ME, mental health and victim blaming
Yesterday afternoon there was a debate on ME at Westminster Hall, an annex to the House of Commons, whose main participants were Ian Swales (Lib Dem, Redcar) and the Tory health minister Paul Burstow....
Category: The Tories
Celyn Vincent and the problem of invisibility
This morning the papers reported that Riven Vincent, the mother of a daughter named Celyn (pronounced Kellin, Welsh for holly — and some newspapers thought the public was too stupid to process that, so...
A sad day for parliamentary democracy
Last night a set of “scandals” broke in which various senior Lib Dem politicians made statements which were not conducive to the love-in between their party and the Tories which has caused so much...
Tory think tank compared to “madrasa”
Today the Guardian carried a front-page story about how various Tory MPs and activists are being given training by an offshoot of the party’s youth wing, Conservative Future, named the Young Britons’ Foundation ([1],...
The nasty party begins to re-emerge
In 2002 Teresa May, the chairwoman of the Tory party appointed by Iain Duncan Smith, told the party’s conference that people called her party the “nasty party” and that their base was too narrow...
Why Tories messed up in attack on Islamic school
Why Conservatives failed the test on Islamic schools - Education News, Education - The Independent It appears that the Tories overlooked a number of things while criticising state funding for two schools supposedly linked...
Meet the Daily Mail’s new guest editor
Back in the 1990s, I was a big fan of the Liverpool-based TV soap Brookside (I got into it just as the body-under-the-patio story was hotting up and got out after the storylines got...
Provincial Tory attacks free speech
In case anyone was really thinking that the Tories had become the party of civil liberties in the UK (rather than the party which started the ball rolling on bringing in laws restricting the...
Move ’em down south? Hardly
Yesterday, the Policy Exchange published a report which suggested that the government should stop trying to revive the north, and instead build lots of new houses around London, Oxford and Cambridge and encourage ambitious...
Response to Sayeeda Warsi on the BNP
Pickled Politics: Sayeeda Warsi and the BNP I thought someone would write a cogent reply to Sayeeda Warsi’s interview in yesterday’s Independent on Sunday, in which she claimed that the BNP have some legitimate...
Doreen Lawrence condemns Johnson for mayor
Johnson ‘would destroy London’s unity’ as mayor - Guardian Unlimited Politics Doreen Lawrence, the mother of the murdered teenager Stephen Lawrence, has told the Guardian that she thinks Boris Johnson, if elected mayor of...
“Cultural separatism” and the Islamic studies conference
Islamophobia Watch - David Cameron accuses Muslims of ‘cultural separatism’ David Cameron gave this speech at a conference on “Islam and Muslims in the World Today”, hosted in London by Cambridge university earlier this...
Wheatcroft on Tory neo-cons
Anglo-neocons are slaves to America and not serving us (Guardian Unlimited) Geoffrey Wheatcroft (The Strange Death of Tory England, Yo! Blair) on the clique of “Anglo-neocons” surrounding David Cameron whose position on the Iraq...
Racist or not, Mr Security had to go
Last Thursday, Patrick Mercer, the Conservative party’s spokesman for “homeland security”, was sacked from David Cameron’s shadow cabinet for giving an interview to the Times. He was reacting to the establishment of a “new...
Provincial Tories reject Asian City worker
The local Conservative party in Witham, Essex have rejected an Asian candidate, City chartered accountant Ali Miraj, dealing a blow to David Cameron’s policy of getting more ethnic minority candidates selected for winnable Commons...
Francis Maude in Emel magazine
Francis Maude, chairman of the Conservative Party, has a column in the latest edition of emel magazine (June 2006, issue 21, not online yet but available in Borders), entitled A Party for All People. The article discusses at length the party’s recent drive to recruit more female and ethnic minority candidates, including Muslims.
Conservative Home on the A-list
Comment is free: Get your priorities right Tim Montgomerie (founder of the Conservative Home blog site) reveals why he has named more than 70 of the 100 people on David Cameron’s “A-list” of potential...
On Chishti defection and Sands sacking
Via Pickled Politics, with their memorable headline “Labour lose brown person to Tories”, someone I knew as a union activist at Aberystwyth has joined the Conservative party just months after standing against the party...
Bigots’ friend back in shadow cabinet
The BBC is reporting that Boris Johnson, the former editor of the Spectator who allowed the brazenly unbalanced analysis of the July bombings and French riots to appear on his watch has been given...
Cameron wins, and Tory anti-ID pieces
Well, I have to say I’m guardedly optimistic about David Cameron winning the Conservative Party leadership election. When I saw David Davis’ campaign page, I saw the complaint about foreigners taking up room in...