How much do the Tories really want it?

A good debate on Conservative Home regarding gay adoption demonstrates an interesting point, if one is a bit of a political geek.

I don't want to get into the issue itself (its been done enough) but the politics is fun.

Whenever Cameron has to make a tough call, i.e. backing new laws that do, whichever way you cut it, restrict the freedom of the Catholic Church, he's trying to continue to surprise and impress people who don't usually think of voting Tory. This inevitably causes problems on the other side of the party, with right wing traditionalists wondering what the hell is going on.

The crucial question is this. Cameron needs to do what he's doing to make the Tories electable. Do the right wing want power enough to put up with him?

Letterbox Law

Stephen Tall points out a very good Downing Street petition regarding letterboxes, and the problems therein. May I add to the list of gripes;

- Gravel Drive/Low Letterbox/Yorkshire Terrier combinations
- Pooly marked out flowerbeds (which are hard to see at 5am in the dark until you're coming out the other side of them)

I'm a good Google

One of the things about being an elected politician at any level is that people often, for good reasons or bad, want to do some digging on you. In our modern world, this means they Google, and once to twice a week somone lands on this site having googled me.

I'm fortunate to have an unusual name, so giving me a good google will return things that are actually about me (with one or two noteable exceptions). The thing about this of course, if that if you say something on the web, you can't hide from it (believe me, I know). I wonder how long it will be before a high profile politician is caught out by some age old blog comment?

Reid is getting Judged

It amazes me sometimes the lack of political skill shown by politicians. When, a few months ago, John Reid critised a judge for being 'soft', I don't think the magnitude of his error really occurred to anyone.

The Judge in question was simply following home office sentencing guidelines, which mean that the minimum tarrif, having taken into account a guilty plea and time on remand. To then have the architect of those policies publicy join what amounted to a tabloid smear campaign would have stung.

At the time, I thought Redi was being ignorant andpopulist, now it is clear he was also being very, very stupid.

The current prison overcrowding is a direct result of Labour's tough talk. We jail people who present no danger to society what so ever, and then have to release those that do early because we have nowhere to put them. The Judges know this, and the last few days has seen the start of a direct campaign by them to remove John Reid from office. I suspect it wll probably work.

How UKIP poison the Tories

Over the last few weeks I've been agenting (real word? Computer says no) in a County Council by-election. The area covered (Hucknall) is the largest county division in the country, with 22,000 electors. We hold a district seat that covers just over 1/4 of this area, and we polled *very* well there (where we had run a decent campaign).

The rest of the division, which is traditionally a Labour stronghold, went Tory and they won. You'd expect this shift, and if DC wants to form a Government next year its the sort of area they'll expect to take. However, there is a clear warning here for the Cons in the shape of UKIP.

They polled just shy of 10% (click here for the full results), and turned what would have been a fairly comfortable Tory win into a very close one, with a majority of 43.

43 votes in this sort of election is no margin at all. If UKIP had put out 1 more leaflet, or knocked up a bit more effectively, they could have handed Labour the seat. If I were working at CCHQ, I wouldn't be at all pleased with this result, history shows however that victors don't tend to think like that.

Convenient Optimism

I watched An Inconvenient Truth for the first time tonight. I'd be avoiding it up until now, partially because I think I understood climate change well enough (wrong, as it happened) and partially through the same "see no evil" attitude that I think a lot of people have.

It was eye-opening, not too long (my main fear) and also very positive about what we can do. Al Gore is the sort of politician that restores your faith in politics, if he stands in 2008, I'll go and deliver some leaflets for him.

PS. It was suggested to me yesterday, only half jokingly I think, that "nobody" reads this blog, so thanks for proving them wrong.