By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter With UKIP narrowly ahead of the LibDems with YouGov, there is much focus on how people are supporting the party and on which people are supporting the party but surprisingly little discussion about why people are doing so. I believe that research is likely to answer that last question […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Back from his overseas trip (for which the Prime Minister made an excellent defence in yesterday's Sunday Telegraph) David Cameron will today launch the Conservative Party's local election campaign. His key message is the one at the top of this post: "If you look at what Labour did to our […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter I don't know quite what he meant by it but Tory MP and climate change minister Greg Barker is quoted in today's Telegraph warning the party against adopting UKIP's “swivel-eyed rhetoric”. Perhaps he meant some of the rude speeches made by Nigel Farage? Anyhow, I agree with Iain Dale that […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter There's a difference between modernisation… Don Porter wrote in yesterday's Daily Telegraph that at the last election "the Tories not only failed to win over new voters but failed to win back more than three million who supported us in 1992". I have news on that score. Many of […]
By Paul GoodmanFollow Paul on Twitter Knowing one group of ethnic minority voters… Mohammed Razzaq died not long before I was selected as the Conservative candidate for Wycombe, so I never got the chance to meet one of the first Tory Asian mayors in the country. A wave of migrants left the part of Kashmir […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter We haven't heard much from George Osborne since the Budget but the Chancellor has broken cover today and he's very much in "je ne regrette rien" mode. He tells The Telegraph's Robert Winnett that Britain's newspapers may have been obsessed with the pasty and granny taxes but investors from overseas […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter We're cutting welfare bills. Reforming schools. Devolving power to local councils. Lowering taxes on business. Introducing democratic oversight of policing. And, of course, embarking on the longest period of spending cuts in British history. This is the impressive list of reforms that Downing Street trots out whenever they receive incoming […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Overnight we got the result of the referendum held in the parliamentary constituency of Thurrock on whether local people wanted a vote on Britain's membership of the EU*. Nearly 48,000 ballot papers were issued to local residents in a referendum initiated by the People's Pledge campaign but overseen by Electoral […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter In a speech launching the Welsh Conservatives' local election campaign today the Prime Minister will embrace the unpopularity of recent weeks and say that he has deliberately chosen to avoid the easy path. Instead he will say that he and the Coalition government are taking the tough decisions that will […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Earlier this week we asked 1,898 Tory members to assess the danger that 25 factors represented to the Tory chances of winning the next election. Members were asked to rate each factor on a zero to ten scale (zero for no danger to Cameron getting returned to Number 10 and […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter There's not many times that you wake up and are genuinely shocked by the news. This morning's by-election result from Bradford West is one such occasion. Without any knowledge of the seat I'm not going to rush to interpret George Galloway's landslide victory but over the next few days, weeks […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter Most Tory members (54% over 30%) agree with the statement "the Budget produced some bad headlines in the short-run but its overall effect will be to boost growth and that will be good for Tory chances at the next election". But if they think the Budget is a long-term boost […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter It was only two weeks that David Cameron and George Osborne were basking in the sunlight of Barack Obama's rose garden. Today they are living through the worst period of their time in government and they've just been warned by David Davis that they are at risk of becoming defined […]
By Matthew BarrettFollow Matthew on Twitter Since Peter Cruddas resigned as co-Treasurer of the Party in the early hours of Sunday morning, we've had a number of Conservative figures try to defend the government. By my count, we've had Francis Maude, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, making, by all accounts, a car crash appearance on […]
By Tim MontgomerieFollow Tim on Twitter After last year's Autumn Statement The Sun decided that George Osborne was the 'Tin Man'. The newspaper blasted the Chancellor's lack of boldness on growth. The occupant of Number 11 isn't getting any more popular in Britain's best-selling newspaper. Over the last 48 hours he's faced terrible headlines in all […]