News from the New Party

News Highlights

The 2010 General Election
Stop playing Scrooge Darling, we need tax cuts now
Government risks civil unrest over pensions
New Party sympathises with expenses backlash MPs
Miliband's carbon solution is to export employment during recession
New Party disappointed by CO2 advert adjudication delays
This year Christmas dinner will cost you £36million, if you are quick
IPPR plans would cause higher numbers to jump from UK Titanic
Stealth tax ‘shooting galleries’ creating killer roads
New Party slams 'perverse' lessons in domestic violence
UK needs to wake up and end this economic 'Greek tragedy'
New corruption figures highlight Kelly's Westminster failure
Queen's Speech a matter of the 'government's new clothes'
Labour's nuclear 'dithering' will have UK scrabbling in the dark, New Party leader tells nuclear heartland
YouTube debut for New Party following Politics Show appearance
Stop Westminster Council's bike rider robbery before it spreads nationwide
New Party calls for BBC to end its 'discrimination' of smaller political parties
New Party praises ASA for investigating 'sickening' carbon advert
Time to unburden 10 million low earners of income tax
'Orwellian' C02 advert prompts New Party call for withdrawal
Richard Vass' letter to the national press
Red Tape has left thousands across Britain jobless
Who are the real progressives?
Memories of '76
The reactionary left
The Democratic Imperative
Socialism for shoppers
Spivocracy in action
Precisely
The abdication of leadership
Rebuilding communities
The loser tendency
The United Nations: what moral authority?
How to banish cynicism
The Chancellor's iron grip - on power
British politics: Is it dead yet?

Sunday, July 22, 2007

By-election blues

You know things must be bad if you are losing out in the credibility stakes to Sir Menzies Campbell, and David Cameron is now starting to feel the heat from his own party.

Thursday's by-election results were disastrous for the Conservative leader. In itself, a third place in a seat like Ealing Southall would not have been the end of the world. Spectacular misjudgment has, however, turned a disappointment into a crisis.

The selection of such a controversial candidate as Tony Lit, who had been writing cheques for Tony Blair only a few weeks ago, sent a clear message that in David Cameron's mind there's not much clear blue water between the Conservatives and Labour (so much for the New Model Tories' presenting the country with a "real change").

The inept blundering into the sensitive Sikh-Hindu communal relations within the area obviously did not go down well, as it now appears that the Conservatives were manipulated by the clutch of defecting councillors rather than the other way round.

Finally, the stupendously hubristic ballot-paper description of the candidate's allegiance to "David Cameron's Conservative Party". The Tories were asking for trouble and they found it.

Sedgefield was a nightmare of a different kind. In Tony Blair's old constituency the Cameroon candidate was overhauled by the Liberal Democrat, and only beat the BNP challenger to third place by less than 1.600 votes.

So what now for Project Cameron? The news that murmurings on the Conservative benches are starting to manifest themselves as letters of "no confidence" to the Chairman of the 1922 Committee is hardly surprising. The increasing likelihood that Gordon Brown will seek to cash in on his honeymoon period with an early election next spring only piles on the pressure more. There is little time to complete the much vaunted policy revamp to put some flesh on the bones of the Cameron vision for Britain.

Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday hits the nail on the head:

If the Tory Party were your car, it would be broken down at the roadside. If it were your fridge, all your food would go bad. If it were your accountant, you'd be bankrupt. If it were your lawyer, you'd be in jail.

And in all cases, you'd get rid of it and get a different one.

The vultures are circling...

News from the New Party

News Highlights

News Archive

By-election blues