Archive for conservative party
What do you think was the second most important reason why people didn’t vote Tory in the Cotswolds?
Between us, Stephen Tall (he of the Oxford Comma cartoon) and myself (purveyor of news about commas in election law and academic research), appear to be carving out a niche in political punctuation coverage. I fear it is all going to end in tears when someone puts our own punctuation habits under the microscope, but [...]
Bromley Council pulls a controversial novelty with a lollipop lady petition
Tsk, tsk, Bromley Conservatives. There is a council by-election campaign underway in Shortlands ward, Bromley where the excellent Anuja Prashar is the Liberal Democrat candidate. (So excellent, I’ll forgive her for organising a raffle once that broke all my Lib Dem raffle rules.) She has been campaigning against council plans to axe the lollipop ladies [...]
After the Coalition: A Conservative agenda for Britain
Collections of policy essays from new or junior MPs rarely have much of an impact or shelf-life in British politics, but however fallible their predictions for the future they can be illuminating about the current state of the authors’ party and its broad ideological direction. So it is with After the Coalition which is very different [...]
Do CCHQ staff have to bring their own toilet paper in to work?
I only ask, you see, because earlier today the Conservative Party’s press team decided to highlight the fact that a Labour MP, Chuka Umunna, claimed £43.12 for “soap, toilet roll etc”. Well, the claim was for his office where staff work. So quite why would someone want to pick on an employer providing toilet roll [...]
Tories run into a treble spot of Scottish bother
The Herald reports, THE Scottish Conservatives were plunged into a fresh crisis last night after a sacked election candidate said he had been denied natural justice by the party’s “dysfunctional” leadership. Malcolm Macaskill, who was dumped as the leading candidate in Glasgow last week, said his treatment would cost the party £1 million, because his [...]
Conservative party in Hornsey & Wood Green packs up
Conservative Party member and Telegraph journalist Ed West reports, My local constituency, Hornsey and Wood Green, certainly is closed to new members – it was recently wound up altogether, and I’ve heard that other party organisations in north London are in trouble (admittedly not Tory heartlands). All I get for my party membership are bulk [...]
Back from the Brink: the extraordinary fall and rise of the Conservative Party
Peter Snowdon’s history of the Conservative Party in opposition, quickly updated last year to include the final stage in their recovery, has four white men on its cover striding towards the reader – Cameron, Osborne, Hague and Clegg. It tells you immediately the sort of book that Back from the Brink: The extraordinary fall and [...]
A Fresh Start that failed: William Hague
The first Conservative party political broadcast after William Hague’s election as party leader in late 1997 has all the right basic elements but, much like his leadership, didn’t quite work: Also available on YouTube here. (For my other posts on party political broadcasts, including move clips, see my Party Political Broadcasts page.)
The most powerful party political broadcast I've seen broadcast live
Although it isn’t a Liberal Democrat (or Alliance, SDP or Liberal) party election broadcast, this is the one that had the biggest immediate impact on me when I saw it. It’s a tremendously well put together piece, using music in a powerful and ironic way (at a time when Labour was trying to wrest the [...]
New Labour, New Danger: the largely forgotten TV film
The so-called “Tony Blair Demon eyes” Conservative billboard poster from the 1990s has a well-established place in the history of British political advertising – high profile, criticised by many leading Church figures, ruled unacceptable by the Advertising Standards Authority, often derided as ineffective yet given an ad-industry award (for more on all of which, see [...]
