This week alone we have seen notable noises either from or about three of the leading contenders: Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Theresa May.

Of the three, the Education Secretary is the more talked-about than talking. He secured the prized spot on the front cover of the Spectator, in which free schools enthusiast Toby Young gave fulsome praise for Gove’s revolutionary zeal, and declared him “the best leader Labour never had”. The obvious implication is that the Conservatives should give him the job their opponents would, were their situations reversed.

It is perhaps no coincidence that on the day the Spectator came out, Theresa May addressed the Reform think tank with a notable speech. She advised on the character of Conservative spending cuts, the form public services across the board should take and even on the presentation and communication of Conservative policies.

This is not the first time the Home Secretary has publicly reached out beyond her own brief to mull the future direction of Conservative thinking, but it is one of her most comprehensive efforts at doing so.

There were messages for party loyalists about the party’s record since 2010. There was warm praise for colleagues such as Francis Maude, “the Government’s star reformer”.  Tellingly, there was an emphasis on the achievements of “David Cameron’s Government”, a note of reassurance that would not have been felt necessary in a less ambitious speech.

But May also made admonitions. Ministers should have the courage of their convictions, she urged, and resist any temptation to wobble. Importantly from the woman who coined the term “the nasty party”, she also called on all Conservatives to redouble efforts to reassure the public of their motivations and values. It was a speech shot-through with a message of experience, pragmatism and wide-ranging ambition.

The Mayor of London is perhaps most often associated with ambition, if not always with pragmatism, but he completes the set politely jostling each others’ elbows behind the PM.

The launch of his 2020 Vision for London on Tuesday saw Boris presenting himself in a new light. The quirky anecdotes and memorable flourishes of phrase were all there, as ever, but they were marshalled in order to present a new, practical BoJo.

The plan for London’s future was, he said, published later than planned because he had written it all himself – and in the absence of anyone else able to write in his unique style we have no reason to doubt him.

In which case, this is a clear Johnson attempt to answer the looming question about his leadership ambitions: can he do the serious stuff as well as make us laugh? Here was detail on how London’s education system, transport network, infrastructure and economy should work in future, and how the city should interact with the rest of the UK.

No candidate has the title of next leader of the Conservative Party in the bag as yet. Troublingly for Boris, yesterday Theresa May overtook him as the Ladbroke’s favourite.

As open as the race may be, that it is happening at all points to one fact: numerous senior Conservatives still believe a vacancy will come up after the 2015 General Election.

By Mark Wallace

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Paul Goodman: The Euphrates is running through David Cameron’s drawing room “The Times reports that the American Government is now prepared to send small arms to Syria.  The apparent reason is the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian Government, but that these have been deployed has been known for some time. The real reason is doubtless that the Obama administration is spooked by the prospect of Assad winning the war.  His forces have taken Qusair.  They are poised to take Aleppo.  Britain and France have been pushing to arm the rebels. The question now is whether the Cabinet and Parliament will and should agree to Britain doing so.” http://is.gd/U05iB5

Jesse Norman MP: It’s time for the Co-op to ballot its members about its relationship with Labour “There’s one other fact about the Co-op which is less often mentioned—one “say it ain’t so” fact which undermines this whole great picture, and indeed raises issues of serious public concern. For the Co-op is not just a retailer; it is a major political player in its own right.  Over the past ten years it has given £6,187,788 to a British political party, the Co-operative Party, and a further £355,857 to the Labour Party.  There are currently 32 Co-operative Party MPs in the House of Commons, 17 Co-operative Party Members of the House of Lords.  It has five MSPs, nine AMs, and hundreds of councillors around the country.” http://is.gd/Qw8Q20

Lewis Sidnick: First, fewer Special Advisers. Now, a record number. But where’s much of the growth? Step forward, Nick Clegg… “While there has been growth in the number of advisers, the new intake haven’t added to the old crowd. The turnover rate is extraordinary, even for political sector jobs. Of the 20 advisers in Cameron’s office in June 2010, just five remain today, a 75 per cent turnover rate that would send alarm bells ringing in the Human Resources Department of any private organisation. Of the four advisers who started in Clegg’s office, just one remains today.” http://is.gd/8n4yrI

Mark Wallace: Should we object so much to the “postcode lottery”? “We should embrace variation by postcode, or even more locally than that. We should encourage the state to recognise and act in response to our individuality rather than have it dish out what it believes the average family, street or town needs. It is a happy fact of the human condition that the average person does not exist – why should government set out to serve a statistical freak rather than treat the people as we really are? Instead, we should acknowledge that if the “postcode” element of the popular gripe is actually desirable, then it is the “lottery” that we should object to.” http://is.gd/W75ND2

Andrew Gimson profiles Samantha Cameron: A model professional in Number 10 “The more one examines her performance, the more one sees the professionalism which underpins it. Mrs Cameron’s upper-class background in no way debars her from being organised. A woman who knows her well says: “If you ask her, ‘Have you got a Phillips screwdriver?’ she not only knows exactly where it is, but she asks you, ‘What size would you like?’” Mr Cameron agrees with this. As he said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in 2008: ‘Samantha could organise the invasion of Russia: if she had, they’d have made it to Vladivostock.’” http://is.gd/pw3XjP

Syed Kamall MEP: How to get the banking system we want “The response of politicians to the financial crisis has been like a fight breaking out in a bar. Legislators have preferred to hit those they have always wanted to hit (hedge funds and private equity) rather than those who started it (the banks and regulators that failed). Their actions over the past four years have done little to restore confidence and little to kick-start growth.” http://is.gd/D4facR

Paul Goodman: Select Committee Chairmen should be barred from having outside interests “The Yeo row is a reminder that Select Committee Chairman are now paid by the taxpayer and, in most cases, elected by their fellow MPs.  They thus have a legitimacy they didn’t have previously, and are receiving taxpayers’ money to help fund their role: all in all, they are now doing a job.  The case for banning conflicting outside interests has now become overwhelming.” http://is.gd/wUZk2m

By Mark Wallace

I mention nuclear power because although Michael Fallon, the new Energy Minister, is singing the same song as Ed Davey, the Secretary of State (more or less), the question of how the lights will be kept on is still unresolved.  Fallon has moved deftly to repair some of the damage done to the coherence of the department by the open war between his predecessor, John Hayes, and Davey himself.

Hayes was famously sent to the department by David Cameron to deliver a win for “our people” on wind farms.  His opponents say he was swiftly moved out of it by the Prime Minister because Downing Street never intended the Minister to have a public quarrel with his boss.  His supporters say that he laid the groundwork for a settlement on onshore wind, and was need by Cameron in Number 10 as a parliamentary fixer.

Either way, Fallon has found a way of squaring his department’s support for wind farms with his party’s opposition to them.  Taking a leaf out of the book of Nick Boles on housing, he is offering to pay compensation to local people for the building of wind turbines – if they’re willing to take the money, that is.  There are also signs that he and Davey are beginning to get their department’s ducks in a row.

Earlier this week, the department saw off an attempt by Tim Yeo, the Chairman of the Energy Select Committee, to write a new decarbonisation target into the energy bill.  Fallon believes he has a framework for the regulation of fracking that will work.  And the Conservatives are on the attack over energy prices.  This week, Grant Shapps released an infographic claiming that energy users would pay £61 extra under Labour.

But that question about nuclear lingers.  Fallon told the House Magazine this week that the Government is not dependent on EDF energy for the first new generation nuclear station at Hinkley Point.  “We have Hitachi ready to come in, they are next in line. So we are not wholly dependent on Hinkley. We would like to do the deal with EDF but we are not going to do it at any price,” he said.

He added that “It’s a very complex negotiation and we are inching closer but we are not quite there yet.”  But Charles Hendry, the former Energy Minister who once held the nuclear power brief, wrote on ConservativeHome this week that “nuclear may not happen on the scale hoped for”.  As I say, there’s a way of squaring the circle on the department’s calculator.  But it’s far from certain that the nuclear capacity required will ever arrive.

By Paul Goodman

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Lord Ashcroft: We can’t afford to waste another six months
“All in all, the first half of 2013 represents a time of stagnation that we could hardly afford. We have a good case to make on many of the policy areas on which we have lost ground, including crime, immigration, welfare reform and the economy. But people will only hear that case if we use the available air time to make it. The latest round of parliamentary scandal will make people all the more resistant to what we have to say, and the spending review later this month makes it all the more necessary to show we are doing what people expect of us. There is no more time to waste.” Read more: http://is.gd/Wy06ss

Julian Lewis MP: The Government mustn’t arm Syria’s opposition behind Parliament’s back “There is no appetite at all for British military intervention in Syria. Parliament is not being obtuse by reflecting public opposition to a dangerous policy. We must put aside West Wing fantasies about toppling dictators and recognise the existence of evil forces on both sides of this atrocious conflict. To assist our enemies to obtain sarin nerve gas would be suicidal. To bypass Parliament by refusing a vote would be intolerable. To do so during the Recess would be unforgiveable. Let us hope David Cameron is getting the message.” Read more: http://is.gd/D9KTAT

Andrew Gimson interviews James Wharton MP: “It would be hard to think of a more reasonable Tory to try to steer the Referendum Bill onto the statute book.” “Mr Wharton was born in his constituency and went to school there, at the independent Yarm School, before reading law at Durham and qualifying as a solicitor. “I’d have been 16 when I joined the Conservative Party. I got more involved in my local association in Stockton, became chairman of it and was heavily involved in the 2005 general election campaign. I liked the on-the-ground local campaigning because I understand the area: because it’s my home, I like to think I understand the people. I was fortunate enough to be selected as the prospective parliamentary candidate in 2007 and was then able to run a campaign as I wanted.” Read more: http://is.gd/FMGtHD

Mark Wallace: Five ways to sell the cuts 1) Call them what they are: Be brutally honest – if a function of the state is being cut, say so…2) Put in the groundwork: The message needs to continually be sent out that waste can and should be eliminated…3) Look after the pennies: Getting into the Big State habit of treating fortunes as though they are chickenfeed is unhealthy if we want to maintain a low-tax conservative outlook on life…4) Do it for good, not just for now: “We should be clear that balancing the books is a worthwhile aim, long-term”. 5) “This isn’t just about the OBR, the IMF or the OECD. It isn’t just about forecasts and dips, or billions and trillions. It is about our country’s future, and the quality of our children’s lives.” Read more: http://is.gd/jP4yVP

Paul Goodman: Get ready to register yourself as a lobbyist. Or risk a fine. Or prison. Or maybe both.“If the sacred cause of transparency still floats your boat, so be it.  But don’t pretend that it would stop Parliamentarians who are determined to behave badly, because it won’t.  Nothing will.  Only Nick Clegg and his fellow Liberal Democrats could possibly believe otherwise.  Proposals for a statutory register of lobbyists will provide the political parties with enormous fun.  (David Cameron is using the revival of the idea as a means of having a crack at trade union funding.)  But if it ever happens, the Daily Telegraph and Panorama’s sleazebusters will still be in business afterwards, until the end of Parliament – indeed (who knows?) until the end of time.” Read more: http://is.gd/czD1SP

Natalie Elphicke: Taxpayer’s HomeBuild – time to unlock the housebuilder in all of us “Taxpayer’s HomeBuild could work as follows: The taxpayer takes all the private sector risks of development – site, design, planning, finance, build and sale. Once built, and sold, the taxpayer pockets the profit, tax-free, provided the house has a sale value of less than £250,000. Stamp duty is paid in the usual way by the purchaser. One house per taxpayer, with a value up to £250,000. We have thousands of hectares of public land. The availability of that land to support the Taxpayer’s Homebuild programme would help to prevent a land purchase bubble. In addition, you could expect commercial sites to be sub-divided to provide opportunities for people to deliver Taxpayer’s Homebuild quickly.” Read more: http://is.gd/otQtIY

Charles Hendry MP: Why we shouldn’t put a decarbonisation target in the Energy Bill this week “One of the key decisions for Parliament now is to decide whether we need to include a formal decarbonisation target in the Bill.  As an enthusiastic supporter of a low-carbon economy, I don’t think we do. The case for the target is less about new low-carbon electricity generating plant – as there are other specific contractual measures in the Bill to deliver this – and more about the vital need to secure industrial jobs in the UK to build that infrastructure. It is good for Ministers to challenge people to raise their aspirations and ambitions, and targets are part of that process, but they can only be relevant if we know how to meet them.  As a Minister, I always questioned targets where there was not a ‘roadmap’ for delivering them” Read more: http://is.gd/sSreqI

Peter Hoskin: Before making spending decisions, the Government must learn to count “But the most significant concern those doing the controlling. Although the Coalition has done well to publish business plans for each department, there could still be more clarity about what they hope to achieve by each policy. Perhaps the time has come for what the CSJ calls, after the Office for Budget Responsibility, an “Office for Spending Effectiveness”. The Cabinet Office is, it’s true, already snuffling in that direction with it’s “What Works Network”, but, for now, that only covers four policy areas. If George Osborne is to deliver more savings, and deliver them wisely, then he’s going to need more support along Whitehall – and a new abacus.” Read more: http://is.gd/16NiM4

The murderers of Drummer Lee Rigby announced that they wished to “start a war”. Cameron’s task is to avert that war by doing everything he can to strengthen social cohesion. He has to represent the overwhelming coalition of decent, law-abiding people, who are revolted by what happened in Woolwich, and are not prepared to have British politics conducted in this manner.

The politics of national consensus come naturally to Cameron. He possesses, thanks to the Anglican tradition in which he was brought up, an instinctive sense of how to stress the things on which all reasonable people can agree, however much they may disagree on other topics.

The initial response of Muslim organisations has been helpful. They have learned, partly at Tony Blair’s urging, to condemn without delay such unpardonable acts of terror. Cameron has encouraged them in their moderation by saying: “This was not just an attack on Britain and on the British way of life, it was also a betrayal of Islam and of the Muslim communities who give so much to our country. There is nothing in Islam that justifies this truly dreadful attack.”

But as Cameron well knows, he is going to have to be tough as well as conciliatory. For there is a substantial body of British opinion which will reject Cameron, and indeed the entire political class, if our leaders appear to stress the virtues of Islam at the expense of everything else. The British public is tolerant, but is not so limitlessly willing to make concessions as some liberals would like to believe.

Cameron’s early decision to encourage members of the Armed Forces to continue to wear their uniforms or other identifying items when outside barracks is a sign that he has the right instincts about this. We cannot cringe in front of a few terrorists.

The Prime Minister must not appear to exploit this situation for personal political advantage. It was a minor lapse of taste for him to say at one point, “I know from three years of being Prime Minister”. We all know he has acquired a certain amount of experience in the top job.

But as long as he observes that self-denying ordinance, Cameron now has a chance to expound and exemplify some of the best aspects of British patriotism. He rightly hastened to praise Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, the Brownies leader who with extraordinary courage and presence of mind sought to give first aid to Drummer Rigby before engaging the killers in conversation.

This horrific event is an occasion when we need leaders who help us to feel proud of our nation, its constitution and its peaceful ways of resolving disputes.

In the struggle against terrorism, the upholding of freedom under the rule of law is indispensible. The effect of the terrorists should be to make us value all the more the way we usually do things.

Liberal-minded people nowadays tend to suspect anything which might be described as “nationalism”. But when Ed Miliband conceived the brilliant idea of stealing the Tory idea of “One Nation”, a theft carried out in his party conference speech last autumn, he was recognising the need to develop a healthy nationalism, which unites different classes and indeed people from different religious traditions.

Miliband has not yet managed to fill the words “One Nation” with much content. But whether or not one uses that term, it expresses what we need to be.

UKIP has risen to political prominence because the long-established parties have become less good than they used to be at making people feel proud to be British. Beyond UKIP lies a susceptible part of our nation which feels deeply insecure, and whose insecurities are liable to be expressed by attacking people of immigrant descent. If conventional politicians fail to reassure these worried patriots, then hooligans who delude themselves into believing it is patriotic to attack Muslims will seize the chance to portray themselves as the true defenders of the nation.

In crude political terms, this attack presents Cameron, in particular, with an opportunity. He can be the leader who unites the nation in the face of adversity: who with calm resolution, rather than panicky over-reaction, gives expression to this country’s essential decency. If the Prime Minister can do that, he will oblige everyone else to follow him.

By Andrew Gimson

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Paul Goodman: One of the terrorists said: “We want to start a war”. They mustn’t succeed. Attacks on mosques play their game. Governments must recognise that there are limits to what policy can achieve.  Withdrawal from Iraq and coming withdrawal from Afghanistan have not ended terror, as we saw yesterday.  The security services will not halt every plot, though they have stopped many since 21/7.  There is no evidence that initiatives such as last Government’s Prevent policy, on which it staked so much, delivered hard results or value for money for the taxpayer. http://is.gd/exH6T6

Mark Wallace: Who are UKIP? The failure of the main three parties to understand who UKIPpers are has undoubtedly contributed to Nigel Farage’s success. Those who thought them to be a protest vote to be won over with one simple pledge, a bunch of “fruitcakes and closet racists” whose xenophobic views should be ignored or a lost tribe of conservatives who should return to the fold, were all mistaken. http://is.gd/f09nm7

The Deep End: The rightwing consensus on shale gas is about to be torn apart. The risks of shale gas exploration can and should be manageable, but public opposition to such developments is not based on the cool calculation of cost-benefit analyses, but upon gut reaction (though some cool calculation of property price impacts may also feature). http://is.gd/qEDk2b

Peter Hoskin: The Tory leadership is betting the house on house prices – it might not end well. Of course, from Burke through Thatcher and on to Cameron, conservatives have tended to value property-ownership. But, with the market as subverted as it is, it shouldn’t be regarded as an unalloyed good; and particularly not when a government-sponsored borrowing binge is required to bring it about. http://is.gd/NiTZz5

Andrew Gimson: Ed Miliband becomes Prime Minister and detests being Francois Hollande. Six months in to what was proving to be an unhappy prime ministership, Ed Miliband woke early and found he could not go back to sleep. His aides had assured him that “a quiet weekend at Chequers with no media” would do him a power of good. But as the wind howled round the ancient mansion and the rain splattered against the window panes, his fevered brain allowed him no rest… http://is.gd/vI2zqr

By Mark Wallace

In such circumstances, the leadership of the three main parties will have an eye to such an outcome.  It would be astonishing if there were no back door overtures by the Liberal Democrats to Ed Miliband – especially if Nick Clegg is no longer in place as their leader.  It would also be very surprising if these were not picked up by the media.  Trust between the two governing parties – which has not recovered from their fall out over the AV referendum, and won’t do so in this Parliament – will wither further.

The flow of special advisers from Downing Street and government, both Conservative and Liberal Democrat, will gather speed.  Amidst such a febrile atmosphere, it will be even harder for the Coalition partners to agree on radical legislation – and for their leaderships to persuade backbenchers to vote for it, since those from each party will be as resentful of each other as ever (if not more so), and unwilling to upset voters who they will have face shortly by backing contentious new laws.

I think one must look at today’s front page story in the Times, and the response from other papers (such as the Daily Telegraph) in this context of this coming paralysis and gridlock.  The Times suggests that senior figures in Downing Street are considering an early break-up of the Coalition; the Telegraph is mildly dismissive of its competitor’s story.  I would be very surprised if Number 10 wasn’t considering its options – though after its bungled handling of this week’s Commons Euro-vote, nothing would surprise me.

The choice for this last six months, from David Cameron’s point of view, is a stark one.  On the one hand, for him to encourage the Coalition to break down altogether would risk his reputation for putting the national interest first, and maintaining competence and control.  On the other, for him simply to soldier on with it in place risks making him seem a victim of events.  Nature abhors a vacuum – and if one is left in Parliament, restive Conservative MPs are likely to fill it (as we’ve seen this week).

My view is that Cameron should aim for a managed break-up in this last six months, allowing backbenchers to move proposals from the forthcoming Tory manifesto on the floor of the Commons, with Conservative Ministers speaking for the proposals from the dispatch box, and voting for them whenever possible.  Admittedly, such an arrangement, which would fall somewhere between the present Coalition and Confidence and Supply, would be risky – but no less so than the bleak alternative I outline.

The flow of events points to such an outcome.  The moral of this week’s revolt on an EU referendum is that Tory MPs are more frightened of their local Euro-sceptic Conservative Associations, and of their voters, than of David Cameron and the whips (who in any event were not given clear guidance by Downing Street).  The Prime Minister could try to keep them in order by exploiting the Party’s powers to recognise and de-recognise candidates.  But that would suggest an appetite for conflict with it entirely absent this week.

By Paul Goodman

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Tim Loughton MP: If you’re gay, you can have a civil partnership. But if you’re straight, you can’t. What’s equal about that? “There is one amendment to the Report Stage of the Bill which I have tabled for next week around which opponents and supporters of the principle of same sex marriage can all rally. It addresses a real inequality that will be created if the Bill becomes law…If same sex marriage becomes law, then gay couples will have the choice either to go for the newly acquired right to marry or to join a new civil partnership or maintain an existing one. Conversely opposite sex couples will only have the option to marry, albeit in a wider range of religious or civil institutions. A Bill which is being pushed through (wrongly in my view) as an equality measure will therefore actually create a new and substantial inequality.” Read more: http://is.gd/F3xj0S

Paul Goodman: In public, Tory MPs are backing rebels. But in private, they’re voting for loyalists. “Fear of local voters counted as much yesterday evening as fear of local activists – at least for MPs in marginal seats, some of them are furious with Baron for pushing his amendment to the vote, and claim to have told him so.  It can be argued that this reflects badly on them, rather than Baron – that if they disagreed with his amendment, they shouldn’t have voted for it. This week’s ’22 Committee elections also suggest that while their votes were with Baron, their hearts were elsewhere.  Robert Buckland is an outspoken supporter of Britain’s E.U membership – and thus a rarity among the 2010 intake of Conservative MPs. At roughly the same time as yesterday evening’s vote, it was announced that he has been re-elected as a secretary of the 1922 Committee’s executive committee.  In public, Tory MPs may be backing the rebels, but in private they are supporting the loyalists.” Read more: http://is.gd/T6F2Z2

Andrew Gimson: Replace Grant Shapps with a Chairman who can cheer the troops “Another long-serving Tory backbencher was less charitable: “We don’t want Muppets being the voice of the Tory Party, and that’s what we’ve got with Grant Yapps.” This backbencher insisted, rather unkindly, that Shapps was becoming known as Yapps because of a tendency to yap, and added that “he called himself Michael Green for several years, for reasons no one entirely understands”…Any fair-minded observer would agree that inspiring the Tory foot soldiers is just now more difficult and more necessary than ever, given the shrinking size of the party, and the rise of UKIP. But that is why the Prime Minister should think again, and should appoint someone to the role who is already a big political figure. To leave Shapps there for the next two years would be to insult a party which already feels it has been insulted enough.” Read more: http://is.gd/tBwiih

Philip Cowley and Mark Stuart: This Parliament remains on course to be the most rebellious since 1945. “Despite the reduction in the rate of rebellion from the preceding session, the Parliament still remains on course to be the most rebellious since 1945.  The rate for the Parliament as a whole (that is, 2010-13) now stands at a rebellion in 39% of divisions, easily topping the 28% seen in the 2005 Parliament.  Even if the rate of rebellion drops again by half – down to a rate of around 13% – in the remaining two sessions, we would expect the overall total for the Parliament to be 29%, still (just) enough to make it the most rebellious in the post-war era.  The good news for the whips, therefore (and right now they probably need some), is that we can report a gradual reduction in the level of backbench dissent on the Coalition side.  But the rate of rebellion in this session only appears low when compared to the unprecedentedly high levels seen in the preceding session.” Read more: http://is.gd/hPAofx

Ben Harris-Quinney: Royal Mail Privatisation – where is the debate? “I believe we should apply some simple tests before proceeding with this controversial sale – has the case for privatisation been made? Is it the best deal for the country? is it popular with the public? is it politically beneficial to our party? In all cases the answer is clearly “no”. Electorally it could be immediately damaging for the Conservative Party, which might explain the lack of debate about the issue. As with the proposed Forestry sell-off, it is my suspicion that the majority of the general public are not aware that the privatisation of Royal Mail is moving swiftly through Parliament, but that when it is too late and the decisions have already been made, public awareness will rise and it will be met with outrage and uproar.” Read more: http://is.gd/RHBfWu

Mark Wallace: The MEP selection purdah is a farce “For the duration of May, June and July, all Conservative MEPs and MEP candidates are forbidden from speaking at party events, going out campaigning with activists, host visitors at the European Parliament or even send out their regular emails updating party members on what is going on in Brussels. This is apparently intended to prevent them using their positions to drum up support.  But isn’t that rather the point of selection processes? If someone goes out campaigning, makes great speeches to members and is doing good work in Brussels, that should be seen as a good thing – not skewing the pitch for selections. It seems to me that through this farcical rule we are wasting a valuable resource, and giving MEPs and would-be candidates a perverse disincentive against going out and doing what they are meant to – campaigning for conservatism.” Read more: http://is.gd/xScHWJ

Mark Field MP: The mispricing of risk. The danger to savers. And the spectre of inflation – big themes in my first book. “The crisis kicked off by the Lehman’s collapse was brought about by an irrational exuberance, most obviously in the housing market, that made it difficult for investors to make rational risk/reward investment decisions. The next ‘crash’, if it came about in our bond markets, would instead be as a result of deliberate government economic policy.

But would such an outcome lead to social calamity? We can only hope not. Yet history is littered with periods where the debasement of money (hyperinflation) – and therefore the debasement of trust – has gone on to undermine social cohesion, not least as it has first wiped out an aspirational middle class. A wide scale destruction in the value of pension funds triggered by a bond crash would coincide with the erosion of debtors’ liabilities by inflation. This would likely trigger a deep sense of injustice, as savers and the responsible in society lose out to the profligate.” Read more: http://is.gd/0XPEG0

Few would have predicted Lord Lawson’s decision to announce his conversion to the Better Off Out cause or the sympathetic hearing he was given by the media, though. The floodgates have opened, and big beasts such as Lord Lamont and Michael Portillo have aligned themselves with a viewpoint that only a few years ago was barely discussed in Westminster. The Queen’s Speech was not just dominated but almost eclipsed by the EU debate.

There are dozens of Conservative backbenchers who privately agree with the former Chancellor that the negotiations are likely to fail, leaving “Out” as the only option.  Most prefer for reasons of political strategy or personal positioning to press for greater euroscepticism within the Prime Minister’s stated optimistic position of negotiation followed by a referendum.

That is not to say they simply line up behind him, though. Many of their number may well back the amendment to the Queen’s Speech in favour of an EU Referendum Bill, should it come to a vote (John Baron MP, its proposer, is yet to decided whether to force a division). Some are doing so on principle to bring forward the timing or alter the process of David Cameron’s renegotiation, but others are doing so because they believe it will help to reassure the electorate that this time a “cast-iron” referendum pledge will not be broken down for scrap.

The amendment is part of a wider shift of power from the leadership to the backbenches. The readmission of Nadine Dorries to the Tory fold on Wednesday righted what many of the Prime Minister’s MPs had long complained was an unjustly harsh punishment for her trip to the jungle.

Had it happened a few weeks ago, the return of Mid-Bedforshire’s prodigal daughter could have been portrayed as a magnanimous, sensible step. Delaying it to a few days after a less than glorious bout of local elections allowed some to feel they had triumphed against the whips. Far from stooping to conquer, the leadership – it is felt – has been conquered from below.

The reality is that the Chief Whip has long intended to end her exile, but the perception on the backbenches is of a victorious rebellion. This was no defeat, but it was certainly a damaging delay.

The timing allowed Nadine Dorries to take immediate advantage of her (perhaps temporary) whip-proof status, and within 24 hours she had signed the EU Referendum amendment and toured broadcast studios to urge her colleagues to do likewise.

All of this certainly means the balance of power within the Conservative Parliamentary Party has shifted. The Prime Minister’s strategy has moved accordingly, as can be seen by the free vote on the EU amendment which he has offered not only to backbenchers but apparently to ministers, too. That attitude of relaxation – particularly on topics that were previously no-go areas due to Liberal Democrat disapproval – is set to continue.

At the same time, Chris Grayling and others have begun to present hard-bitten policies which will please MPs and activists who want to see a more conservative agenda from the Government.

What the week’s events emphatically do not mean is that a leadership challenge is near. It has been a rocky ride, but the Prime Minister has passed through the period of maximum danger. There were no senior figures flouncing off stage once the local election results were out, and there has been no whispering campaign in support of any alternative candidate. He may be changing his party management style, but he won’t be changing his job title any time soon.

By Mark Wallace

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Lord Ashcroft: CND are not the best people to ask what Scots think of Trident “In the event of Scotland becoming independent, only half of Scots thought Britain’s nuclear weapons should cease to be based at Faslane; 35 per cent would be happy to see the UK lease the naval base, with 15 per cent undecided. Again, those in favour of independence opposed the idea by more than two to one. Overall, only a quarter of Scots thought Britain did not need nuclear weapons during the Cold War and does not need them today. More than a fifth said the need is lower than during the Cold War, while for nearly two fifths Britain needs nuclear weapons just as much as before (29 per cent) or even more (10 per cent): hardly a picture of overwhelming opposition.” Read more: http://is.gd/51ILA

Roger Scruton: Truth in politics “The absurd insults hurled at UKIP and its supporters have at last done their work, and the Conservative Party has been forced to wake up to the fact that you can no longer conceal the truth from the people. Membership of the EU brings benefits. But it also means that our borders are now infinitely porous, that our national assets (the welfare system included) are no longer ours, and that our government is powerless to pursue the national interest. It is not as though this is true only now: it has been true since the ‘Single European Act’ forced through Parliament for no clear reason by Margaret Thatcher. Indeed it was true from the beginning and is the reason why Jean Monnet insisted that the European project should advance behind a sequence of disguises, beginning with the ‘Coal and Steel Community’ of 1951.” Read more: http://is.gd/n0DTqR

Mark Wallace: Our Afghan interpreters should be offered refuge in Britain “There are precedents for bringing the Afghan interpreters within our Military Covenant. When British forces withdrew from Iraq, a similarly lackadaisical approach was taken – until public and political outcry forced the Labour Government to let them in.

As well as the moral responsibility to act, there is a political risk in failing to do the right thing. Many readers will remember the humiliation of Labour minister Phil Woolas at the hands of Joanna Lumley, during her Gurkha campaign. It is hard to imagine any coalition minister wanting to play his part in an Afghan re-run of that fiasco. The Military Covenant rests on familiar, fundamental values – decency, honour, service and gratitude. It would be a grave disservice to those values to turn our backs on these interpreters.” Read more: http://is.gd/ZZpsPA

Paul Goodman: Five ideas for Cameron: 2) Transferable Tax Allowances Now “I would make it clear before and during tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech that George Osborne will, as Downing Street indicated to me recently, bring in transferable tax allowances at the earliest possible opportunity.  (Cameron’s reminder that “I am First Lord of the Treasury” was a dig at his Chancellor’s resistance to the measure.)  Transferable allowances have three big pluses.  First, they recognise marriage in the tax system.  Second, they would help to reverse the bias against one-earner couples in the Coalition’s childcare plans.  Finally, their introduction is promised in the Coalition Agreement.  No-one could fairly claim that Cameron was making some new concession.  And the move would sit neatly alongside the plans to help women and carers that we ready this morning will be annnounced in the Queen’s Speech.  Read more: http://is.gd/q0NXdr

ConservativeHome poll: A third of Conservative Party members want an electoral pact with UKIP in 2015 “They divide a third, a third, and a third in our latest survey, issued last Friday morning, about whether to treat UKIP as a friend or enemy when the general election comes in 2015. 34% believe that the party should form a pact with UKIP for the poll. 33% believe that it shouldn’t. And 33% want to wait and see. Asked if they believed that such a pact will be formed for 2015, 10% of Tory member respondents said Yes, 53% said No and 37% said that the leadership will wait and see. Understandably, the leadership’s position is that there should be no pact with UKIP (or anyone else). So only a third of members are lined up behind it. To write that this evidence suggests that there’s a big gap between Downing Street’s views and those of Party members would be an understatement.” Read more: http://is.gd/TPgTBr

John Redwood MP: Why we need a referendum now – to give Mr Cameron the authority to create a new relationship with the EU “It is no good the Government saying that it will just try a bit harder within the current broken framework. The odd power back here, the odd concession there will not be enough. The Mandate Referendum should ask: “Do you want the UK government to negotiate a new relationship with the EU based on trade and political co-operation?” I think 80% would vote Yes, giving the government a strong mandate to negotiate a sensible outcome. The result of the negotiation should also be put to the people, to decide whether to accept the new deal or simply leave. That way the EU has every reason to come up with something good, as Germany would not want to lose her lucrative trade with the UK.” Read more: http://is.gd/0UiTYn

Jackie Doyle-Price MP: The way to fight UKIP is to knock on doors – not knock each other “The fact is that this Country cannot afford another Labour Government.  And it is incumbent on all of us who have the privilege of representing the Conservative Party to work towards attaining that majority.  On polling day, an Essex newspaper carried a letter from the MP for Billericay which was critical of the Prime Minister and as good as invited Conservatives to vote UKIP.  It is unsurprising then that so many then did.  There is no room for self-indulgence which serves only to damage the Conservative brand.  It is very easy to put out tweets that say ‘look at me’ but think on.  Winning the battle will require focus, discipline, strong messages and hard work.  It is time to stop fighting each other and take the battle to the doorsteps.” Read more: http://is.gd/TM2PYO

UKIP expresses a certain idea of Britain, and especially of England: pugnacious, energetic, good-natured, uninhibited, trenchant in speech, determined not to be pushed around or invaded by foreigners, ready to guffaw at political correctness. Merry England is protesting ever more loudly against the dominance of the cautious career politicians who run the main parties.

Unless the career politicians work out how to respond to this, they are going to find themselves with a real problem on their hands. The earth is trembling beneath their feet. Farage on present showing will triumph in next year’s European elections, and in any half-suitable parliamentary by-elections which crop up in the meantime.

So far the Tories, Labour and even the Liberal Democrats have sought to meet the threat by striking a harder note on subjects such as welfare, crime and immigration control.  This may be necessary, but is nothing like sufficient. If it looks like yet another attempt to manipulate the electorate by making clever but essentially cynical adjustments to policy, it could even backfire.

How do Cameron, Miliband and Clegg express a generous and self-confident sense of nationhood which renders UKIP redundant? For Clegg, with his deep commitment to the European Union, the task may already be impossible. Nor can one say that Miliband’s policy-wonkish demeanour makes it natural for him to don a Union Jack waistcoat.

It was clever of Miliband to raise the cry of One Nation at last autumn’s Labour Party conference. One Nation is a Tory concept, whose origins lie in the novels of Benjamin Disraeli, one of the greatest of all Conservative Prime Ministers. Disraeli’s successors have used it to show that measures of social reform are in firmly within the Tory tradition, because they help unite the nation and bridge the gap between rich and poor.

But Miliband has failed to build on his One Nation speech, by showing people what the phrase means to him. His colleagues feel increasingly frustrated by his seemingly total inability to take any decisions about what Labour actually stands for. More than ever, he looks and sounds like a backroom boy who is unfitted to the role of leader.

Which leaves Cameron. The Prime Minister hinted earlier this week that he might somehow find a way of introducing legislation in this Parliament to guarantee the holding of a referendum on EU membership in the next:  “I look forward to publishing a Bill, to getting support for it, to doing everything I can to show to people at the next election there will be a real choice: if you want a party that’s going to reform the European Union and Britain’s place in it, and then give you a proper in-out choice, there only is one option – that is the Conservative Party. So anything we can do to strengthen that offer, as it were, I’m prepared to consider.”

The language is still tentative. This is not how people talk in the saloon bar. It is not how Farage talks.

One of the many fascinating details in Charles Moore’s new biography of Margaret Thatcher is that in her entire life, she never went into a pub alone. People were nevertheless in no doubt that if she had ever gone by herself into a pub, and some sort of altercation had developed, she would have been more than able to stand up for herself.

It is this sense of sturdy independence that Cameron has not quite managed to convey. Like every Tory leader since 1990, he finds himself operating in Thatcher’s shadow. John Major, the man with the soap box, led the Tories to an unexpected and highly creditable overall majority in the general election of 1992, but later that year – on 16 September, to be exact, also known as Black Wednesday – it all went wrong for Conservatives, and they have never again won an overall majority.

Cameron’s leadership depends on whether he can at least win the largest number of seats in the general election of 2015. To do that, he has to develop a better ability to express nationhood. Otherwise he will be harried into an early political grave by Farage, and it will be left to a future Tory leader – Boris Johnson, perhaps – to reunite the Conservatives with their lost cousins in UKIP.

By Andrew Gimson

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Iain Dale: John Hayes should keep quiet, and Justine Greening should be reshuffled “There’s nothing like telling people, especially journalists, how important you are. The thing is, you can indeed become important, but only when others have worked it out for themselves rather than constantly being reminded of it. David Cameron is said to be amused by John Hayes. I can understand why. He’s good company and an arch parliamentary gossip. He tells a good yarn. But anyone at the Downing Street court who is suspected of opening their gobs to the papers too often will do well to remind themselves that what the Prime Minister giveth, the Prime Minister can easily take away.” Read more: http://is.gd/Qri8It

Grant Shapps MP: Why you should Vote Conservative today “This week, thanks to the work of this Conservative-led government, hardworking people across the country will see our income tax cut in their pay packets. But if Ed Miliband and Ed Balls got their way, they’d saddle us with £83 billion more borrowing and more debt – more of what got us into this mess in the first place – and that’s just to pay for their ever growing welfare bill. They have opposed everything we’ve done to get the welfare budget back under control, without putting forward any firm ideas of their own…So I’ve been telling people in my patch exactly why they should vote Conservative – because we’ve showed that, even in these tough times, Conservatives are the party who back people who want to work hard and get on in life – and we’re making it happen.” Read more: http://is.gd/PbiAD7

Stephan Shakespeare: Why it’s a mistake to target only a small section of voters “There is a widely-held and wrong assumption that only a small section of the electorate is open to being persuaded from their current political voting intention to a different one. A second, also wrong assumption is that these few voters are located along specific parts of a supposed political spectrum, for example where left and right blur into each other, and that the strategy for winning elections is to understand specific narrow band and target it.

I say confidently that the assumption is wrong because there is experimental evidence against it. I have reported previously on ‘Choice Blindness’ studies; here is another one; I recommend anyone interested in winning elections to read it carefully, but for those willing to make do with the abstract, here it is.” Read more: http://is.gd/jlUNnc

Garvan Walshe: Time for a Syrian No-Fly Zone “Today’s false Machiavellis warn against getting entangled; they imagine jihadists and the regime exhausting themselves for years to come. Their memories are short. Before we intervened in the Balkans, young bearded men from the Middle East, North Africa and the less salubrious parts of Birmingham travelled to help the embattled Bosniaks. The Kosovo Liberation Army – though more organised than anything in Syria – are nothing close to the liberal democratic freedom fighters we chose to imagine them to be. We’ll very rarely have the luxury of supporting unblemished allies who fight gloriously in an unimpeachably just cause, but it’s the policy of half measures, of raising expectations that we’ve no intention of meeting,  that will end up turning Syria into a desolate terrorist base.” Read more: http://is.gd/HfgFyY

Paul Goodman: Five snapshots of Cameron on tour “Then he is outside in the sunlight as the members applaud, turn to each other, brandish mobile phones.  For a moment, I am seized by a sudden sympathy for him.  It is utterly disproportionate.  After all, no-one asked him to do the job.  He is never going to go hungry after he leaves it.  Many of his problems are his own fault.  But the bottom line is: what he does is public service.  What I and much of the Village do is not.  I have been a politician, am now a journalist – and know which is harder.  He spots me.  “Goodbye, Paul,” he says. “Thank you for coming.”  I hold out my right hand.  Out comes his left one.  Its palm encloses my hand, shakes it, and pushes it slightly downwards.

And then he’s gone.” Read more: http://is.gd/iMuld8

Adam Afriyie MP: “Jobs for the boys” is making this Government too big “Starting at the top, there are currently 31 people who attend Cabinet on a regular basis. Having spent more than 20 years starting and growing businesses, I cannot ever recall chairing a company board meeting with more than a handful of directors and executives in the room.  Any more people and it simply wouldn’t work; it wouldn’t be effective.  In my time as a Governor of the Museum of London, we would seldom have more than a dozen or so active participants in a board meeting; even in some of the world’s largest companies you’d be unlikely to see more than 15 people.” Read more: http://is.gd/EtjOXA

Peter Walker: How ring-fencing turns public servants into state dependents “Everybody knows the next spending round will be tough.  The low-hanging fruit have been picked, the easy savings made.  Most of this has resulted in changes to tactics.  Driving really imaginative and radical change, strategic choices about the shape of services, sharing of buildings, use of IT, merger of back office departments, deciding whether the public really want a public service to do something – and using local electoral accountability to underpin the decision…this is what has to happen next if we are to shrink the size and cost of the State. People who lead public sector organisations got their jobs because they wanted them.  Nobody has been forced to be there.  Smaller budgets mean they will have to take decisions to do things differently.” Read more: http://is.gd/9aUpWO

It’s obviously been the Conservative Party’s week for calling in ConservativeHome – presumably as part of David Cameron’s charm offensive, of which the appointment of Jo Johnson to head Downing Street’s Policy Unit is a sign – because a few days ago I was also heavily briefed by senior sources at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.

Five big points were made to me, which fit in neatly with Number 10s observations to me about Ed Miliband having “spent his first year of so doing nothing very much”, and that this is now catching up with him – as his problems over welfare have shown.  They fall under the following rough headings:

• Leadership.  CCHQ wants to capitalise not only on David Cameron’s incumbency status as Prime Minister, but on a simple sense that he is up to taking the tough decisions the country needs and that Miliband is not.

• Being on the right side of the issues.  This is at least partly a code for being tough on welfare, and it’s worth adding that I detect a difference of tone between CCHQ and Downing Street.  CCHQ recently commissioned a poster portraying a welfare claimant as a slob on a sofa.  But Number 10 was very keen to stress to me the importance of “decency” in having a truly national appeal.

• Competence.  CCHQ admit that the Government’s reputation for this was hit hard by the Omnishambles Budget of 2012, but claim that this year’s budget has helped to restore a sense of order and purpose.

• “Belief in ourselves”. Dan Hodges, the Daily Telegraph’s anti-Miliband Labour writer-in-residence, recently asked if the Tories really want to win.  (By the way, Hodges is the Prime Minister’s favourite journalistic read, I’m told.)   CCHQ is eager to stress that if the Parliamentary Party is consumed by plots and conspiracies, then recovering a sense of momentum will be extremely difficult.

We will see whether all this adds up to anything.  First, CCHQ must get through this week’s local elections…

By Paul Goodman

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Paul Goodman: A view from Downing Street
“Should the Coalition go all the way to the April of that year?  Should it break up earlier, as I and others would prefer?  My sense is that Number 10 would prefer to go all the way, but that it is prepared to consider other possibilities – for example, encouraging backbenchers to open up “clear blue water” in the Commons over welfare, immigration, crime and the ECHR.  There are three points of interest.  On an EU referendum bill, there is a range of options from not publishing one at all through simply publishing one to publishing one – and then introducing it.  On tax breaks for marriage, there are signals that the policy will be implemented, perhaps as early as the autumn: “The Prime Minister is the First Lord of the Treasury,” I was told – a clear dig at George Osborne’s long-standing scepticism about the policy.  On aid, I get no sense that Downing Street intends to back off the 0.7% target.” Read more: http://is.gd/ACGrAE

Lord Ashcroft: The case against overseas aid – and for genuinely compassionate conservatism “99.3% of the UK Budget is not spent on Overseas Aid. So what is all the fuss about?’ This was the start to an attempt by Robert Halfon MP to defend the government’s determination to pump ever-larger sums into Britain’s over-inflated overseas aid budget. I think that it is extraordinary because it comes from a Conservative MP (and one for whom I have the greatest regard and respect) – but surely one of the things that unites the right is our desire to ensure all taxes taken from voters and businesses are spent as efficiently and effectively as possible. So unlike Labour, we don’t pretend a few billion here and there don’t really count…The simple fact is that the amount hard-pressed British taxpayers are giving away to a variety of dubious and vainglorious causes has grown and grown under successive governments. ” Read more: http://is.gd/YdCiGv

Tim Montgomerie: Cameron lowers the Downing Street drawbridge and invites new voices into his bunker “Jo Johnson is an able enough individual but it is regrettable that yet another Old Etonian occupies yet another key position at the heart of the party. Overall, however, we’re seeing a Prime Minister who is finally getting serious about party management. Many people are correctly crediting Lynton Crosby with improvements to the operation, but the real driving force of better personnel relations is John Hayes MP – appointed as the PM’s parliamentary adviser a few days before Lady Thatcher’s death. While the PM is in a forgiving and healing mood he should warn uber-loyalist colleagues to end their briefing against Theresa May. He should also restore the whip to Nadine Dorries. The whips want this to happen but Numbers 10 and 11 are resisting.” Read more: http://is.gd/sYPAgP

Daniel Hannan MEP: The Whig aesthetic that helped to create the virtues of the Anglosphere “Hartwell House embodies the ideal of the country house poets. Here is Whig architecture in a Whig landscape, right down to the bust of John Hampden, whose family once owned the estate, on the north door, and the statue of  William III in the garden. In the classical stonework, we see made solid the tradition that exalted our freedom and, indeed, that created the American Republic. Why am I telling you about Hartwell House, in particular? Because, although this was meant to be a cultural essay, I can’t help ending with a political point. The proposed route of the new London to Birmingham rail link cuts through the grounds. Those far-sighted landscape-plotters, so confident that their property wouldn’t be confiscated or damaged, had reckoned without HS2.” Read more: http://is.gd/9A9KUR

Adam Afriyie MP: A lesson from South Shields – why we need to legislate for an EU referendum “Having spoken to one or two UKIP campaigners in South Shields, it seems to me that the only way forward is if we acknowledge the way people really feel about immigration and Europe, and gain enough credibility that they trust us to deliver the referendum after robust negotiations. If we’re serious, we must bring the legislation that enables a referendum before parliament sooner rather than later. Even if Labour and Lib Dem MPs vote against it, the British people will know we’re serious. Otherwise constituencies like South Shields will never take us seriously.” Read more: http://is.gd/R0Tyj0

Andrew Gimson: A conviction politician who survived by twisting and turning “I suggested to Moore that neither her admirers nor her detractors generally understood what a mixture of opposites Thatcher was: very brave yet also very cautious; a serious woman who was attracted to raffish men; a puritan who was tolerant of others’ weaknesses; a conventional Tory, yet the first woman Prime Minister. “This is true,” Moore said, “and it does go right through, and it’s part of the key to her success, I think, because she’s always wrong-footing people. So for example, because she’s very formidable and combative and successful, that led a lot of people to say ‘well she’s really a man’, because they think only a man could be formidable and combative and successful. It’s of course complete and utter rubbish that she’s really a man. You could not be less like a man, it seems to me.” Read more: http://is.gd/vsGTdk

Harry Phibbs – Setting the bar: What would be a good result for the Lib Dems on May 2nd? “The council by-election results, and the full council election results, last year suggest they will slip back – from the 25% national equivalent vote share they got in 2009 to mid teens. The opinion polls and the fall in the number of candidates they are putting up suggest they will slip back even more substantially. So given that even reasonable expectations for them are so dire what could possibly constitute a bad result?  Last time these councils were contested, the Lib Dems had 484 councillors elected. This time, the councils contesting and the boundaries are slightly different. But the Rallings and Thrasher projections from council by-elections imply a loss of 130 seats. If they do much worse – say lose half their seats and/or come in behind UKIP then that really will be a pretty dismal night for them.” Read more: http://is.gd/LTSEVf

Like her, these new MPs believe in the nation state – the belief which precipitated her downfall in 1990, by which time her own Cabinet had turned against her on the European issue. Thatcher was ditched by her own MPs because there were not enough Thatcherites among them to defend her.

The new batch of Tory MPs has not taken the trouble to get elected to the Commons in order to surrender its rights to the European Union. Parliamentary sovereignty is for them of over-riding importance. Veteran eurosceptics like Bill Cash have been joined by a host of knowledgeable and determined newcomers, including such figures as Dominic Raab and Jacob Rees-Mogg.

In order to remain Tory leader, David Cameron has to demonstrate to these backbenchers that he too is a defender of the nation state. Fortunately for him, such a policy is more feasible now than it was in 1990, when Thatcher made her brave but unavailing stand against European monetary union.

Monetary union duly happened, and as she warned, it has proved a disaster.  On Wednesday, Greece released unemployment figures which show the rate among 15-24 year-olds has risen to the scandalous level of 59.3 per cent.

In France, where the ineffectual Francois Hollande will soon have been in power for a year, unemployment has risen to 3.2 million, the highest since 1997, debt has gone above 90 per cent of GDP and the promise to reduce the deficit to three per cent this year has been abandoned.

The euro in its present form is unsustainable. Something has got to give. German taxpayers are terrified that they will be the ones who have to give: that in order to prop up the single currency, they will find themselves forced to subsidise almost everyone else.

No wonder Cameron is spending this Friday night at Schloss Meseberg, the country house north of Berlin where Chancellor Angela Merkel entertains favoured guests. As if to show how respectable this outing is, Cameron is taking his wife and children with him. That is rather an intimate but also innocent thing to do. He and Merkel are in the process of forming a coalition of the respectable. They have already joined forces to bring the EU budget under some sort of control.

Merkel faces elections in September. She has to convince frightened Germans that she will stand up for them, and will not allow them to be treated as disgracefully as Cypriot savers have just been treated.

I lived in Germany in the Nineties, when Chancellor Helmut Kohl forced the replacement of the German mark, proud symbol of post-war recovery, with the euro. This was not a popular thing for him to do: it was forced through by the German political class in defiance of the German public. Go into any German pub, and you would find ordinary people who knew it was madness to share a currency with the Italians, let alone with the Greeks.

Germany’s politicians were so determined to prove they were good Europeans that they conspired to ignore the wishes of their own people. For Kohl, a bully of genius who could not care less about economics, this made perfect sense: it gave him something important to push through after reunification, made him sound high-minded, and the opposition Social Democrats were quite incapable of opposing him, for they believed more whole-heartedly in the euro than his own Christian Democrats did.

Merkel, brought up in East Germany, never got implicated in Kohl’s West German system of power politics, and had the courage to overthrow him. But she and the rest of the German political class now find themselves in the alarming predicament of trying to make go of a new currency which faces dreadful problems, and for which there was never any democratic mandate.

A new party, Alternative for Germany, has just been founded, and is holding its first conference this weekend. It contains a large number of professors, and wants to bring back the German mark. In order for Merkel to prevent this new party from taking off, and perhaps denying her several percentage points in this September’s elections, she has to show that she too is a respectable eurosceptic, who will not give handouts to Mediterranean spendthrifts who should never have been allowed to join the euro in the first place.

For Merkel, it makes electoral sense to be seen working closely with Cameron, another respectable eurosceptic, and to distance herself from Hollande and his disreputable band of champagne socialists. The British aim of breaking up the Franco-German axis which has for so long dominated the European Union may at last be about to be realised.

By Andrew Gimson

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Iain Dale’s first Friday Diary for ConservativeHome: Cameron’s drinking stories this week about “us working class boys”
“My spy says he downed a pint of Guinness,  and spent most of the time being greased up to entertained by Tory MP Mark Pritchard. It was Pritchard who, during a leadership elections hustings at the 1922 Committee asked all the candidates about their drug-taking history, something leading Cameroons have never forgotten. Cameron was regaling Pritchard with stories from his CCO days when a visit from the Leaderene was greeted with total fear and terror. Bizarrely, they were also overheard talking about their favourite musicals. I have to say Mark Pritchard has never struck me as a Friend of Dorothy, but there you go! Oh, sorry, wrong musical. Apparently they were waxing lyrical about ‘Jersey Boys’. At least, I assume they were talking about the musical…” Read more: http://is.gd/pb5waN

Mark Fox: You can’t understand Thatcher without understanding her Christian faith
“In the two excellent speeches by David Cameron and Ed Milliband in Parliament it was not mentioned at all. In the extensive TV and radio coverage, and all the newspaper comment, barely a word about her faith – her upbringing as a Methodist and her adult commitment to Anglicanism. Yet her Anglicanism and earlier Methodist upbringing was an essential part of her formation as a person and as a politician. Hers was not a showy, worn-on-the-sleeve sort of faith, that we became wearily used to in some of those that succeeded her as Prime Minister but a steady, discreet, deeply felt and regularly practiced commitment.” Read more: http://is.gd/8nWfwX

Paul Goodman: Margaret Thatcher, Parliamentarian
“The only political event in town today is the Commons’ special session for tributes to Margaret Thatcher. So this is a good moment to reflect on Thatcher as a Parliamentarian….Jokes are secondary. If they come off, they’ve an imitable way of weakening your opponent, but they’re no substitute for the grinding, wearing power of argument. Thatcher was famously joke-blind (though very swift in coming back at opponents).  But above all, she was always making an argument.  One of her opponents as Leader of the Opposition, Michael Foot, was a great Parliamentarian – far greater than she was.  It didn’t matter when they came face to face.  She won, he lost, and she won because she won the argument.” Read more: http://is.gd/NDidh6

Owen Paterson: Lower taxes. Less red tape. Privatisation. Environmental progress. We must build on Thatcher’s legacy
“From the beginning, Margaret Thatcher knew exactly where she wanted to take this country and how.  Through unshakeable conviction and true bravery, she transformed our country by taking a series of enormously difficult decisions. As the daughter of a small businessman, she knew all about hard work and aspiration as the keys to a prosperous, confident society.  She understood that government could destroy a business by draining it of money through excessive taxation and stealing its time with unnecessary regulation. Working in business on Merseyside throughout her time in office, I was willing her on as she set about reinvigorating a sclerotic economy by deregulating business, cutting taxes, controlling inflation and taming the unions.” Read more: http://is.gd/hTNLjE

Lord Ashcroft: Farewell, Margaret Thatcher – a colossus of British politics and a dear friend
“To me, she was not just a colossus of British politics but also a fiercely loyal friend when I was under fire. Her death today, aged 87, has saddened me greatly…Even today, I sometimes try to imagine how Britain would be without Margaret’s resolve and leadership. She undoubtedly deserves to go down in history as Britain’s greatest peacetime Prime Minister. It took someone with astonishing willpower and principle to change the course of history, and Margaret Thatcher was that person. As Prime Minister, she offered people hope, opportunity and a chance to run their own lives.  I have lost an old friend while Britain will be a poorer place without her. One thing is certain: we will not see her like again soon.  And isn’t that a pity in the world today.” Read more: http://is.gd/oKzgbH

Graeme Archer: The Sacred and Profane Love Machine
You don’t have to live in Brighton, of course, to feel the power or the necessity of love, whether sacred or profane. But this year, the temporal conjunction between celebrations of both versions underlined the importance – the (it seems to be) essential unity – of both. In the same twenty-four hour period, we had Easter, when Resurrection gives us hope of everlasting renewal. We had Easter, when Man pushes time forward from Winter to Summer. And we had Easter, when the seaside returns to life, and the non-natives return, to satiate their earthly, earthy passions…a life well-lived surely requires both forms of what we’re perhaps too quick to classify as antithetical forms of human love, and Easter is the machine that lets us see that. It is sacred and profane; completely necessary, and good.” Read more: http://is.gd/PNJJQm

Cameron Penny: There’s been too much tribal rhetoric about welfare this week. As I know from my own experience “As a proud and hugely ambitious man, this is not an experience I like to dwell on. I am deeply grateful to live in a country where my fellow citizens pay their taxes so, at times of need, those of us who have fallen out of the workforce can work towards getting back into it. I’m also sure that many of those in that situation can emphasise with me the massive hit your self-confidence takes. I remember well one interview. in particular, where it seemed humiliation rather than a serious conversation about a position was the preoccupation of the interviewer – recruitment consultancy is an industry I can’t recommend! I am one of the lucky ones. I am painfully aware that today, nearly a million young people in the UK, aged 16 – 24, are unemployed.” Read more: http://is.gd/gjoBtj

By Paul Goodman

Date: Wednesday 17th April at 2:30pm

Silver and Dining club members - To reserve a place, please email michelle@conservativeintelligence.com

Instead, this week’s leading from the front was done by Cameron’s closest senior political friend and ally, George Osborne.  The Chancellor made a carefully-staged, tough-but-temperate speech on welfare reform, before making an equally deliberately-crafted intervention in the raging debate about Mick Philpott and welfare.

I believe that the Osborne manoeuvre demonstrates that Cameron won’t take Tim’s advice, and that the way in which they divided the Government’s work this week between them shows why.  On the same day that Osborne made his remarks about Philpott, Cameron was in Scotland being winched aboard Trident-carrying HMS Victorious.

If you compare the two operations – one grand, grave, Prime Ministerial and would-be-unifying (though with a solid party political purpose); the other partisan, aggressive, and divisive (though with a serious point), it won’t take you long to work out what the two men at the top of the Conservative Party are up to.

Despite the stubborn persistence of the deficit, the Chancellor is attempting to roll back what he sees as the client welfare state that Gordon Brown built – for example, by scaling back the child tax credit.  For this reason, he has a strategic interest in welfare reform, and his eye alighted on housing benefit as ripe for change as soon as he took office.

Perhaps Osborne is interested in Brown because the two men are in one sense curiously alike.  Like Brown, the Chancellor is a sharp-edged operator who loves to draw dividing lines, with the aim of putting his opponents on the wrong side of it.  His words about Philpott were crafted to lure Labour into the trap of seeming to defend welfare as it is.

Osborne is a better operator than his critics claim (his inheritance tax and stamp duty cut gambit in 2007 helped to halt a general election that Brown might well have won), and a worse one than his fan club believes (consider the 2012 budget).  But his assault this week went according to plan, and is a reminder that he’s still a formidable figure.

Indeed, playing Bad Cop rather suits him, since he doesn’t have Cameron’s suave presentational skills.  The Prime Minister’s visit to Scotland was a reminder that he will deploy them to float above the fray, or try to – to be, in so far as a politician can be, above party politics: an emollient and soothing figure.

This explains why Cameron will steer as clear as possible of personal identification with the sharper end of welfare reform.  (Labour MPs queue up each week at Prime Minister’s Questions to ask when he will visit a food bank.)  Warning in authoritative but vague terms that Britain needs Trident is more his style and scene.

I believe that Cameron should follow up the aspiration theme of his two most recent party conference speeches by visiting academies and free schools, new housing projects, employment programmes – anything related to opportunity, social mobility and getting on.  But whether he does or doesn’t, he will be careful when welfare’s concerned.

The main reason why the two men have chosen the roles they are acting out isn’t merely one of temperament.  This week has told us much about how the next election will be fought.  Osborne isn’t Party Chairman.  And he isn’t Lynton Crosby, the new election supremo.  But he will be at the forefront of the party political fight – especially on welfare.

Cameron, in the meanwhile, will try to maintain as much distance as he can from its rougher end.  The reason?  Because he almost certainly can’t win a majority.  He doesn’t just want to stay above the fray because it suits him.  He wants to do so because he wants to be in a position to re-form the Coalition if he next Parliament is hung.  And that means being the kind of irenic politician that the Liberal Democrats are willing to work with.

By Paul Goodman

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE WEEK ON CONSERVATIVEHOME

Lord Carey: Lord Bates is wrong. I’m right to worry about the Government: “Lord Bates suggests that I’m accusing the government of ‘Herod-like persecution’.  Not at all. I’m suggesting that the coalition is following a trajectory set by previous governments which in spite of their warm words, they have done nothing to arrest. Take the support of the Prime Minister for the right of Christians to wear the cross, I have never heard a satisfactory explanation of why lawyers employed by the coalition argued against this right in the European Court of Human Rights? I am surely not alone in wanting to see some correspondence between a government’s words and actions?” Read more: http://is.gd/sl7pz5

David Skelton: Why I’m moving on – to help meet the Conservatives’ northern challenge: “If the Tories don’t face up to this challenge and broaden their appeal, they will face the prospect of never being able to have a sustainable period of majority government again. For the Conservatives, the challenge is that urgent and that important – they can either focus on building a lasting and broad based electoral coalition, reaching out to people who remain suspicious of the Tories, or they can become increasingly marginal political players in great swathes of the country. That’s why I’m moving on from Policy Exchange to help set up a group dedicated to broadening the appeal of the Conservative Party. 42 per cent of the public have said that they would never vote Tory and the Conservatives have to work hard to consider why this is the case and to break down the barriers that get in the way of people giving the Tories a hearing.” Read more: http://is.gd/U8vQy6

Paul Goodman: When it comes to Attack Dogs, Osborne’s still a Big Beast: “Osborne can be criticised for being a pupil of Brown in other ways.  On one count, the deficit is as high as ever.  The budget had some good measures, such as the NIC and corporation tax cuts, but its big idea – subsidising housing – was a cry of intellectual exhaustion.  His plans were predicated on robust recovery by now, and it hasn’t come.  But his speech yesterday was a reminder that when it comes to attack dogs, the Chancellor’s still a big beast.  His aim was to throw Labour on the defensive, exacerbate the pressure on Ed Balls from Labour’s backbenches, and draw a dividing line over an issue on which voters are not on Ed Miliband’s side.  David Cameron, Good Cop, stayed out of yesterday’s fracas.  Osborne, Bad Cop, waded into action.  That Mockney accent apart, the role suits him.” Read more: http://is.gd/T7rjp8

Lord Ashcroft: Words matter. Don’t choose them too carefully.: “There are two problems with the search for magic words – or the abracadabra theory of political communication. The first is that the listener, the voter, does not separate the words from whoever it is that is saying them. Everything a politician or party says is heard in the context of what the audience already thinks of them. Even if a phrase or argument works in the abstract, it can be unbelievable or at least ineffective when delivered by someone who cannot, in the ears of the listener, sound plausible while saying it. The Conservatives might criticise Labour’s record on the NHS, and Labour might complain about the rising national debt, and both might have good points to make – but for either to be taken seriously on those respective subjects needs more application than simply arranging their syllables in the right order.” Read more: http://is.gd/CEkS0I

Tim Montgomerie: Today is ConservativeHome’s eighth birthday: “Our recipe is summarised in the eleven shields that crown the site. We need to be a party that doesn’t sit narrowly on the so-called centre ground or the so-called Right. We must be a party of the common ground, adopting ‘the politics of and’. Tough on crime AND committed to rehabilitation of offenders. Committed to strict border control AND generous anti-poverty programmes in the developing world. Investors in our armed forces AND opposed to the sale of arms to despotic regimes. Eurosceptic AND global traders. Generous to the genuinely needy AND demanding of people who should be standing on their own two feet.” Read more: http://is.gd/8LkZIw

Matthew Sinclair: The three elements of good climate policy: “Good climate policy has three elements: resilience, as free and prosperous societies will cope best with whatever the natural world throws at them; adaptation, as climate will always change and we will need to roll with the punches; and promoting research and development which can lower the price of cutting emissions. All that fits within the established role of government. It does not require a utopian faith in supranational institutions. It will survive a lot of mistakes as each grant or prize doesn’t need to be worth billions so the stakes are relatively low on each roll of the dice. I would submit that it is both the right climate policy and definitely the right climate policy for an oikophile conservative.” Read more: http://is.gd/r3jWcO

Lord Bates: George Carey should worry a little bit more about global poverty and a little less about David Cameron: “It is perhaps more revealing of the private prejudice of Lord Carey that he makes absolutely no mention of the Prime Minister’s policies which will see overseas aid levels reach 0.7% under this government at a time of recession. No mention of the 12 million children vaccinated last year against killer diseases; the 2.7 million mothers and children prevented from going hungry and five million children given access to education for the first time. I suppose we would be told that God is much more concerned about a British Airway’s employee being able to wear a piece of jewellery or “more shockingly” the Chapel of St Mary Undercroft being turned into a multi-faith prayer room than the fact that 29,000 children under five die every day from preventable disease or malnutrition.” Read more: http://is.gd/8IIax3