Recently in Tory stuff Category

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 northerners to move down here. Despite the Policy Exchange's close links with the present Tory leadership, Cameron has dismissed the report, while the Guardian had a substantial G2 feature on the virtues of the north (lovely people, great scenery, and hey, it's a great place for the arts as well). David Cameron called it barmy, and stated that "Conservative policy is focused on the good work of continuing the resurgence of cities across the north of England", and also towards keeping regional development agencies where they are working.

As a southerner myself, I have my own concern about the suggestion about people clearing off down south in large numbers, which is that the cost of living in London is difficult enough as it is; has anybody seen the cost of buying or renting a property? Even if they build a whole load of new boxes in the Thames Valley or around Oxford and Cambridge, these will not be good enough for ambitious incomers, from the north or anywhere else, who will want either proper houses, or nice new flats or studios, in the cities or in desirable suburbs, not in some new estate orphaned on the Thames estuary. These places will become ghettoes.

The Policy Exchange mob have their own agenda, and their own prejudices. One suspects that state-sponsored regeneration is anathema to them anyway, but no doubt they just want to get "their people" out of the "God-forsaken" north with all its small towns divided into "white trash" and Asian ghettoes. Besides their total ignorance of the north itself, which has thriving and well-regarded universities, they seem to think that Oxford and Cambridge are the only places besides London where a self-respecting person might settle, when in fact they are hardly the most industrialised places in the south. Cameron noted that the report's main author was soon off to Australia; one wonders what country he was living in when he wrote this nonsense.

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 views and that people who vote for them ought to be listened to. Sunny Hundal makes the point that the Tories have been listening to these very people for two successive election campaigns, running on explicit anti-immigration platforms, and lost both times. There is another issue Sunny doesn't mention, which is that the BNP's anti-immigration campaigns are often based on outright lies about foreigners being prioritised for housing over local people and even about rapes committed by immigrants.

I should add that this government has pandered to the anti-immigrant lobby and press to a disgraceful degree, and is notoriously eager to send refugees back, making excuses such as that rape is not torture. It even seeks to send people back to known war zones and to countries without stable governments which are in a state of ruin, and hinders people who want to bring spouses into the country. Perhaps the BNP really can't get much more over on the government, or even the Tories, on immigration anyway.

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 London, "would destroy the city's unity" and that the Conservative party should not even be thinking of putting his name forward:

"Those people that think he is a lovable rogue need to take a good look at themselves, and look at him. I just find his remarks very offensive. I think once people read his views, there is no way he is going to get the support of any people in the black community." Mr Johnson wrote a series of articles at the time of the Macpherson inquiry, claiming some of its recommendations were born of political correctness and that the furore around the murder had created the whiff of a witchhunt against the police. The inquiry team found the police institutionally racist.

The Macpherson report was the result of an enquiry into Stephen Lawrence's death. While the identities of the murderers are well-known (they boasted of it), they have never been successfully prosecuted, and the police were accused of "institutional racism", not only because of the failures of the inquiry but also because they took it upon themselves to harass Lawrence's friend, who witnessed the attack. The Guardian also reproduces another selection from Boris's "wisdom":

In an article written in October 2002, Mr Johnson described the Queen meeting "piccaninnies", adding that when the prime minister arrives in the Congo "the pangas will stop their hacking of human flesh, and the tribal warriors will all break out in watermelon smiles to see the big white chief touch down in his big white British taxpayer-funded bird".

What a despicable character he is. I have written at length in the past about why he is a danger to the Muslim community as well.

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 week, an event also attended by Dominic Grieve, by Conservative party vice-chair Sayeeda Warsi, by Tony Blair and by the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa. He began by telling everyone how successful Britain had been in the past in integrating minorities, notably the Ugandan Asians and the Jews in the early 20th century, and how the UK never had the violence between the Protestants and Catholics as happened on the continent. (More: Tariq Nelson.)

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 war, relations with the US and Israel are completely at odds with both the party's own history and with the pattern of right-wing parties in Europe, which tend to support their own national interest rather than those of foreign countries. Among those cited are Michael Gove (MP for Surrey Heath) and Douglas Carswell (Harwich & Clacton, Essex), who has opined that the British army in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting on behalf of Israel.

Technorati Tags: douglas carswell, geoffrey wheatcroft, tory, israel, iraq, conservative party

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 antiracism trade union" established by Private Marlon Clancy, who alleged that he had suffered racist abuse while in the Army. You can read his words here, but the gist of it was that language considered racial abuse in the outside world were commonplace in the Army, particularly when "egging on" a slow soldier, that fat and ginger-haired people get similar treatment, that some soldiers from ethnic minorities use racism as an excuse to cover up their shortcomings, and that the vast majority of soldiers have "a degree of colour-blindness" which makes differences disappear when the uniform is put on.

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 seats. This has prompted the resignation of Bernard Jenkin, the party's deputy chairman responsible for recruiting more ethnic minorities, who had overseen Cameron's A-list project but whom Miraj accused of warning him that he "would be shocked if they didn’t pick a white middle-class male" for the Witham seat, and that two Tory MPs for neighbouring Essex seats had given similar advice. (More: Ali Miraj's blog ([1], [2]), Pickled Politics.)

Technorati Tags: francis maude, conservative party, emel.

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:

When David Cameron stood for election to be Leader of our Party, he talked about the need for us to change. Last December, when our members voted for him, they gave him the mandate to make that change. We are making progress but we still have a lot more to do.

We had some tough questions to answer. We needed to address what was wrong with the Conservative Party. Why was it that we lost three elections in a row? Why did we come in third place with the black and minority ethnic communities at the last election?

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 Tory MPs. The list includes the novelist Louise Bagshawe and "unashamedly metrosexual" soap star Adam Rickitt:

Last week 100 or so wannabe Tory MPs were told that they had made it on to the Conservative party's new list of priority candidates. As promised by David Cameron, more than half of those on the A-list are women and 10% are from ethnic minorities. The list also includes a number of gay candidates. The party is trying hard to represent all of modern Britain and this list is the most important part of that effort so far.

Unfortunately, however, because the culture of secrecy still dominates the Conservatives' mindset, the party's high-ups decided that it would not publish the names of this priority list. Without publication the public cannot see this diversity and party members are unable to inspect the quality of the selection.

In my observation, there are a lot of complaints that many of the new intake are newcomers or people who "forsook" the party in its "darkest days" after John Major's departure and before Cameron's arrival. They may be forgetting that a lot of voters, not just activists, deserted the party for this reason when they tried to import Australian "dog-whistle" campaign tactics, thinking they could pick up working-class votes by appealing to peole's worse natures. Frankly, I think taking on a few people untainted by the disaster of the Howard election campaign can do the party a lot of good. There are good reasons why people might want to support the party now but would have run a mile in the face of a Howard premiership.

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 chairman, Francis Maude, in his home seat of Horsham in Sussex. I have to say I didn't know Mr Chishti that well at Aber, to the extent that I can't quite remember what position he held in the union, but I do remember him being around. I also remember that people misspelled his surname as "Christi" even back then, and the same mistake has been repeated now that he's made the news. Chishti refers to a town in Afghanistan (called Chisht) from which the Chishti Sufi order originated. The order has many followers in both India and Pakistan, and he may be descended from the order's originator Khwaja Moinuddeen Chishti, or maybe not. Anyway, his name's definitely not Christi.

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 a shadow cabinet post by David Cameron. On one hand, of course, this means the possibility of a better editor for the magazine and a possible rise in the quality of its output; on the other hand, Boris Johnson is not fit for either the Shadow Cabinet or the editorship of a major political magazine. Notice that the BBC does not mention his biased and inflammatory coverage of a "hot button" issue, but rather what he and Petronella Wyatt did in their spare time. Shame on them.

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 British jails and knew he was going to be "same old, same old" and I'm glad the membership have seen this.

There's also a piece on opposition to ID cards at the Conservative Home blog. The article covers most bases - the idea is authoritarian, costly and likely to be ineffective in reducing crime and terrorism. My attitude has always been that the scheme is a bad thing whether it works or doesn't - I hate the idea of a government database containing all our biometrics for the same reason I hate the idea of "spyware road charging". I don't want people spying on me, which is what this amounts to.

Also, the Tory Reform Group has an article from Shami Chakrabarti of Liberty in the latest edition of its magazine Reformer about the Tory appeal to civil libertarian concerns. The magazine is in PDF format but is a free download.