And another thing…

ON THE day that the Conservatives launch a new campaign trying to convince the electorate that they are a historically “progressive” force (no, seriously), a number of prominent Tory blogs have helpfully blown the gaffe.

While Dave waxes lyrical about how spiffing these wind farm thingies are, and how paying proles less than the minimum wage is…well, it’s just not cricket, is it?… along comes this from Tory Bear, slamming Ed Miliband for having the temerity to believe that global warming is man-made. Last time I checked, Tory Bear’s leader claimed to believe the same thing.

And then there’s Douglas Carswell, Daniel Hannan’s straight man, singing the praises of Ian Plimer, the Right’s latest climate change sceptic hero.

And then we have some wistful musings from Letters From a Tory, clearly annoyed that more Tory MPs aren’t following Christopher Chope’s example by trying to undermine the national minimum wage.

And let’s not even mention Nadine’s cheeky introductory sentence to her latest post:

I have returned home from holiday to a diary as full as a state grammar school.

Hmm? Should I have said that?

Why shouldn’t she? After all, if she was hinting that she’s in favour of moving backwards from the state comprehensive system to the eleven-plus, then there’s no reason to obscure her views, especially if , as I strongly suspect is the case, they are supported by the majority of her party.

And that’s the point: Tory Bear, Douglas Carswell, Letters From A Tory and Nadine are all mainstream Tory bloggers. It’s fair to assume, therefore, that their views are fairly mainstream (in Tory terms) too.

Conservative? Absolutely. Progressive? Nowehere near.

CRANMER reckons there are many reasons why Christians should vote Conservative. Well, of course he does: he’s a Christian, he’s a Tory, ergo, all Christians should be Tories.

I’ve come across this nonsense before, of course, many times, within the church. Shortly after the 1987 general election, I was visiting a friend who had been a member of the same “house church” as me back in our Ayshire days. She had now settled in Sale, Cheshire, with her husband. A Christian friend came round in the evening (with his guitar, natch; wouldn’t want to avoid any evangelical Christian clichés, now, would we?). “Did you vote for our man?” he asked my friend. “Our man”, it turned out, had been the local SDP/Liberal Alliance candidate a few weeks previously, who was also a member of my friend’s local church. Never mind the policies — so long as the person voting for them in the Commons shares your faith. Apparently.

Cranmer’s argument, naturally, is slightly more sophisticated, and it centres on abortion. If you’re a Christian, you’ll oppose abortion, and since David Cameron has apparently offered a free vote on reducing the upper limit, then Christians should vote for a Conservative government. Now, I don’t deny that this argument has a certain logic: more Tory MPs and candidates than Labour tend to be pro-life, so if that’s the most important issue for you, you’ll be tempted to vote accordingly.

But as I’ve argued before, abortion has always been decided on a free vote, and I assume always will be. My biggest problem with Cranmer’s argument (apart from the fact that he refers to himself in the third person; Tom has never been comfortable with that style of writing, which is why he gave up on Facebook) is that he’s trying to accomplish what others —such as Nadine — have tried to do before: make abortion a party political issue along the same lines as in the US.

This would be very bad for British politics and even worse, in the long term, for the Conservative Party. Yes, there was a time when the Republican Party successfully exploited the prejudices and intolerance of the Christian Right for electoral gain. But they paid the price for their 4G strategy (God, guns, gays and gynecology) at the last election and look as if they’ll ditch their fundamentalist allies in order to gain a foothold in the mid-terms next year.

There’s nothing wrong in promoting your own party to those of your own faith, of course. In 1988 I made an impassioned plea to my own church members that the poll tax should be resisted on the basis that a flat tax, with everyone paying the same amount regardless of income, was incompatible with the Biblical principle of tithing. Most members agreed, but it didn’t mean they voted Labour afterwards; I suspect most of them continued to vote Tory.

Tory-voting Christians all too often try to make this specious argument, that a single party (theirs, of course) most accurately represents “Christian values”. Labour-voting Christians, in my experience, tend not to, or at least, they do it less often. Perhaps that’s because they look across at the American political system and are repulsed by the stranglehold that the Christian Right have over Republican policy and don’t want to see the same thing happen here.

More likely, however, they simply recognise that it’s far too simplistic to claim any one party for God, that individuals should be trusted to make their own choice, and those choices respected.

The problem is that there are some vocal Tories out there who look across the Atlantic and actually like what they see. They see the intolerance and ignorance of the likes of Sarah Palin and think: “Yes, let’s have some of that over here!”

Very worrying indeed.

CONTINUING my lone crusade to convince someone — anyone, in fact — that David Cameron’s detoxification strategy has been 100 per cent cosmetic and zero per cent substance, here’s the latest piece of evidence.

Louise Bagshawe, the novelist and Tory candidate for Corby, has Twittered that Sarah Palin is her "heroine". And no, I don’t think she was being ironic, judging from some of her subsequent Tweets.

Bagshawe is one of the Tories’ most high profile candidates, frequently appearing, presumably at the request of Central Office, in media articles profiling the Tories’ "next generation".

And Sarah Palin is her heroine.

Sarah Palin, who made an international, as well as a national, laughing stock of last year’s Republican presidential campaign.

Sarah Palin, who the Alaskan state legislature concluded had abused her powers as governor by persecuting her sister’s ex-husband.

Sarah Palin, who actually believes  that dinosaurs and humans co-existed because she believes in the literal interpretation of the book of Genesis.

Sarah Palin, whose good ol’ fashioned folksy charm just wasn’t enough to hide the fact that she was one of the least qualified vice-presidential candidates in modern political history. You betcha!

John McCain, by all accounts a decent and principled man, holed his own bid for the Whitehouse below the waterline by appointing her as his running mate, while simultaneously prompting the world to reassess whether he had the political judgment after all to be elected to his country’s highest office. After all, someone who thinks it a good idea to put Sarah Palin within a heartbeat of the presidency can hardly be trusted to make other, less important decisions in government.

As an Obama supporter, I obviously would like to see Palin become her party’s standard bearer in 2012. But even the Republican Party, I strongly suspect, don’t have that much of a death wish. They might opt for her if Obama looks like being unbeatable by then, in which case she’ll be rendered as harmless as Bob Dole was against Clinton in 1996. But if Obama’s looking remotely vulnerable, I expect the party will want to nominate a credible candidate instead.

The interesting question is: how many other Tory candidates and MPs actually take Palin seriously and want her to become president (other than Nadine, obviously)? An interesting survey of Tory candidates today at ConservativeHome reveals that as many supported Obama as opposed him. We know that Dave himself supported McCain (although his endorsement came before Palin’s nomination for VP).

Bagshawe has since Twittered that she doesn’t agree with Palin on gay rights but she does on abortion. Well, throw a stick into any Southern Baptist church in America and you’ll hit someone with the same views — surely Palin’s got more going for her than that? Apart from the glasses, of course, which I admit are very fetching.

Palin is an extremist. She is also a fool. I would question the political judgment, therefore, of anyone who describes her as their "heroine". 

UPDATE at 11.00 am, 4th July: Louise herself has replied by Twitter, suggesting that the accusation that Palin thinks dinosaurs and people walked the earth at the same time is a smear. If what I wrote above is untrue, then I apologise. But again, most people don’t believe this either and it doesn’t qualify them to be president. Can anyone provide a link to a direct quote by Palin denying the whole One Million years BC scenario?

LESS than a day in the job and already the media are writing John Bercow’s political obituary. The knives are out because some Tories aren’t happy that the rest of the House didn’t agree with them on who the Speaker should be.

But more of that in a minute; first, a confession.

After announcing on this blog and elsewhere in the media that I was supporting John, yesterday I changed my mind. Based on nothing more than the strength of the candidates’ speeches, I voted for Parmjit Dhanda in the first round and then for George Young in the subsequent two rounds. Fickle, I know, but I thought it better to change my mind and support who I thought would be best for the job rather than simply stick to my guns. Consistency, as I have said before, is a much overrated quality in politics.

But John Bercow is the new Speaker. He won by a healthy margin and Tories who are now throwing their toys out of the pram should start behaving themselves.

Contrast the comments today of two prominent Tory back benchers. Nadine Dorries’s behaviour last night in the chamber and this morning on the Today programme was ungracious to say the least. According to Nadine, the Tories, who make up well short of a third of the House of Commons, should have been allowed a veto on the choice of Speaker, though she fails to explain this absurd position. Her ostentatious shaking of her head as John was ceremoniously "dragged" to the Speaker’s chair, and her audible "Not in my name" at the same time, were more about her well-known talent for attention-grabbing than about any statement of principle. They were also an embarrassment to her party and her constituency.

And then there’s Douglas Carswell, prime mover behind the removal of Michael Martin from the Speaker’s chair and co-author, along with Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, of  "The Plan: Twelve Bonkers Solutions to Non-Existent Problems". Now, I disagree with Douglas on pretty much everything, but I like him. He’s honest and straightforward. And yesterday he voted for Richard Shepherd in the first round and for Bercow in the final ballot. He told Sky News:

John Bercow was not my first choice, but I voted for him in the final round and I think we must accept that he is the legitimate speaker and he is a reformist Speaker, which is good.

The electorate don’t like sore losers, and if the Tories have any sense, it is Carswell’s approach they will emulate, rather than the screeching partisanship of Dorries.

I didn’t vote for Bercow, but I have no doubt he will be a good Speaker. In a democracy, those who lose the vote must accept the result. If the Tories refuse to do that, they will be exposed as having no respect, either for the House, or for democracy itself.

AN ODD thing happened at PMQs today.

The Tories had apparently come up with a ripping wheeze in order to make sure Nadine Dorries was called to ask a question about Smeargate. So they decided that, until Nadine was called, none of her colleagues would attempt to “catch the Speaker’s eye” by standing up between questions.

And so it transpired that, when the Speaker came to choose someone from the Tory benches, only Nadine was standing. So of course he called her.

I don’t know if perhaps she was feeling the pressure of the spotlight, but she did not shine. She asked the Prime Minister if he would “say sorry for what happened”. This did not prove the bear trap that the opposition clearly had hoped it would be and Gordon’s response was confident and appropriate.

Their standard bearer having had her moment, the Tory legions resumed the customary practice of the eager back bencher known in parliamentary terms as “bobbing up and down”.

However they had not anticipated Mr Speaker’s determination to uphold the rules and conventions of the House. And one of those conventions is that if you want to get called at PMQs, you need to start standing at the very start. If you wait until even a few minutes in, you reticence will be interpreted as a sign of disrespect to the House and it’s unlikely you’ll get called.

And so it proved today. Labour and Liberal members cheered as the Speaker deliberately avoided calling Tories who had colluded in their little scheme. Not a single other Tory was called from the floor. Sir Peter Tapsell would have been called had we got far enough down the order paper (he was number 14) but we didn’t.

I suspect that those Tories who actually wanted to raise an important issue, perhaps about their own constituencies, might not be so keen to play such silly games with the Chamber in future.

AFTER three and a half years of being an MP, Nadine Dorries is still finding the concept of consistency a bit tricky.

In March this year, she waged a disgraceful and unprincipled campaign against female Labour MPs, ostensibly because if their support for abortion, but in fact because Nadine thinks their small parliamentary majorities are vulnerable to the Tories.

On March 17 this year, Nadine wrote:

According to the Sunday Times, Dawn Primarolo MP, the Health Minister, will this week attempt to persuade MPs to retain the 24 week limit.

Now, why would a government Minister want to persuade MPs to vote against the will of the people?

Isn’t that why we, as MPs, are in Westminster, as representatives of the people? Isn’t that what democracy is about, accountability to the people?

If I were a government MP with a small majority, and the Tories leading in the polls, I would think very carefully about making sure I voted the way the majority of my constituents wanted. Maybe, on the day of the vote, I might just leave my arrogance at the entrance of the yes lobby; and cast a vote for decency and humanity, and not union funded political ideology.

Yet today, on her blog online diary (no comments allowed), she offers a frank and eloquent argument against the so-called “right to die”. Now, as it happens, I agree with Nadine on both points: her attempts to reduce the upper time limit for abortions to 20 weeks (even though she actually voted for amendments which would have reduced it to far lower) and her opposition to euthanasia.

But opinion polls – on which she relied heavily to make her nasty arguments against parliamentary colleagues back in March – consistently show majority support for the right to end one’s own life. Nadien said in March that “If I were a government MP with a small majority, and the Tories leading in the polls, I would think very carefully about making sure I voted the way the majority of my constituents wanted.”

That’s the danger of claiming public support for your own views and actions. When I voted in favour of 90 and then 42 days’ detention before charge of terrorist suspects, I did so knowing that the public largely agreed with me. But if they had not, that wouldn’t have prevented me from voting for something I believed to be right.

Nadine took the view in March that because the public supported the lowering of the abortion limit, every MP in the House should have reflected that in their vote, regardless of their personal convictions. Today, Nadine believes the views of the majority can be safely ignored.

Six months is a long time in politics when you live in NadineLand.

THIS is what Nadine Dorries MP said about Speaker Martin less than a week ago:

I am awash with disappointment as the reality dawned on me, that the coveted chair and the man to whom as Speaker I have always been loyal, is without honour.

One could be forgiven for assuming, therefore, that, having jumped on her party’s anti-Speaker bandwagon, she might support her party against the government at the first vote today.

Alas, it was not to be. My Commons snout tells me that she arrived in the chamber a bit too late and had the lobby door slammed ignominiously in her face as she attempted to vote. Tut, tut…

I am awash with disappointment as the reality dawned on me, that the well-known blogger and the woman to whom I have always been slightly critical, is without a watch.

WITH the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill heading back to the Commons this week, Nadine Dorries MP has been drumming up self-publicity support for her stance on abortion.

Nadine got some publicity last time round by spreading the myth that Labour had an unofficial whip on the abortion vote when it last came up. Now she’s at it again. 

In May she was claiming that “Labour abandoned the free vote principle by whipping their MPs on a three line whip ‘to attend the chamber’. I saw the whipping note, a copy of it was left for us to see.”

Now she’s claiming it was Harriet Harman alone who whipped the vote.

Maybe it’s because Nadine hasn’t been an MP for long, but she clearly doesn’t realise that there is no such thing as a whip that forces MPs to “attend the chamber”. She claimed back in May that Labour whips were encouraging Labour MPs to walk into the pro-choice lobby; funny, then, that I walked into the lobby in favour of 20 weeks and found myself accompanied by Nadine and… four Labour whips.

Women’s abortion rights are important to Harriet, and I would be astonished if she had not attempted to persuade as many colleagues as possible to vote to maintain 24 weeks. And I know that Nadine did the same on the other side of the argument. But when Harriet did it, it was “whipping”; when Nadine did it, it was “lobbying”.

In fact, I was approached by only two people asking me to vote one way or the other. Anne Snelgrove, the Swindon MP and a good friend, tutted and shook her head when I told her I would be voting for a lower limit – gosh, some real arm-twisting from the Sisters there, eh?

And who else whipped lobbied me? Oh, that’s right – Nadine Dorries.

Nadine has been trying for some time now to make abortion a party political issue. She justifies this by claiming that Labour made it a political issue first by whipping Commons votes. Now that I’ve pointed out that this never happened, she should withdraw that accusation. She won’t. 

Nadine Dorries must gaze on her new heroine, Sarah Palin, and wonder why she has found it so difficult to import into the UK the rancid politics of hate that the Alaskan governor and her followers thrive upon. To give her her due, Nadine is trying her best. 

But along with the great majority of her own party, I sincerely hope and pray that she fails, as she deserves to.

UPDATE at 11.36 pm: One other thing… If you can be bothered clicking the above link to Nadine’s 27 May entry, you’ll find this reference…

“I love the picture of Harriet Harman watching my speech from behind the speaker’s chair, hand on hip – with a look that says it all!”

to this picture…

Except, this is a composite picture, made up of two separate events: HH is clearly listening, not to Nadine but to the Deputy Speaker, Sir Alan Haselhurst. How egocentric is Nadine?

“I am only concerned about one rather big issue,” writes Tory MP Nadine Dorries in her blog. “How am I going to remember the names of 200 new MPs?”

A bit too early to be worrying about that, Nad, don’t you think?

All through his leadership, Tony Blair warned us against complacency. All good leaders do, particularly those who remember the drudge of powerless opposition. Labour had to work hard to achieve government. It seems the mindset among Tory MPs is different. As I’ve said here before, to the Tories, government is seen as a birthright, not a privilege.

Where Tony warned against complacency, Dave’s message to the nation seems to be: “Well done, you’ve come to your senses. Now just keep behaving yourself in the polling booth and we’ll say no more about it.”

Intriguingly, Nad announces she won’t be posting again until Monday night, when she’ll have “big news”. Hmmm…