Letters From A Tory

Dear Janet Daley,

Even though you are almost a year too late with your article in the Telegraph this morning, I largely agree with your analysis.  You rightly ask whether New Labour was “ever anything more than a stupendously successful media operation?”  The answer is yes, but not much.

Although Gordon Brown has made a large number of poor strategic and policy decisions that have led to his current plight, he has helped expose the charade that was Tony Blair’s reign as PM.  Blair’s frequently cited charisma plus the “phenomenal skills of [his] image builders” made him appear to be greater than the sum of his parts, but Gordon Brown’s lack of ‘magic’, style and media savvy has let down New Labour’s guard.  Being a Labour supporter was undoubtedly a matter of class loyalty in the past, but Tony Blair ripped the heart out of the Labour movement in a bid to make them electable and now the lack of principles, philosophy and ideology in the Labour Party is there for all to see.  Blair started the ”open competition for the language of the high ground”, a competition which Cameron is now comfortably winning, but the Conservatives still retain their traditional focus of the last 20 years - the family, deregulation, personal responsibility, opportunity etc.  That’s not to say they haven’t made a lot of mistakes along the way, but at least they can still count on the support of their core voters; a luxury which Labour is currently foregoing.  Tony Blair’s obsession with bringing big business and profit-making into the public sector will have been loathed by traditional Labour voters, but now the party has nowhere left to turn in a bid to kickstart their revival - they can’t go back to the Left as the middle class will desert them, and they can’t go to the Right as their core voters will desert them.

I agree that “politics is now an open contest between conflicting solutions to real problems in which parties must convince individual voters of the force of their arguments”, although I can’t help but feel that with the demise of party loyalty will come a fall in turnout at the polls in future (bar the next election, when the entire country will want to get rid of Labour).  In short, the Conservatives remain a party of principle.  Sadly for Labour, they no longer have a soul.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear Chris Grayling,

You seem to be rising through the ranks of the Conservative Party with some ease and it is becoming more and more apparent why you are highly regarded.

While David Cameron is doing a lot of the glamour work in front of the cameras, which is absolutely essential, you are also following up his remarks with some excellent ground work.  For a businessman who donated £12,700 to the Labour Party to suddenly appear in a government post and start throwing round some extremely insulting remarks is clearly out of order and you have done well to spot it and drive home a straightforward but damaging assessment of the government’s increasingly dire record on sleaze.

Keep up the good work.

A.Tory

Dear Simon Heffer,

Your thoroughly justified anger in today’s Telegraph was verging on an educated rant, and consequently made for good reading.

Although you touched on many recent news stories, your point about public services was the most cutting.  The fact that many ministers have never done a ‘real job’ means that they are completely detached from the ‘real world’.  Labour ministers have no concept of serving the taxpayer, they have no concept of morality and decency, and even if they wanted to do a good job I’m not sure they’d be able to.  You are right to highlight the danger of individuals spending their whole working lives in and around the Westminster village without venturing into other fields of work and acquiring expertise - especially in public services - to help inform their decisions at ministerial level.  The apparent detachment with reality when Labour announce their latest policies is always mind-boggling. 

The only solution, as any Conservative will tell you, is to put the power back in the hands of the people.  If you make the money follow the people, rather than people always trying to follow the money thanks to the centralised government we have now, politicians and their cronies will be cut out of the loop and everyone will be the better for it.  Thankfully the Conservative Party have realised this and would make changes along these lines should they be elected, but it will be interesting to see how much power they can relinquish should they be in control of the purse strings themselves.

Yours truly,

A.Tory

Dear The Guardian,

And there was me naively thinking that you might try and give a balanced view of the Conservative Party conference - my mistake, evidently.  Your front page attack on David Cameron and his tax cut proposas, stating that they are “uncosted and unaffordable” was not only incorrect, but also laughably biased.

George Osborne has made it abundantly clear that any tax cuts will be funded out of changes to the current tax system, such as changing the rules for people who claim to live outside the UK in order to pay less tax, and also scrapping the Home Information Packs that threaten to pour misery on homeowners around the country and have been a shambles ever since they were first proposed.  So, your claims of “uncosted and unaffordable” tax cuts are inaccurate, and they are also a low blow bearing in mind the Labour conference was full of initiatives that will send government spending through the roof and yet no mention was made of how these will be introduced - especially in light of the decision to keep public sector pay rises to a minimum this year. Eco-towns, an extra £4 billion for social housing, more lame initiatives on gun crime,  increasing GP opening hours and many more policies did not have their funding explained and were often rehashes of previous announcements.

I’m sure your bias was wholly intentional but, just like the Labour Party, it lacked substance and showed how nervous you really are about a Conservative fightback.

Better luck next time.

Regards,

A.Tory

Dear David Cameron,

So here we are.  After the rollercoaster of a ride that has been the last six months as leader of the Conservative Party, one could reasonably argue that it all comes down to one speech.  The polls are still being fairly unkind to the Conservatives, although the fact that Labour have just had their party conference obviously skews the polls considerably.

Softening stamp duty, going after benefits claimants, tax breaks for families - these are all good things, but it’s not enough.  Crime, the EU and immigration is where the battle lines between yourself and Gordon Brown must be drawn.  You have no choice but to boldly state to the country why you as the Conservative leader offer a genuine and respectable alternative to Labour.  Needless to say you have to highlight Labour’s weaknesses as much as possible in addition to stating your own case - even so, your message must be a powerful one.  You have to convince Conservatives to support you, you have to bring back the voters who have jumped ship and gone over to Gordon Brown, you have to tempt some Liberal voters, and I’m sure you can chip away at UKIP and the BNP if you get your message right.

I don’t know whether the possible re-emergence of foot and mouth disease plus the bluetongue virus might make Gordon Brown think twice about an autumn election.  For now, you must assume that it won’t.  I don’t envy you Mr Cameron, as you cannot afford to have anything less than a perfectly choreographed conference with no infighting, no backstabbing, and no dissenters.

Best wishes, and good luck.

A.Tory

Dear David Cameron,

I respect the fact that you are not bothering to fight Gordon Brown for the headlines during the Labour Party conference.  There isn’t really much point, seeing as he will steal the headlines regardless of any counter-offensive you launch.  But as you rightly spotted yesterday, Gordon Brown’s speech was light on content and was clearly designed to bring the State further into people’s lives - and this is where you have to bring him crashing down to earth.

To save you a little time, here is a list of points to attack Brown on, either because he forgot to mention them or because he failed to address them in sufficient detail:

EDUCATION - How will he halt the freefall in the credibility of our national examinations?  Why should it only be people on low incomes who get free university education?  How come ‘catch-up’ classes have so far failed to stop an increase in the number of NEETs?

FAMILY - Why talk about child poverty, seeing as poverty has increased under Labour?  How can you extend maternity leave and not paternity leave?  How can small businesses cope with such a change?

CRIME - How can he attack underage drinkers after 10 years of ignoring them?  Surely 24-hour licensing has made things worse?  Is more stop-and-search really going to help community relations and cut crime?  Has he forgotten that he has introduced most of the bureaucracy in the police force that he is now trying to cut?  Didn’t Labour claim to be tough on the causes of crime ten years ago?

EU - Why should we be “good Europeans”?  Where is our referendum?

NHS - Has he forgotten that he was Chancellor when all the hospital wards were being left dirty?  How we will double the number of matrons when we aren’t training enough hospital staff at the moment?

As if all that wasn’t bad enough, he’s talking about spending lots more money when he is cutting public sector pay this year, he completely ignored immigration controls and the EU referendum, he didn’t propose anything to help mend our ‘broken society’, a lot of his initiatives were re-releases of old policies - and last but by no means least, his references to ‘Britishness’ were sickening.  He doesn’t care about the appalling deal that England gets thanks to his funding arrangements, nor is he going to stop Scottish MPs voting in England as it increases his level of support relative to the Conservatives.

Mr Cameron, this speech was a gift to you.  He failed to produce anything to capture the public spirit and he failed to achieve any advances in policy over Blair.  If you can’t tear him to pieces over this speech, there really isn’t much chance for the Conservative Party at the next election - whenever it may be.

Yours in hope,

A.Tory

Dear Andy Coulson,

Obviously your work in the Conservative Party is never going to grab the headlines because your best strategy is to support David Cameron behind the scenes.  Even though you started your job a few months back, the benefits of your experience and expertise are really starting to show.

After a very rocky period in mid 2007, you have given David Cameron and the Conservatives a new lease of life.  Cameron has become much more aggressive in the media towards his critics and political opponents, in addition to spelling out his views with more certainty and conviction than ever before.  The improving poll results for the Conservatives is testament to how the public are starting to take him more seriously.  I’m sure you have had a role to play in this, knowing how savage the media become when they sense weakness.

The absence of the Quality of Life policy group from the headlines this morning must have been part of your game as well.  Within the last few days, their proposals for taxing people out of supermarket parking and banning plasma screens have been universally slated (and rightly so, they were worthless proposals), leading you to take evasive action.  You have to look extremely hard in today’s papers to find a significant mention of the proposals, such was the effectiveness of your damage limitation.  Even the BBC didn’t take on the Conservatives this time.  Instead the newspapers have focussed on taxing airlines and highly polluting cars (assuming that they mentioned the story at all), which are more realistic and more palatable to the voters.

I think this whole situation was uncomfortable for you and David Cameron, but you saved the party from considerable embarrassment and for that I am extremely grateful.

Your sincerely,

A.Tory

Dear Michael Ancram,

I don’t understand it, I really don’t.  I will start this letter by saying that you raised some valid points in your article in the Telegraph this morning.  Your views on the Euro, our relationship with Europe, our commitment to lower taxes - all of these will strike a chord with many Conservatives.  Having said this, your letter was nothing short of naive.

I cannot say that I agree with everything David Cameron has said and done since he became leader of the Conservative Party.  I appear to be to the Right of him of some key issues, which many Conservatives will probably empathise with BUT I also want him to be the next Prime Minister of this country.  After being miles behind in the polls recently, he made huge inroads into Labour’s lead with his recent interview on Newsnight and his tough talking on immigration and crime which I thought made him look like genuine Prime Minister material.  So for you to stick your oar in and sabotage his recent gains is an act of stupidity.  You may have undone all of his good work in a single day.

I am sick and tired of people wrecking David Cameron’s chances at the next election from within his own party.  Either you want a Conservative government, in which case you shut up and put up with Cameron, or you don’t.  Make your mind up.

Yours in dismay,

A.Tory