Tag Archives: ukpolitics

articles

Leadership of the New Labour Project

31 Comments

“I think you guys are going to get a majority of 40,” one veteran Labour adviser told me, and I did not disagree

There are all sorts of reasons for voting Tory this week. It is a chance to strike a blow against over-regulation and over-taxation and political correctness, and a chance to enact beautiful new ideas like National Citizens Service for 16-year-olds.

After the disastrous stewardship of Gordon Brown, the man best placed to rescue the New Labour project from Cleggmania and reassure the middle classes is Lord Mandelson

I’ll tell you what was going through the mind of the average Labour MP when Gordon Brown managed to stage one of the most spectacular political pratfalls since Neil Kinnock invited the world’s media to picture him walking along a beach with his wife and contrived to be knocked over by a wave. It was worse than Walter Mondale crying on television. It was as suicidal as Cicero being rude about Octavian.

When Gordon Brown went to Rochdale, and ended up making a direct personal attack on the character and motives of Labour’s core vote, Labour MPs weren’t thinking how to rescue the situation. They were thinking it was the end.

Continue reading Leadership of the New Labour Project →

articles, conservatives, news

Boris’s Second Anniversary as Mayor on 1st May

13 Comments

London illustrates what a bold, Conservative administration can do

I’m a one-nation Tory

He believes in the capacity of human ingenuity

Dave, he says,  will be seen in a completely different light

Benedict Brogan interview with Boris

Boris Johnson was at work on Wednesday when Gordon Brown crashed into the northern rock that is Gillian Duffy. As a connoisseur of forced apologies – Michael Howard once sent him to Liverpool to grovel for criticising the city’s “mawkish sentimentality” – the Mayor of London is forgiving. “If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.”

Apart from the obvious lesson about never allowing anyone near you with a clip-on microphone, he is more interested in the subtext of the blunder than the mechanics. “The thing I thought was revealing, and went to the way he runs things, was the instant blaming of Sue Nye [Mr Brown’s long-serving sidekick whom he held responsible for introducing him to Mrs Duffy]. It’s always someone’s fault and the world is always organised by a hidden hand to conspire against him. It’s a slightly paranoid view of the universe. But it’s fundamentally insignificant. What matters is his stewardship of the country and the complete mess that he has made.”

Which is why Boris, as he is known from Bromley to Beijing, is more interested in the crisis engulfing Greece and the ramifications for Europe’s financial capital. We are in his office to mark his second anniversary as mayor, which falls tomorrow. It is no surprise that a classicist who is also a big fan of the City is keeping a worried eye on the drama unfolding in Athens. He fears we could be next if we end up with an indecisive result next week. “If we get things wrong next Thursday, this could be something that we have to face in this country. That’s why I worry about a hung parliament. If all we get is drift and indecision, then we will get the same response we have seen in Greece.”

Continue reading Boris’s Second Anniversary as Mayor on 1st May →

articles

Election Fever and Cleggmania

24 Comments

The plan was to boost Clegg, take the gilt off the Cameron gingerbread, and wreck Tory hopes of achieving a majority government

what you will never succeed in doing, either in Britain or in any other political environment, is creating three-party politics

 

But look at what is happening to Labour! Look at the great humming, purring spin machine that propelled the People’s Party to three election victories and humiliated a succession of Tory leaders. They are doing worse than under Kinnock. They are down to levels not seen since M Foot appeared in his donkey jacket; and with H Harman’s teeth locked in Mandy’s throat we are beginning to detect the gurgling sound of meltdown.

Continue reading Election Fever and Cleggmania →

articles

Nick Clegg’s Message

35 Comments

The British began to make the big subconscious assumption that there would be a change of government in 2010

I am certain that the Tories will win

What crouton of substance did Nick Clegg offer last Thursday?

It must have been a couple of years ago that I was having dinner with the great Max Hastings, former editor of this paper, and he was being so gloomy about Conservative prospects that I scented a financial opportunity. Tell you what, I said, let’s have a bet. A thousand pounds says the Tories will win the next election. How about that?

Continue reading Nick Clegg’s Message →

articles

Dave’s Ambitious Message

27 Comments

Boris to Dave:  “You have got to run for this thing … or else I will!”

GENERAL ELECTION: Parliament Dissolves today and the General Election campaign begins officially today with the Dissolution of Parliament – and the publication of the first of the party manifestos.

It is almost exactly five years ago that the Tories experienced yet another election defeat and Michael Howard unexpectedly decided – after a valiant campaign – to step down as leader of the Conservative Party. I remember staggering back to my office at The Spectator and wondering what should happen next. After about ten seconds’ reflection, I picked up the phone.

“Dave,” I said to the future Prime Minister, “you have got to run for this thing.” With his customary politeness David Cameron thanked me and said that a couple of other people had mentioned the same idea. In fact he was so polite I wasn’t quite sure that he was going to strike with the mamba-like swiftness required. I decided to raise the stakes. “You have got to run for this thing, Dave,” I said, “or else I will!”

At which point, as he later told Tory audiences, David Cameron was seized with the full urgency of the situation and the need to save his party and his country. He has done a fantastic job in the last five years, and triumphantly vindicated that small group of us who first supported him in 2005.

Continue reading Dave’s Ambitious Message →

articles

For wealth creation cut National Insurance

10 Comments

I tell you it’s enough to shake a chap’s confidence in Her Majesty’s Press. It was barely a month ago that my trembling fingers reached for a Sunday paper proclaiming in huge type, all over the front page, that Gordon Brown was “on course” to win the election. So imagine my feelings of bewilderment yesterday morning when I went to the same newsagent to buy the very same newspaper. And there – on the same front page, in the same supersized font – was the news that David Cameron was “set to claim victory” in the very same general election.

What is going on with these headline-writers? Isn’t there some law against this kind of thing? One or other of these headlines must be false, and you would have thought that we innocent consumers were protected from such blatant deceptions. The reality is that Gordon Brown was never on course to win the election, as I pointed out at the time, any more than he is on course to win a gold medal for rhythmic gymnastics in the 2012 Olympics. Gordon Brown remains where he has been for the past two years, firmly on course to lose the general election, and lose it big.

What tosh. Labour’s decision to hike National Insurance is a direct attack on employment in all firms, large or small, there are other insurances companies that give you car or van insurances like one sure insurance that works solely online, but if you still have problems with insurance you can contact Tennessee lawyers. It is sugar in the tank of the British economy; it is paraquat on the seedlings of recovery, and the Tories are right to cut that tax because, in the end, governments cannot end recessions, and chancellors cannot end recessions. It is businesses that end recessions when they have the confidence to take on more people and expand – and they will have that confidence only if they are not going to be hit with extortionate payroll taxes. You can read more here about the insurance agency in Rockwall Texas. Well you should appoint experienced  Mobile beautician insurance for better services.

Continue reading For wealth creation cut National Insurance →

articles

Stop the Litter

22 Comments

It was a dark and rainy night and I was cycling innocently home at about the speed of an elderly French onion seller, when – pok – something hit me on the side of the helmet. I heard a shout of laughter to my right, and a cry of “You ——!”, and a car sped off up Shaftesbury Avenue. As anyone would in my position, I saw red. I put my foot down, and pedalled so hard that I was able to keep the weaving rump of the car in my sights, and I noted that it was some kind of Astra.

Soon the bike had beaten the car. As they waited at the next set of lights, I pounded on the window. “Open up!” I cried. There were three kids inside, and I could see the culprit goggling up at me with appalled recognition. They lurched off again in the hope of escape, but of course I had them at the next lights.

Continue reading Stop the Litter →

blog news, general, in parliament, news, personal notes

The Budget Song 2010

13 Comments

To keep up with a small Dungeekin tradition here is a specially commissioned little Budget Song for you all.  Enjoy.

Ronan Keating ‘When you say nothing at all’

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuJrEBtmM1Q&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

You can keep up with Dungeekin via his inimitable tweets @dungeekin

It’s amazing how you can still try to be smart,
Thanks to you our economy’s fallen apart,
This Budget Day you have done it again,
Talked a lot but you don’t say a thing,

Continue reading The Budget Song 2010 →

articles

EU students in UK universities

30 Comments
Kings College Cambridge (freefoto)
King’s College Cambridge (freefoto)

Let me propose a subject to be placed on the agenda at once …. a rebate. With Britain’s contribution to the EU budget rising to £6.4 billion, and the country’s finances so parlous that London babies are being buried in paupers’ graves, we have no option but to raise this at EU level

On June 17, David Cameron will travel to Brussels for his first EU summit as prime minister. When the silence falls and the goggling interpreters prepare for the first words to be heard from a Tory prime minister in 13 years, he will be thinking – like all British PMs – of two audiences.

To his new amigos he will want to send out a powerful message that the UK is ready to lead in Europe and to ensure that the EU is a force for good. And to the millions of voters back home he will simultaneously want to signal that he will stick up for this country’s interests and that he will not allow us to be ripped off by our friends and partners in Brussels.

Continue reading EU students in UK universities →