Daily Mail: Growing rebellion and Dave losing touch with troops

Tim Montgomerie in the right-leaning Daily Mail has an interesting opinion piece which seeks to analyse David Cameron's current standing as Prime Minister and leader of the Conservative Party. He starts in no uncertain terms:

Whereas the best Prime Ministers possess most of the necessary leadership skills, the really great ones possess them all.

They must be good communicators - particularly, nowadays, on television. They need to have a vision for the country and an ability to master the detail of complex policy.

They must build strong teams of advisers and ministers. And they need to excel at party management so that backbench MPs and activists are loyal in bad times, as well as good.

It is the absence of this last skill that poses the most serious threat to David Cameron’s chance of becoming a great Prime Minister.

It should be noted that Tim Montgomerie is the editor of the ConservativeHome blog and web site—the litmus paper for the core Tory voter. And has many concerns: increasingly alienated backbenchers, a narrow coterie of personal advisers, some instances of a bullying style, and the filling of important party posts with those indebted to the PM.

Montgomerie also has his suggested solutions (somewhat predictably): placate Tory backbenchers and soothe their disappointments, reduce the sedative influence of Nick Clegg and his LibDems on long-held Tory ambitions, be not so gung-ho with social reforms that will (they believe) inevitably bring electoral punishment. Above all, Montgomerie wants to see Baroness Warsi replaced with a more traditional style party chairman...

Altogether, the article is essential reading for those about to embark on a detailed examination of the Prime Minister and Cabinet / Executive, particularly in regard to the issue of how powerful the PM is, as well as the intangible notion of personal style. Read it in full!

Davis: David Cameron surrounded by the 'well-off'

David Cameron is head of an inner circle, including George Osborne, his Chancellor, that is predominantly “well-off” and risks becoming out of touch with a large part of the country, David Davis said to The Telegraph on Sunday night.

The veteran right wing MP and former shadow home secretary said Downing Street lacked the “antennae” to understand that people in the South East, on £40,000 facing child benefit cuts, were not “well-off”.

Mr Davis, who is from a council estate background, made the criticisms in the wake of the departure from No10 of Andy Coulson, Mr Cameron’s head of communications.

He said that no matter how much Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne appear to care about the poor and social issues their backgrounds remain a problem.

Read the whole thing - important for inner Conservative Party divisions and for Prime Ministerial style.

Tony Benn: 'Protest is vital to a thriving democracy'

Today in The Independent veteran politician Tony Benn argues the case for active (but not violent!) protest as being essential to UK democracy, making a potent appeal to history:

No government likes to find itself faced with demonstrations against its policies and as these recent pictures show, there are plenty of disillusioned citizens across Europe right now. Over Britain's long history, many significant gains have been brought about by such demonstrations – as with the recognition of trade unions, the campaign for the vote by the Chartists, and for votes for women by the Suffragettes.

Each of these campaigns was denounced at the time as violent. But it's interesting to see exactly how they unfolded. To begin with, the demonstrations are ignored; if they continue, they're described as absurd, and then if they persist, they are described as violent and the people responsible may be imprisoned.

Then comes a pause as public opinion realigns itself to support the changes being demanded. Once the government has finally got the message, you can't find anyone who doesn't claim to have supported the demands in the first place.

It's not possible to find anyone now who was opposed to the recognition of trade unions or to the principle of one woman, one vote. Yet it was only a committed group of campaigners who actually brought these changes about. There's no justification for violence – if protesters resort to it, it can turn public opinion against the cause.

Remember the way that public opinion shifted in support of men such as Gandhi and Nelson Mandela. Both are now regarded as heroes for the sacrifices they made to defend human rights. There is hardly any support now for the Vietnam war and public opinion is strongly opposed to the Afghan war.

This all goes to prove the importance of demonstrations and popular campaigns for peace, human rights and democracy.

We must expect far more demonstrations in the future and they must be seen as an integral part of political action in a democratic society. Without them, injustices would continue unchallenged and people would lose confidence in the democratic process by which such injustices are changed.

It's worth reading the whole piece.

Lord Elystan-Morgan criticises bill to reduce MPs

BBC News Online brings us news of a Welsh cross-bench peer's objections to legislative plans to reduce the overall number of MPs from 650 currently to 600:

The former Cardigan MP, Labour minister and judge described the idea as "utterly superficial".... The peer says "ancient communities hammered out on the anvil of the centuries" would be lost.

The bill, which also includes the trigger for a referendum on changing the voting system, was raised last year but has now moved to the Lords.

Lord Elystan-Morgan said "arithmetical consistency" was different from "equality", explaining that two constituencies weren't the same just because they had the same number of constituents.

He said one could be a city constituency which could be cycled across in 15 minutes whereas the other could be a huge rural community such as Brecon and Radnorshire taking "hours and hours" by public transport.

"There is no equality," he told BBC Radio Wales' Sunday Supplement. "People have a cultural identity, there is a historical consistency, there are ancient boundaries that have been respected for centuries and yet all of this, in regards to at least two thirds of them, will be brought to an end.

"And that link between a member of parliament and his constituents will be broken," he said.

The proposals were announced by the UK government, shortly after the general election, saying they would bring fairness and "reduce the cost of politics".

Last July, Wales Office Minister David Jones told the Welsh Grand Committee that it was "worrying" that a vote in parts of Wales was worth, in some cases, double that of a vote in the south of England.

"That needs to be addressed," he said, adding that it was "wrong in principle" that votes should carry different weight.

"It is also a matter of concern that the Welsh vote has not been looked at again at a time when we have the National Assembly, and Wales has representation in another legislature," he added.

AV referendum: Where parties stand

A referendum on the Westminster voting system is set to be held on 5 May. Voters will be asked whether they want to replace the existing first-past-the-post system used to elect MPs in favour of the Alternative Vote system. The BBC's Gavin Stamp examines where each of the parties stand:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-11609887

Summary: Conservatives - broadly 'No"; Labour - broadly "Yes", with some nay-sayers; LibDems - strongly "Yes"; SNP - undecided; Plaid Cymru - "Yes"; Northern Ireland - mixed / undecided; Greens - "Yes"; UKIP - "Yes"; BNP - "No"; English Democrats - "Yes"; Christian Alliance - "Yes"; Respect - undecided;

Telegraph: The battle is on for the soul of the Tory Party

Columnist Janet Daley warns that a brand new form of Conservatism has emerged wet and wriggling from Oliver Letwin and Francis Maude's laboratory...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/janetdaley/8247957/The-battle-is-on-for-the-soul-of-the-Tory-party.html

Open Season for Referendums

In addition to the upcoming referendum regarding the use of the FPTP and AV systems in General Elections on 5 May this year, students should be aware of yet another referendum in the offing that will be posed to some British citizens a couple of months previously...

I am, of course, talking about the Welsh referendum on the 3 March that seeks to extend the legislative powers of the Welsh Assembly, thereby further facilitating devolution from Westminster and providing an element of constitutional reform / development:

http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/elections/upcoming-elections-and-referendums/wales/referendum

BBC News: UK general election system broken, says think-tank

BBC News Online today outlines the findings of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) regarding the General Election last May:

The general election result was determined by just 1.6% of voters in marginal Commons seats, a report by a think-tank suggests. The Institute for Public Policy Research said the UK had a "broken" electoral system, unable to cope with the rise of minor parties. This made hung parliaments, like that returned last May, far likelier. Reform was needed to create better representation and more stable governments, the think-tank said.

The think-tank found that 31% of voters - 9 million people - lived in marginal seats which formed the main battlefields under the first-past-the-post system. And the number whose votes made up the margin of victory in seats which actually changed was just over 460,000, or 1.6%, of the electorate, the IPPR says.

Meanwhile, 34.9% of votes in the 2010 general election were cast for parties other than the "big two" - compared with 3.2% in 1951. This made single-party government less likely, with the major parties now requiring 85 more seats than their major rivals to secure power and 100 more to enjoy the kind of parliamentary majority needed to rule effectively, the report suggests.

Think-tank director Nick Pearce said: "Britain now has a broken voting system that needs to be fixed. Unless first-past-the-post is reformed, the UK will be left with a voting system that neither delivers fair representation nor single-party government. The last election result was not an aberration but a reflection of long-term changes in voting patterns across the UK which significantly increase the likelihood of more hung parliaments in the future. Britain has evolved into a multi-party system, but it still has an electoral system designed for only two parties."

NB: If you're interested (and maybe you should be!), the IPPR website has a longer summary in the original press release (link) and a link to the full report (PDF), evocatively entitled Worst of Both Worlds—Why First Past the Past No Longer Works. Take a look!