Cash for Cameron Scandal Breaks

[Sheilbh]

That's nice to see Tories are branching out from their traditional sex scandal area.

Well now they're okay with the gays there's very few sex scandals left.  When the government started the Tory Prisons Minister announced that he was divorcing his wife because he's gay.  Then he grew a beard.  But he's still Prisons Minister.

Btw, is Sunday Times Murdoch-owned? If so, this looks like a big revenge/warning thing.

Yep.  The Sun in Scotland also looks like it'll endorse independence

The PM's made a statement and ordered an inquiry.  Which normally takes more than 24 hours.  Maybe there's more on this and Cameron wants to get ahead of it.

[Sheilbh]

I thought this on the collapse of the Tory press was interesting.  For what it's worth I agree with their critique of Cameron:

Cameron-bashing shows 'the Tory press' ain't what it used to be
The Mail, Telegraph and Sun's recent hostility to Cameron and George Osborne shows a new detachment from the Tory party

Once it was accepted by everyone that there was an entity known as "the Tory press". The old barons in the last century may have played fast and loose within the Conservative fold, but they never kicked it hard enough to cause any real problems.

Gradually, however, the newspapers of the right have detached themselves from any semblance of party allegiance.

Now they have no care to preserve the Tory party at all costs. They wish to refashion it and feel emboldened enough to rage at what they believe are its shortcomings apparently heedless of the ramifications.

Never has this been more obvious than in the reaction to the budget, and the furore over the enforced resignation of the party's co-treasurer, Peter Cruddas.

The Daily Mail has given David Cameron the biggest kicking of all in the past week. But the Daily Telegraph and the Sun have put on their hobnail boots too.

It would appear that the true blue press is true only to itself, and certainly bluer than the Tories that they helped, without much enthusiasm, into power.

Not that Cameron achieved sole power, of course. He had to settle for a coalition with the Lib Dems and that failure to secure victory is part of this story of newspaper disillusion with him and his administration. As far as the editors of the right-wing papers are concerned, Cameron has let them down. Not that they expected much of him anyway.

It was easy to detect a faint-heartedness among the trio during the general election campaign, and they have never warmed to him since. He just isn't their kind of man.

The editors and columnists of the Mail, Telegraph and Sun hanker for the meritocratic virtues that transformed the Conservatives in the Thatcher era. They stood four-square with her as she dispensed with the grouse moor crew who had risen through privilege. Now they think Cameron is too close to that old style of Tory.

Worse, they believe him guilty of grafting on to his own privileged background a concern for touchy-feely conservatism, tinged with concern for the environment, that make editors like the Mail's Paul Dacre scream with rage.

The language employed in today's leading article in the Mail was hugely significant. "The stench of hypocrisy is almost overpowering," it said.

Though it called him as "a highly capable prime minister in many ways" – a calculated qualification – it pointed to his "worrying track record of appointing questionable people to important jobs".

More telling still was the reference to Cameron's "soignée wife ... playing hostess at cosy dinner parties at No 10". It is a class-based insult, a criticism rooted in the Camerons' background that Mail readers could instantly grasp.

A second Mail leader then laid into the chancellor, George Osborne, for "the outrageous "granny tax". It was a reminder of the Mail's post-budget front page: "Osborne picks the pockets of pensioners."

That condemnation was echoed in the Sun, whose its own hostile reaction to the budget included a page one cartoon lampooning Osborne with an accusation that he had "clobbered the masses of hard-grafting Brits in a budget that boosted super-earners".

Once again, it was a message about social class distinction. The Sun was delivering a broadside by suggesting that an old Etonian could not possibly grasp the problems of the working class. The Sun can be accused of hypocrisy on that count, but its readers are unlikely to bother about that, so the paper felt confident in championing their cause.

The Daily Telegraph, which saw the "granny tax" as "a £3bn 'stealth' raid on middle-class pensioners", also played the class card, pitching its audience against the narrow upper-middle class strata peopled by Cameron and Osborne.

By contrast, the Times has been more conciliatory towards Cameron. But for how long? Note the latest set of tweets by its proprietor, Rupert Murdoch.

Even if it was only natural that he should boost the Sunday Times for breaking the cash-for-access story, it was possible to detect an anti-Cameron agenda. He wrote: "What was Cameron thinking? No one, rightly or wrongly, will believe his story." Then came: "Cameron should just have followed history and flogged some seats in the Lords."

The Tory press? Think of it instead as the Thatcher press – a group of reactionary newspaper editors and proprietors who just cannot find a successor to the old lady.

[mongers]

It's not over yet, I've heard rumours the LibDems are offering privileged access to Nick Clegg is you stump up 250 tesco clubcard points. 

[Richard Hakluyt]

A tempting offer, but I went with the set of sporting drink coasters instead 

[Richard Hakluyt]

Notice how this has already been more or less forgotten.

We have now moved on to pastygate!

Apparently the only leading politician who doesn't eat pasties is Eric Pickles 

[Admiral Yi]

Notice how this has already been more or less forgotten.

Political donations in exchange for meeting people is not that zesty a scandal.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Notice how this has already been more or less forgotten.

Political donations in exchange for meeting people is not that zesty a scandal.

Indeed, especially when it is common and accepted practice. Scroll down to the bottom of this page from the tory party website, it is there in just about as straightforward a fashion as possible :

http://www.conservatives.com/Donate/Donor_Clubs.aspx

The Trade Unions give Labour about 85% of its funding IIRC, they directly have votes on party policy and leadership.

This was more about general disgust for politicians than a specific shock at a scam imo.

[Sheilbh]

Political donations in exchange for meeting people is not that zesty a scandal.

The real problem I think was the use of the No. 10 policy unit.  If they met at party HQ and the Conservative party policy wonks had a look at things that'd be fine.  Having dinner in the No. 10 flat and then having the government's policy unit look over things is different.

We have now moved on to pastygate!

And Jerrycanning.

I'm entirely behind the outrage about pastygate though....

[Sheilbh]

Interesting that the class angle - which I think is a legitimate problem with the current government - is getting worse for them.  David Davis (the man Cameron beat to the leadership, a more hard-line conservative who was raised in a council estate) has said voters feel the government's 'well dressed, well turned out, well fed ... and in a different world':
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2122291/David-Davis-voters-feel-Government.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

In addition it looks like another dangerous element of Osborne's budget was his line that aggressive tax avoidance is 'morally repugnant'.  The Times had a front page story on a Minister with a multi-million pound investment in a company engaged in aggressive tax avoidance - there'll be more as journalists look into all the cabinet and major donors records.  The Times said it could have been as big a blunder as 'back to basics'.

[Richard Hakluyt]

I was just thinking earlier of the time when Cameron mocked Nadine Dorries in the Commons a few months back. Now she is by no means my favourite politician and I can agree with barely anything she says, but she represents a significant section of people. And, of course, they lost the services of David Davis due to the leadership business a few years back.

I'm coming round to the idea that they really are only talking to southern English toffs 

Which may be rather slow of me; but, since that is electoral suicide, I had been assuming that they are surely not quite so stupid. Anyway, it poses quite a challenge to Miliband and Balls, how can they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory 

[Sheilbh]

 

There's been a couple of polls that are pretty grim for the Tories too.  I don't think they should get too worried about the 10 point lead Labour's got, because, as you say, they're still led by Ed Miliband.  But the 7-8% UKIP are getting, unprompted, should worry them a lot.

I think that's a good point about Dorries.  Apparently in the post-budget 1922 meeting - when Cameron and Osborne were cheered to the rafters for their triumph - Osborne made a joke about one of the leading Christian Conservatives too.  It didn't go down well and Cameron joked that he'd need to make it up with the Christians if he wants to be leader.

The two really do seem a bit clueless at times.  The child benefit thing is a point, Iain Martin says that he can see how it came about that they were sitting in Osborne's Notting Hill home - everyone earning over £100k - and someone pointed out how ridiculous it was that they got child benefit.  That's a fair point and so he announces he'll cut it at the Tory conference, for a while the Tories think this is great because it shows 'we're all in it together'.  But it doesn't just affect people like Cameron and Osborne, even now it affects single earner families on £50k a year (which isn't that high) but, even worse, doesn't affect dual income families on up to £100k.  Also it doesn't just affect them but all of the voters who reasonably aspire to be on £50k at some point in their life and have children.

Martin calls it Oka conservatism:

By coincidence, the day that Parson's piece appeared, the latest catalogue for the furniture company Oka landed on our doormat at home. It made me wonder about the electoral viability of what we might call Oka Conservatism.

Oka is a company with impeccable Cameroon connections, run by strong-willed entrepreneurial women. The PM's mother-in-law Lady Astor was a founder.

In its shops you can find the expression of a particular kind of elegant West London and South West London late 30s and 40 something living – with lots of cream, tasteful lighting and the odd ethnic themed item thrown in. If Oka made food, all the ingredients would be organic and sourced from Hugh Fearnley-Whatshisname. The furniture is extraordinarily over-priced for what it is, but then what isn't these days.

Of course, a typical customer at the store wouldn't be so vulgar as to fill the entirety of their house with Oka furniture, lamps and rugs, just as they wouldn't be seen dead in head to toe Boden ("just the odd polo shirt, and the children's clothes are great"). No, Oka provides a basic but expensive backdrop against which more individual items from more exclusive stores (such as George "Osborne and Little") can be displayed in smart West London homes.

Think of Oka as the IKEA of the Cameroon classes, although Cameron himself is always canny enough to point out that he himself sometimes buys and constructs IKEA furniture. As he did when he did up the nursery in Number 10 after the election, and got Nick Clegg to help. Message: we're just a pair of ordinary dads struggling with a flat packed wardrobe. Response: Come off it. Their natural habitat is much more rarified and London upper-middle class than that.

Why does any of this matter? If David Cameron wants to govern in his own right after 2015, or even at the head of another coalition, he is going to need the votes of people a million miles removed from that world. If they calculate that he or his coterie are too remote form their concerns that is likely to have implications.

Ever since the post-war collapse of the culture of deference, leaders who are successful electorally have been adept at understanding the concerns of the broad middle – with a particular emphasis on the lower-middle classes. That includes Thatcher and Blair. She felt it instinctively, having started in Grantham. He realized he could not win without thinking his way into the heads of the voters he needed to convince.

Harold Macmillan, something of a hero of David Cameron's, was actually rather brilliant at grasping this whole business. In D.R. Thorpe's new biography a wonderful tale is included, of Macmillan's grandson asking the old man whether he was annoyed by the increased number of airliners taking off near his country home and flying overhead. Not a bit of it, said Macmillan, it was a wonderful development. Those planes were full of hardworking people off to have foreign holidays and broadening their experiences as they rose on the tide of prosperity. When he said that Britons had never had it so good, he meant it (unlike Lord Young) in a positive, inclusive sense.

But all the evidence so far suggests that Cameron doesn't connect properly with such voters. He didn't mange to in the election, or he would have won. And the task won't get easier. The longer he is Prime Minister the more shielded he will become; that is just the way it is.

The whole piece is good and, I think, accurate:
http://blogs.wsj.com/iainmartin/2010/11/26/oka-conservatism-out-of-touchness-and-the-real-middle/

I think they really are speaking to all of the swing voters from the Chilterns to Kensington

[Admiral Yi]

Has there ever been any discussion of building a new PM's residence?  Every time I see no. 10 in a movie I think that dump really needs a yard.

[Sheilbh]

Has there ever been any discussion of building a new PM's residence?  Every time I see no. 10 in a movie I think that dump really needs a yard.

Never.

It's got the Rose Garden out back.  Where the coalition had their first joint press conference:


The PM should be stuck with a pretty small flat above No. 10 (or 11) that they have to contribute to the refurb of and that doesn't have staff

[mongers]

Has there ever been any discussion of building a new PM's residence?  Every time I see no. 10 in a movie I think that dump really needs a yard.

It fit perfectly with the country's post-empire vibe; If you've once ruled 1/4 or the world's landmass and are now reduced to 95,00 sq.miles and counting, then a shabby little flat over the shop seems entirely fitting. 

[Razgovory]

I thought the PM governed, and the Monarch ruled.  The Queen seems to have nice house.