. However the party is much more in tune with the Lib Dems and have already spent the best part of a day promising the Lib Dems a referendum on the Proportional Representation system they so desperately want.

So I believe the most likely result is that talks fail between Cameron and Clegg and they turn instead to the Labour party for a coalition. This would most likely come with a demand for Brown’s resignation so that they can justify it as “change”. But this would leave us with a second consecutive unelected Labour Prime Minister.

We are going to see an interesting couple of days, with the media speculating on what’s going on in the Leaders’ private talks. Voters will have to wait at least a few days if not weeks before they know whether it will be a Labour or Conservative coalition running the country. Either way, any deal will likely prove unstable and we could see another election before the end of the year.

The Dawn Of An Identical Era

So tomorrow the country will go to the polls and decide the future direction of the country for at least the next year, depending on whether the Conservatives manage an outright victory or not.

This election has been hyped up by the media for so long now as the most important General Election since the war. The Expenses Scandal was meant to galvanise the public into making radical changes to the way this country is governed by punishing the three main parties. The old corrupt career politicians would be voted out and we would see the rise of the smaller parties.

This has not happened. Although there will be a huge exodus from Parliament of those who were caught with their hands in the public’s cookie jar, many of those caught up in the Expenses Scandal will carry on. And those that replace them are if anything worse. Nearly 30 Conservative candidates work for the PR industry and lobbying firms, and the story is similar across the other main parties.

Yet despite an early surge in support for the smaller parties, the three main parties have shored up their votes in time for the election. The only major change is that the Liberal Democrats and Labour have swapped positions in the polls. Much of the ‘vote for change’ vote has gone the Lib Dems’ way, and yet they have been crucial in supporting much of Labour’s legislation and have had as many problems with the Expenses Scandal as anyone else – the smaller numbers of those caught out reflects the smaller size of the party.

So whatever the outcome on Friday, the country is likely to end up disappointed by more of the same after the hope of change promised by so many people. A Conservative majority will see a government little different to the current one. A Hung Parliament will see back-door deals being made away from public scrutiny, and could even see Labour cling on to power despite likely coming third in the vote. Worse than that we would not even get Gordon Brown back in, as whatever happens in this election the party is likely to twist the knife in his back and bring in a new leader who none of us would have voted for. Sound familiar to the current government?

This new era will unfortunately be of more of the same old politics and self-serving politicians, the only change being the names of our political masters.