Dedward

Today saw the Conservative party conference come to an end, the first party conference to be held in the city by a party in power.  There were some interesting announcements as might be expected for a newish government, including the proposal to end universal child benefit and speculation that a married couples allowance would be reintroduced to help offset some of the unfairness of the change.

Meanwhile last week saw the biennial Labour party conference in Manchester which included the announcement of Ed Miliband as leader, beating his older brother David by 0.1%.  David did not seem to take the defeat graciously, particular as he challenge Harriet Harman for applauding Ed when he claimed the Iraq war was wrong.  This was proof that Ed was the correct choice for the party: David, throughout the campaign, often failed to answer serious questions and kept a very safe, Blairite line on policy and announcements.  Winning the party nomination requires a person to enthuse the grassroots, but all David seemed concerned with was continuing failed New Labour ideology. While Ed may well move back to the centre now he has won the nomination, he demonstrated he understood where the party was now and where the problems lie.  We may have an interesting few years ahead.

A Trip to California

Two weeks ago, I set off for an overnight trip to London to stay at some friends' place before   flying from Heathrow on a trip to California the next day.  Over the next week or so, I hope to recount the experiences of my first trip to the USA and specifically to its most populous state.

One of the regular topics on this blog is the overcentralisation of the country in the capital and Heathrow, in particular the decision to build a third runway, has been criticised previously. There were no direct flights from Britain's sixth busiest airport direct to San Francisco, and the indirect flights were as expensive as the direct flights from Heathrow.  As such, I was forced to use the busiest international airport in the world despite my disdain for it (although I was also travelling with some friends who were based in London).  Even more worrying, originally it looked like we would be flying by BA from a BAA airport; a recipe for disaster if ever there was one.  However, our incompetence meant that we missed the cheaper BA flight and ended up flying Virgin Atlantic - a blessing in disguise in my opinion.  While BA epitomises the third-rate Thatcherite-Blairite capitalism of privatisation of a publicly-owned service to monopolist profiteers who run it down to the point that it is now a dodgy pension fund which does a bit of flying on the side, Virgin Atlantic represents capitalism at its best; entrepreneurs building a business from scratch and delivering a decent product to attract the masses.  Let me say, the flight did not disappoint either; having not flown long-haul since the early 90's, I was amazed at the choice of food and entertainment, over 60 movies and numerous tv shows, numerous games that can be played some against other passengers and even a phone, e-mail and text-message service from the flight (the latter for a premium of course). Discussions with my friends who are temporarily staying in California seemed to confirm that Virgin was indeed better than BA in this respect.

However, flying from Heathrow still left me with the problem of getting to London for a mid-morning flight, which being a weekday could have proved rather expensive had the friends I was flying with not generously offered to let me stay over at theirs.  This left me with the option of getting to London by train either pre-booking via Virgin trains for £7 each way, or using the £19.50 super off-peak with Chiltern railways. Unfortunately, Virgin trains tend to be closer to BA than Virgin Atlantic, and the risk that I would miss the train back to Brum by flight cancellations meant I was prepared to pay more for the slower but more flexible ticket by Chiltern trains, which has the added advantage of leaving via the far superior Birmingham Moor Street Station rather than the overcrowded concrete mass that is Birmingham New Street.  The Chiltern line is really two local services; a local service from Birmingham Snow Hill to Leamington Spa, and one from Bicester to London Marylebone.  Hence the train left packed and pretty much emptied by Bicester, only to fill up again the closer we got to London.  We seemed to stop at a ridiculous amount of stations (I think it was 27) meaning the entire journey took 2 hours 14 minutes instead of the 1 hour 24 it would take from New Street to Euston. Once in London, I had to face the tube.

Life would be a lot simpler for the majority of the country if we used the extra capacity at regional airports rather than putting all our eggs in the baskets of London airports and in particular, London Heathrow.

Birmingham Stands Alone

So there we have it. A week ago today, the BNP gained two seats in the European parliament in their most high-profile victories to date. Despite getting less votes than they did in 2004, they gained a bigger proportion of the vote in the North West and Yorkshire & Humber to take the last seats, allocated by proportional representation, in both. I do not think we should be so sure that an increased turnout in future elections under a likely Conservative government will necessarily happen; both the North West and Yorkshire & Humber were part of the postal voting experiment in 2004 designed to increase Labour turnout. We may have to turn to the opposition to the BNP which exists in this country to get them out in five years and remove the stain of electing them sixty years after British troops landed in Normandy in an attempt to remove fascists from Europe. European elections will become more exciting than they ever have.

It was not all bad news, however, as BNP no 2 Simon Darby got nowhere near getting a seat in the West Midlands constituency. The sixth seat went to UKIP, with the potential seventh, should Lisbon be ratified, going to a third Tory. Next would have been the BNP, but the population in the region is not big enough for us to get any more representation. Perhaps we need a few more immigrants?

This leave Birmingham, unlike London, Manchester and Leeds, free of fascist representation at any level, which is quite funny given the national press have tended to think we are one of the most likely places to elect Nazis. Just like Britain in 1940, Birmingham now stands alone as a bastion of freedom in the fight against fascism. Let us not underestimate how much fascists can damage the reputation of a city. Richard Barnbrook, elected to the London assembly under PR with just over 5% of the vote, has undermined England's 2018/22 bid for the World Cup and potentially embarrassed the Queen by attempting to take Nick Griffin to Buckingham Palace with him; both a direct consequence of his election. If it had been any other city other than Our Glorious Capital! no doubt the press would have been sneering. Perhaps all future events to promote the country should take place away from London to stop this happening in future. All we need is a major city that has refuted fascism at the ballot box at every opportunity.

How about Birmingham?

Green Day?

On their website, the BNP have been talking up their chances of getting some seats in the European elections. Having analysed the local election results and assuming local votes will also translate into European votes (with a couple of other caveats), they believe they will get between 1 and 4 seats (one or two in the North West, one in the North East and one in the West Midlands).

For the West Midlands:

Average BNP vote: 12.6 percent. Result: One possible Euro BNP seat. (This result could be boosted by the fact that the best BNP-supporting areas in the West Midlands - Stoke, Sandwell, Dudley and others - did not have local elections on Thursday, meaning that large numbers of BNP voters are not reflected in this average figure.)

Leaving aside the facts that an increased UKIP vote, local votes do not necessarily translate into european votes and there were no local elections in BNP stronghold areas, the signs look ominous. Will the fascists really win four seats on the anniversary of Winston Churchill's "Fight them on the Beaches" speech?

Possibly not. I reported on the political betting website that turnout seemed to have been good in Sparkbrook, a predominantly Muslim area. This was despite the fact that Respect were not standing in the European elections and there was no council election (Respect have all three councillors in Sparkbrook). Newsnight also interviewed some Sikhs on election day who came out to vote to stop the BNP. Anecdotal evidence suggests that BMEs may have come out to vote in higher numbers in an attempt to stop the BNP.

The Green party may be key. Salma Yaqoob has called for Respect voters to vote for the Greens in the absence of a Respect candidate. The combined Respect/ Green total at the last European election would have beaten the BNP by .1%. The Green Party had "Say no to Racism" as their strapline on the ballot paper. I am pretty confident that Labour, the Liberal Democrats and UKIP will get one seat each in the West Midlands constituency, with the Conservatives getting two. I believe the final seat will be a tossup between a third Conservative, second UKIP, or maiden BNP or perhaps possibly Green. It will be very close. I just hope that people exercised their right to vote.

We Will Fight Them at the Ballot Box

Thursday will see the 69th anniversary of one of Winston Churchill's most famous speeches. Thurday will also see the European elections takes place, with the big three parties bracing themselves for a kicking from the electorate due to the expenses saga.  One of the parties hoping to benefit are the BNP, who are tipped to win one or two seats in the North West and West Midlands constiuencies.   Readers of this blog will be under no illusions; despite its best efforts to clean up its image, this is still essentially a racist, fascist party. Don't believe me?  Take a look at its section 2 of its constitution:

http://www.mattwardman.com/blog/2009/04/03/constitution-of-the-british-national-party-bnp/

Their leader, Nick Griffin, has continually denied the Holocaust ever took place, calling it the "Holohoax".

Recently, in guidance sent to his party members he claimed black and asian Britons do not exist;  the correct term for such people is "racial foregners".  The manual describes the BNP's "ultimate aim" as the "lawful, humane and voluntary repatriation of the resident foreigners of the UK".

There is absolutely no doubt that immigration is a big issue for people living in Britain today.  The question is, are the beliefs expressed above representative of what the British people think, or has the debate been hijacked by racists in an attempt to turn legitimate grievances against government policy into a wider attack on anyone who is different?

For quite some time I have believed there is a need for the immigration debate to be deracialised.  While I do not support them, I was glad to see UKIP park their tank on the BNP's lawn with this party political broadcast on Friday:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8074734.stm

It is a question of space, not race, says television cook Rustie Lee on the UKIP European election leaflet.  It is more important than ever not to confuse race and immigration.  While the issues may be related, they are not the same.

Brew Coup to Unseat Whitby

You may not have noticed it, but at the moment a coup is taking place in Birmingham that will culminate tomorrow at 5.30pm. Randal Brew, a Conservative councillor for Northfield, fed up of the lack of consultation from the current Council Leader Mike Whitby, has challenged him for the top job at the city council as originally broken by the Stirrer. With nearly one in ten unemployed in the city as a result of the economic crisis, Randal plans to deflate us out of recession by cutting 3000 jobs at the City Council, famously the biggest local authority in Europe and twice the size of the European Commission - a plan which is sure to enthuse the nasty party who would, if they chose Brew, look to be going down the route of Thatcher rather than the liberal Conservative traditions of Joseph Chamberlain which made this city what it is today.

The ruling self-styled "progressive partnership" Conservative-Lib Dem coalition (ConDem for short) who run the city are famously opposed to an elected Mayor which would "concentrate too much power in one persons hands".  They prefer the current system which would allow 49 Conservative councillors to elect the leader behind closed doors; presumably the Liberal Democrats will not get a choice.  Meanwhile, Birmingham's 750,000 strong electorate will only be allowed to make our views known next May when a third of the council seats will be up for grabs, which means little is likely to change and in any case we might be slightly distracted by the general election, which is likely to happen on the same day.  Nice to see democracy is alive and kicking in Birmingham, eh?

Targetting Benefit Thieves

I am fed up with the journalists swallowing the MPs excuses that it was "within the rules" What rule allows you to claim expenses on a house not in your constituency or in London? As politicalbetting points out:

1971 Guidelines:
The Additional Costs Allowance reimburses “for expenses wholly, exclusively and necessarily incurred when staying overnight away from their main UK residence…for the purposes of performing Parliamentary duties. This excludes expenses that have been incurred for purely personal or political purposes.”

The Green Book 2009:
Members are cautioned against instances “where they may appear to be vulnerable to criticism or accusations of impropriety.” It also reminds MPs that their conduct should be placed concepts of “selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty, leadership.”

What has gone on is nothing short of benefit fraud. I expect to see MPs fined, imprisoned and generally made and example of. Perhaps a few could appear on the next government benefit fraud hotline campaign with a white circle around them and a finger pointing at them.

Should we be phoning this hotline (0800 854 440) with the evidence coming out and shopping our MPs?

Facebook: the Private Government Database

Now I am convinced someone in the higher echelons is reading this blog!?

ID Cards by the Back Door?

Perhaps someone in the government is reading this blog.

I once pondered whether Facebook was a private sector solution to the ID card: people sign up to it involuntarily, it is free and the government (or Facebook) can keep tags on what you are doing and who you are in contact with.

It seems I was in the right area, but had the wrong website. The government are using Twitter.

While creating the Twitter account for this blog (feel free to follow me!) I decided to follow the Downing Street Twitter site to see what the government were up to.

They immediately put me on their follow list!

Unperturbed, I put out my first tweet claiming the ProBrum's presence on Twitter was another step towards independence. That should put the wind up the London-based navel-gazing ruling elite bastards.

A New Dawn

For a man renowned for his use of words, Barry did not half bungle the Oath of office.



Highlight of the inauguration speech:

"we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist."

Headline from Blair's victory speech; let's hope this "one" is the real deal

Update 21/10: It seems I have been a bit harsh on Barack

Bloody Useless State-Head

Tomorrow will be George W Bush's final day as President and this is my tribute. The defining moment of the Bush presidency was of course September 11 2001. I will never forget that after Bush was told a second plane had hit the World Trade Centre, he sat aound for five minutes reading "The Pet Goat" because nobody had told him what he was supposed to be doing.



Conservative leadership at its best.

The Thatcher-Blair Endgame?

The government owns 58% of RBS, and 100% of Northern Rock, both previously private banks.

Meanwhile, we pay water rates to a private monopoly. Six private energy firms control the market for gas and electricity. The railways are run as essentially private monopoly enterprises. Air Traffic control and defence research is part privatised. There has been increasing privatisation of schools and the NHS, including PFI where money for capital projects is borrowed from the private sector (at rates higher than we would have been able to borrow from the government). The telecommunication industry is completely in private hands, despite BT's dominance stifling competition.

It's a funny old world.

Yes We Can

The term historic has been bandied about too much over the past few years. I am off the opinion that something can only be historic once it has happened and we understand the full impact of the event. The election of the first African American to the position of US present may well be an historic event and it is interesting to note down our feeling while it is happening, but history will often portray a different version to what actually happened.

I have had to read an awful amount of nonsense from Conservatives and Liberal hawks over the past few months telling me that McCain, and not Obama will win the election (although to be fair both backtracked before election day). Let this be a lesson to everyone who blogs! It is easy to give glib partisan statements about current events and they can come back to haunt you.

Commiserations to John McCain. The guy is a true gentlemen who also deserved to be president and would have been better placed to lead the country after the 9/11 attacks. Unfortunately, he was not able to be himself during this campaign after taking some very bad advice from his campaign manager. If he had the result would have been closer.

I believe Obama's election, despite his inexperience and liberal voting record, is a direct consequence of George W Bush's failures. Finally we have something to thank him for. I do have one worry though. The expectations of the Obama presidency are now so high it may be impossible to meet them, particularly as the previous incumbent has left the country in such a mess. In 1997, I remember such a mood of optimism pervading Britain after Blair routed the Tory government of 18 years. This was eventually to be dissipated over ten wasted years as Blair held the mandate but failed to deliver, culminating in him bombing a defenceless third world country so his rich American friends could appropriate its economic wealth. I hope when Obama met Blair earlier this year he did not take his advice to seriously. If he did, he could put Americans off politics forever.

Fight Night

It seems local MP John Hemming and my former local councillor Martin Mullaney are having some trouble with the BNP.

The Theory of Relativity

When I found out that the topic for Blog Action Day this year was Poverty, I simply could not get out of my mind the debate between relative and absolute poverty.

In politics there are two types of poverty; absolute poverty, the kind preferred by the right, and relative poverty, the kind feted by the left. Absolute poverty is poverty as most people understand the word; starvation, lack of housing and other basic amenities. Basically being classically poor, similar to the characters in the novels Dickens writes. Relative poverty is based on having household earnings of 60% of the median. In Britain, thanks to socialism and the welfare state, absolute poverty of the kind seen in Charles Dickens novels generally does not exist anymore. Leftists now concentrate on alleviating relative poverty by good old fashioned mechanisms like taxing the rich to give to the poor. In other words, wealth redistribution.

The right-wing have a lot of problems with this. Firstly, taxing the rich (productive) to give to the poor (lazy) means there is no incentive to work. They point to all those single mothers who live in council houses provided by the state producing babies the rest of them support while a wailout of bankers (that is the official collective term) create wealth in the city funding it (until that is they get greedy for short term game and the state has to bail them out before western civilisation collapses). Secondly, they object to the term poverty. The poor are not starving like the good old days of unregulated Victorian capitalism, they own many mobile phones and wear designer clothes. They are actually rich thanks to western capitalism. The fact that a the child of working class parents has a 1 in 10 chance of getting to University compared to the 8 out of 10 children born to middle-class parents getting to University passes them by. Thirdly, the definition of relative poverty means that if a lot of rich people come to the country, the number of people suffering relative poverty can go up. I have always had a slight problem with this, because I was under the impression that rich people leave this country to live as tax exiles elsewhere, and that the majority of immigrants coming here could not speak English and leeched of the state. If this is true, immigration would reduce relative poverty, not make it worse.

I have mellowed a bit over the years and am not as left-wing as I was in a previous incarnation. I understand the ideas of modern right-wing politics, the theory of incentives and how a well meaning government can actually make things worse. For example, there is an interesting theory that Gordon Brown's disastrous abolition of the 10p tax rate was actually a measure designed to target child poverty. After all, if you raise taxes for the poor, and give money back to those with families, those with children will end up relatively better off than those without. Maybe relative poverty is not such a good definition after all.

It used to infuriate me when the right belittled the idea of relative poverty. After all, most of them had never experienced it. It got me thinking: what is the key problem behind poverty in this country. I decided the problem was the lack of social mobility. It is more true today than any time in post-war Britain that a child will end up in a similar position in society to that of their parents. That is real poverty. The poverty of aspirations amongst the relatively poor.

Of course, we should be glad that we do not suffer the old-fashioned type of poverty much anymore in the West, and that many people in the world famously live on less than one dollar a day (cost of living differences aside). I am proud to live in a city which pioneered the Drop the Debt campaign 10 years ago when the G8 summit came to town.

I hope one day I will see a world with no absolute poverty, and a Birmingham with none, relatively speaking.

The Challenge for Cameron

As the dust settles on the 2008 Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, our final in a series of guest posts from Conservative Bloggers is from West Brom Blogger, that rare breed of a Sandwell-based Tory. He takes a look at what challenges Cameron has faced and still needs to face in preparation for forming a future government.

New Labour! New Britain! New Labour! New Britain! That was the cry back in 1994 as Tony Blair proclaimed, “the whole ideology of conservatism has failed”.
After more than a decade of failed social democratic experiments and an economy in the grip of its worst crisis in 60 years; the same could probably be said today of Labour’s “third way”. The grand coalition of working and middle class voters that swept New Labour to power in 1997 is preparing to sweep it back out again. If the polls are to believed, the Tories will form the next government; Mr Cameron will be our next Prime Minister.

For over a decade, a broken Tory party—stuck with its core vote in the polls ever since ERM —has been the central fact of British politics, enabling New Labour to dominate the centre ground unchallenged. But it was the arrival in 2005 of a relative unknown in the form of David Cameron as Conservative leader that changed all this. Cameron reckoned that the central debate of politics had changed. “The great challenge of the 1970s and 1980s was economic revival. The great challenge in this decade and the next is social revival.”

Cameron recognised the need to reposition the party; to decontaminate a brand that was still suffering from the fallout of the 1990’s. Just as New Labour appeared to publicly swallow de-regulation and free markets, Cameron forced the Tories to swallow Labours commitments on public service reform and social liberalism. He brought the parties less obvious support for tackling climate change (it was actually Mrs Thatcher that was the first global leader to recognise the threat of a changing climate) to the fore, and spent an enormous amount of time talking about marriage, families and children. He has promised to fix “a broken society”, with plans for new workfare schemes and a Swedish style voucher system for schools. Cameron has positioned the Tories as the party of society, while presenting Labour as the party of the top down mechanistic state.

Some of this has been famously transparent (remember the huskies?) he has been accused of putting spin before substance, and up to a point his critics have had a point.
Cameron has presented a narrative rather than a clear policy portfolio. Up until now, that has been understandable, Labour has a habit of nicking the best ideas, but the rude interruption of a global economic crisis causes Cameron a dilemma as well as an opportunity. Cameron may have expected that as PM his task would be to do something about our frayed social fabric but if he wins the next election he will take the helm of a nation in economic trauma. And here lies the rub of the problem for Dave, trust. Just before the last general election, Labour led on trust to run the economy by 22%; at the start of the summer we were ahead by 12 points. Then came Black Monday and the near collapse of HBOS, now the polls suggest Gordon Brown is ahead on trust. We may be beginning to reclaim the ground that once looked as impregnable as it was vital but we have not yet convinced enough voters that we would be better at running the economy.

Cameron and Osborne have been understandably cautious. Osborne has seen fit to develop Labour's approach rather than break with it; tweaks rather than an overhaul. But with the current economic crisis being likened to the great crash of 1929, that’s not good enough. It won’t be the crash that causes the long term problems but the flawed policy responses that follow it. What we need now is a clear break, a clear alternative to Gordon Brown’s financial mismanagement.

One thing Cameron is not short of is ammunition; Brown's much-touted economic stability was built on the rickety foundations of a credit and house-price boom. Cameron will need to push home the fact that while Gordon talks about the need for more "transparency in the city" he engages in 'off the balance sheet' PFI accounting practices which would have corporate executives brought before a court of law. That while Brown now criticises the "irresponsible behaviour" in they city, he didn’t care about the debt or the "irresponsible behaviour" when it actually mattered, he didn’t care about the house price bubble; he just reaped in the extra taxes.

But its not enough just to find fault with Labour. If we are to look like the government-in-waiting, then Cameron will need to appear statesman like. A crisis presents politicians with an opportunity; Cameron must seize the one presented by the current financial turbulence to espouse the sort of tough medicine, good house keeping economic policy reminiscent of the Thatcher years. We have to use our spot in the lime light to spell out how we would handle the crisis.

Cameron needs to make clear that the Tories don’t stand for nationalising banks or subsidising failure. While we want innocent savers to be protected we wont stand for the poorest in society being forced to bail out the mistakes of the some of the wealthiest; that we don’t stand for socialised fat cats.

Andrew Allison has already made the case for lower taxation. Public mood on tax is on our side; a recent poll for the Telegraph suggested that the public is far more concerned about the overall tax burden than than it is fearful of the consequences of spending cuts. The Lib Dems have already proven that they understand this, Cameron must not ignore the issue.

This conference is vitally important for the Conservative Party. David Cameron has already done the hard work of ‘de-toxing’ the Tory brand, but the party cannot hope to ride to victory by simply standing on the sidelines as the Government flails. By the end of this conference the public must understand the alternative on offer.

Planning For Change, Working Together

The third in our series of guest posts during the Conservative Party Conference comes from fellow BlogPower member ThunderDragon, a prospective Conservative councillor for the Three Rivers District Council. He casts an eye over the proceedings and background of the Conservative Party Conference.

The tagline of this years Conservative Conference is “Plan For Change”. Change, moving forward, a new start. That is what this conference was meant to show – the Conservative's setting out their plan for their future government. However, events have rather overtaken them.

They have set out several policies and points of principle, such as:

Freezing council tax;
Giving schools budget freedom;
Scrapping authoritarian child databases;
Not releasing prisoners early just because;
Pledging to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty; and, quite possibly most importantly
Not matching Labour's spending plans if the country can't afford it.

But this has been totally overtaken by world events: the economic crisis caused by Gordon Brown and the Labour Party. And so the mantra of the Conservatives yesterday has been less “plan for change” and more “let's work together”, by not “playing politics” with the economy.

This is an immeasurably responsible response in this economic climate. Any other response would have been extremely irresponsible. Yet it does rather undermine the “plan for change” motto, and rather allow the Conservatives to be associated with “more of the same”.

Unfortunately for the Conservatives, their conference has been overcome by the crisis, meaning that the plans for change that they have put forward have failed to dominate the headlines like they otherwise would have. However, they are out there, just not anywhere near as highly publicised in the media. What this will do is mean that the impression that the Conservatives are policy-lite will continue, and unfairly.

Publish Post

The Conservatives are planning for change, but able to work with other parties when necessary for the good of the country.

A Letter from the Conference

In the second of our series of guest posts during the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, PragueTory writes a letter giving us an insight into the theme and mood of the delegates and a personal take on how the conference is progressing. This post was delayed from yesterday because PT was in a rather long conference meeting looking at the effects of alcohol. By the sound of him on the phone, he appears to be a real expert in this subject matter.

Dear Brummie Republic,

The conference opens with a sense of euphoria – how could it be different as members from all over the country meet old friends and share their success stories? On a personal level, my conference started very well on Sunday night because the event that I helped organise in Brindley Place for Birmingham University’s Young Conservatives for which we expected maybe 40 attendees attracted well over 200 visitors.

The average age of the attendees is substantially lower than for other year’s conferences and I’ve either got better at spotting political celebs, there’s more of them about or the layout of the ICC makes it harder for them to hide – I think it’s a mixture of all three.

But being at conference in Birmingham in 2008 has been a sobering reminder that the Conservatives are still in opposition. It is completely impossible to remain objective about how the conference is being perceived from the outside, but it is of course not ideal from a PR perspective that far more significant news events are taking place at the same time. As I receive tidbits from the maelstrom of financial chaos in the wider world, I can’t help but think that the opposition’s conference must look like an irrelevance at best. And I think many other delegates feel the same. And whilst it’s great to hear some of the brilliant policy ideas that we have ready, it’s frustrating that we are still probably 18 months away from having the chance to improve public services and do more to support families and children.

On the fringes, you can see the appetite for radicalism amongst ordinary delegates is high. In particular, Douglas Carswell MP and Dan Hannan MEP’s newly published The Plan – 12 Months To Renew Britain is selling like proverbial hotcakes. I imagine its strategy to move power away from Brussels and London to the regions will appeal to Brummie Republicans!

Best Wishes

Praguetory

Lower Spending and Lower Taxes

Today we have the first in a series of guest posts that will run for the duration of the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham. The posts will be on the broad topic of the state of Conservative party and conservative politics in Britain today. Today's post is written by Andrew Allison, a conservative libertarian and fellow Blogpower member from Hull, who believes in small government with a passion.

Lower spending and lower taxes. There’s no other way.

I have been thinking all week about what to write. Quite naturally one wants to be witty, but also get a serious point across. What to write though? You have no idea the amount of times I have written something down, only to delete it almost immediately. Then serendipity shone through in the guise of a very blunt Yorkshireman called Adrian.

Adrian, a man in his early fifties, told me a story. After Margaret Thatcher took on the unions and union membership started to dwindle, Adrian’s father told him if Labour is elected to office again, the welfare state will have to be much larger, as this is the only way Labour will garner votes for re-election.

This was very prophetic. The only person in Britain who thinks tax credits are wonderful is Gordon Brown; but then he needed tax credits in order to make more citizens dependent on the state. Instead of freeing more people from the burden of income tax, he takes their money, gets them to fill out page after page in forms, processes them through the bureaucratic machine, and then gives them some of their money back. “What a nice man! We are so better off thanks to him. We must vote Labour and keep those nasty Tories out.” This is what Labour hoped and it was largely successful.

Labour are quite happy to leave people on incapacity benefit. Instead of working hard to get them back in to work, it is much easier to keep them on the poverty line, dependent on the benevolent Mr Brown.

The challenge facing the Conservative Party is clear; or at least it should be. Sticking to Labour’s tax and spending plans will not work. No true conservative could think that. Public spending in the UK is too high. Money is wasted at an alarming rate. Taxes are too high and at a time when we all need a break as we work our way though the credit crunch, they need lowering; and I don’t mean by a penny or two. We can start by raising the personal tax allowance to around £10,000 and in a stroke take those who are paid the minimum wage out of direct taxation. This is radical and our opponents will criticise us for not being able to balance the books; not that Labour have managed that after Brown’s profligate spending and borrowing spree. But it needs to be done and it can be done, however it requires a huge shake-up of Whitehall and a large reduction in government spending and waste. For any doubters, the Taxpayers’ Alliance has all the facts and figures on how your money is wasted. You may be shocked.

It is only by being radical that the Conservative Party can get a positive mandate from the voters. Britain is crying out for change. They are tired of failed Labour policies. They want something different. It is our job to deliver.

The Conservative Party are Coming to Town

Next week Birmingham holds its most important political event since the G8 Summit 10 years ago. The Conservative party are coming to Brum and holding their Autumn Conference in the city. To celebrate this event, next week I will be holding a series of guest posts from Conservative bloggers who will be hoping to convince the West Midlands and the wider country that they are ready to replace Labour in number 10 come the next election.

Being Conservatives, the views you will read on this blog between the 28th September 2008 and 1st October 2008 are unlikely to represent the views of the People's Republic of Birmingham - as you might have guessed from the name! I hope my readers will find these posts entertaining and thought-provoking; please feel free to add a comment to say whether you agree or disagree and join in the debate.

Of course, I will be more than happy to hold a similar series of guest posts for the other main parties should they wish to hold their Autumn Conferences in the city. If that is not an incentive for them to come to Birmingham, I don't know what is :)

Guest Post Line-up
Andrew Allison - http://andrew-allison.blogspot.com/
Prague Tory - http://praguetory.blogspot.com/
The Thunder Dragon - http://thethunderdragon.co.uk/
West Brom Blogger - http://westbromblog.blogspot.com/

PragueTory has written a guide to Birmingham for the conference goers here.