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Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Responses and Tory leadership

It has just been announced that David Cameron has won the Tory leadership by a margin of more then two to one. He is untested but I suspect he will be quite effective and the Tory Party is certainly getting serious about winning again.

That has consequences for the Liberal Party as well as Labour and partly explains the decline in support for the Liberals in recent polls.

I thought Cameron ran a good leadership campaign and dealt with the media very effectively especially on his alleged drug use in the past. I gave him full marks for that.

Paul asked me to comment on the Tory position and I think it will be towards a low tax policy. What they will have difficulty dealing with is how you can maintain the levels of investment achieved under Labour. Cameron clearly wants to break with some of the past Tory millstones around race, law and order, and the EU but I am not sure his Party will let him do so.

Andrew Baker comes from a different position. I assume he is a disgruntled Labour supporter. OK, I understand that but the poorer in society have got better off under Labour although the rich have got richer as well. Look at the budget charts in the Guardian today.

That should not lead you to make the mistake that many Labour supporters have made since the Party was founded. All previous Labour Governments fell with rising unemployment and rising inflation. Not this one. I could list hundreds - and I mean hundreds - of achievements that have helped the people I represented as an MP. That is why we are still winning elections although it is true that we have lost support especially from the middle class. That is frequently about Iraq but in our more traditional areas Iraq is not such a big issue whereas immigration and crime are.

After previous Labour governments fell amid cries of betrayal and splits it took about three years for supporters like you Andrew to start remembering the good things you are forgetting now. Even now people look back at the Attlee government as a great achieving government. It was but when it fell it was with the same cries of betrayal that you are making Andrew. That kept us out of office for 13 years. The Left is very good at destroying itself. Why don't we leave that to the Daily Mail Andrew?

I was sorry to hear Peter Todd saying I should have had the teenagers convicted. Since when did Probation Officers start arguing for criminal records for youngsters if there is another alternative available and one that deals with the behaviour that hurts the victims? I spent a lot of my time as a probation officer trying to keep youngsters out of the full criminal justice system. ASBO's help in that respect.