Intelligence Letter
Updated weekly on the website are the Weekly Intelligence Letters, featuring the Leading Article and Highlights of the Week from ConservativeHome. For the weekly political profile, please go to the Profiles Page.
A Few Short Articles…..
THE NHS BILL: Some of you may have noticed that I caused a bit of a media fuss ten days ago when I argued that the Coalition should drop the Health and Social Care Bill (http://conho.me/wB4Gij). I certainly wasn’t expecting my advice to be heeded and it hasn’t been. The Government ploughs on in the teeth of public opposition, holding seminars on the reforms which exclude the major representatives of NHS staff. Anyway I’m not wanting to continue my mini-campaign here.
This Week’s Curtain-Raiser For The Battle For The ’22
The victory of George Hollingberry over Chris Kelly in this week’s by-election for a vacancy on the 1922 Committee’s Executive didn’t exactly make national headlines – understandably enough. But appearances are deceptive: this apparently narcoleptic event was actually part of a lively drama that could impact on the future of the Government. David Cameron has [...]
How The Conservatives And Business Need To Work Together To Save The Job Creating Sectors
Should Fred Goodwin have lost his knighthood? Should Stephen Hester have been forced to give up his bonus? Should the Coalition be proposing new taxes on the wealthy? Individual pro-enterprise people will answer these individual questions in different ways but the climate adds up to something that’s not attractive to investors, risk-takers and job creators. [...]
Which Senior Ministers Are In Line For Cabinet Promotion?
Chris Grayling and Damian Green popped up in the Daily Telegraph earlier today, publishing a joint article about immigration and benefits. It is unusual for a paper to carry an article by Ministers of other than Cabinet rank. So one might have expected the joint by-line to be that of their two Secretaries of State, [...]
It’s Miliband, not Salmond or Osborne, who holds the Union’s future in his hands
“Who’s winning the battle for Scotland?” There are two starkly different answers to the question after last weekend’s move by George Osborne and Danny Alexander to carry the fight over Scotland’s future to Alex Salmond. The first is that to date the UK Government is the winner: that the ambush mounted last weekend over the [...]
Back To Earth After The Veto
Have you taken your decorations down? It’s twelfth night. Christmas is over. It’s wet, windy, cold and we’ve all headed back to work. The joy of the Christmas break becomes the January of credit card bills. I’ll stop there before I depress you further! My laboured point is that, despite Cameron’s very upbeat new year [...]
Angry Lib Dems Will Get Their Revenge But Perhaps Not On Europe
Cameron got his best ever reception at the 1922 Committee of Tory backbenchers on Wednesday night. They thumped their desks with a passion that they’d never done before and I mean ‘never’. The warmth with which Cameron was received by the ’22 was by all accounts unique during his leadership. Receiving the applause he apparently [...]
Cameron’s Steeplechase by Moonlight
The core of the argument for Britain’s EU membership is that we must be at the heart of Europe to enjoy prosperity and influence. The heart of Europe is now set to be the 17, not the 27 – or, to be strictly accurate, perhaps more than 17 (perhaps as many as 26) or perhaps [...]
How Cameron Will Try To Fight The 1992 General Election In 2015
Most elections pare down to two primal instincts – hope and fear. The Opposition’s goal is to evoke hope: as Tony Blair put it in 1997, “Things can only get better”. The Government’s aim is to stir fear: “Britain is booming. Don’t let Labour ruin it”, as John Major countered. And the classic aim of [...]
MEET DAVID CAMERON’S NEW THINK-TANK ON EU POLICY
Nature abhors a vacuum. Seldom is the saying more applicable than to the Government’s EU policy. David Cameron won the short-term Commons battle over a referendum on Europe last month. But he is in danger of losing the longer-term struggle for the loyalty of his backbenchers. The EU is far from being the only cause [...]