The Virtual Stoa

The Mail on Sunday covers the issues that matter, over here [via].

Policy Exchange is basically a parody of what a think-thank is supposed to be — the proof of that is its decision to have the laughable Anthony Browne in a senior position for quite a while now — but people say that it’s fairly influential on Conservative party “thinking”, so perhaps we should pay attention. So here’s a link to a page on its new report, which you can download, that recommends that Oxford (current population, c.150,000) should grow by an order of magnitude or so, with a million new homes being built around the city.

Since it’s the Conservatives on the County Council who have been opposing a very modest urban extension of Oxford on land south of Grenoble Road (a mere four thousand houses), a right-wing U-turn of quite staggering proportions may be on the cards. Alternatively, people may decide that it’s best, all things considered, to ignore pretty much everything that Policy Exchange has to say.

Extraordinary story.

[There's an old page about him from the Tory Party website in the Google cache here.]

Should we have a new Bank Holiday to celebrate Britishness Polishness? Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski makes the case this morning on the radio, over the fold.

(What is it about the voters of Shrewsbury, anyway, who first sent the great Lib Dem erotic poet Paul Marsden to Westminster, and now this chap?)

(more…)

Under the Tories’ new plans, can lesbians just write “David Cameron”, “George Osbourne” or perhaps even “Andrew Lansley” in the bit of the form where they have to mention a “male role model”, or is it a bit more complicated than that?

From tehgraun [via] :

“This is like the March on Rome in 1922,” one shadow minister said as [Boris] Johnson inched towards victory.

I wonder which shadow minister that was? For pictures of some fascists celebrating victory in the mayoral election in Rome last week, try over here.

Tristram Hunt:

Now, I have no problem with a ministry of all the talents, but when the big tent ushers in the former Tory party chairman Kenneth Baker, the progressive consensus has truly lost the plot.

Young people today probably have little idea who Kenneth Baker is. (Curiously, this Wikipedia article doesn’t mention his major contribution to British Government, which was his prominent role in the early stages of the poll tax fiasco.) Perhaps we need a Museum of Britishness that could, among other things, explain his career to current and future generations? A gallery given over to the twists and turns of the Death to the Dogs crisis of May 1991 would be an excellent idea, for example, and children could be given free copies of the 1986 Green Paper, Paying for Local Government.

Oliver Kamm makes the correct point that Paul Foot’s book on The Rise of Enoch Powell is really very good indeed; Mary Beard provides a classicist’s perspective on his notorious speech; and Simon has a very interesting discusison of West Midlands Toryism.

UPDATE [4.45pm]: So, here’s Hastilow’s article; here’s the transcript of the “rivers of blood” speech, and there’s some blog-discussion by Tories here, here, here [ConservativeHome] and here [Iain Dale]. Also Michael White and Sunder Katwala on CiF.

The Giroscoper reports from the Tory Party Conference.

Over here. The humiliation!

(Did they ever withdraw the whip from Lord Archer?)

As some readers will have spotted already, Stoa-favourite Tim Collins x-MP has recently failed to be adopted as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Gillingham and Rainham.

Indeed, it was a selection exercise of keen interest to this blog, as Stoa pantomime-villain Liz Truss failed to be selected from the shortlist, too.

But instead they plumped for some turncoat called Rehman Chishti.

I don’t think I have ever heard of Patrick Mercer, though the headline tells me he is a “Top Tory”. I wonder how many other Top Tories there are, of whom I have similarly never heard.

(On the other hand, I do know who Tim Collins CBE x-MP is, and have done for a while.)

Two good pieces on David Cameron, from The Quiet Road and S&M.

[Less good, but useful background, here and here.]

“They are available in two colours (blue or green)…” Over here.

And, while I’ve got the scanner out, here’s a blast from the past — a William Hague-era Conservative Party pledge-card that I was lucky enough to be given…

Front:

Back:

Don’t miss the photo of Ann Widdecombe plus goat over at the WiddyWeb.

Chick-lit writer Louise Bagshawe takes pride in her work: “I write books that have no literary merit whatsoever”. But there’s more to Bagshawe than crappy writing: the claim is often made that she was “the youngest-ever contributor to The Tablet“, my goodness, and she’s also a noted economic analyst, believing, for example, that “With his tax cuts he [i.e. President Bush] has single-handedly pulled America out of the Clinton Recession”.

Possibly Britain’s only black farmer, and a man who “makes Lenny Henry seem like a shy introvert”, Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones has a terrific website at theblackfarmer.com and even has a blog, though it hasn’t been updated for a while. Nancy Banks-Smith has more. Certainly the most - or perhaps the only - impressive A-Listee I’ve considered so far, at least on the evidence of five minutes with Google (which, let’s face it, is all that most of these people deserve).

Julie Rook is a councillor in Deal with a poor prose style and an interest in stamping out anti-social behaviour. (She’s the local “Cabinet Member for Citizenship”.) When the local cops tried to fine some poor kid �80 for saying the words “fuck all” in a conversation with a friend that took place within the hearing of a police officer, Councillor Rook was asked about the incident. Forgetting to say the words, “This is outrageous, whatever happened to civil liberties?”, she instead came out with the weaselly, “Swearing and abusive behaviour certainly is not normal behaviour and I feel it should never be used in a public place.” Mr Walker sensibly opted not to pay the fine and to have his day in court, there was a bit of publicity, and - surprise, surprise - the charge was dropped.

I think we’ve got a classic Cameroonian A-Listee here. Caroline Righton (what a name!) appears to be a TV newsreader (and scroll down) who went on to work for Carlton TV (hence the Cameron connection?), and has written a self-help book, The Life Audit, which at a glance looks like every other self-help book ever written, though maybe that’s just me.

As late as 1987, Mrs Thatcher was saying that anybody who thought that the ANC was going to form the government of South Africa was “living in Cloud-Cuckoo Land”, and she repeatedly expressed the view that the ANC was a terrorist organisation, much like the IRA. In the new-look David Cameron-led Conservative Party, we can see new ways in which today’s Tories are positioning themselves with respect to the anti-apartheid tradition. Here’s A-Lister Philippa Stroud, addressing the question, “Do you really believe that the laws of this land can be changed to protect the lives of unborn children?”:

“I hear this so often from people who are firmly pro-life in their thinking, but who have lost sight of the hope of change. Let me explain why I am utterly convinced that it is only a matter of time before the laws of this land are changed. When Nelson Mandela was fighting apartheid he said that he never lost the conviction that he would win because he knew he had truth on his side. He argued that, when an ideology is fundamentally flawed, it will fall in the end. Who could have foreseen the collapse of the Berlin wall or the downfall of apartheid? Gradually momentum builds and creates such pressure that a one-time impenetrable stronghold of thinking comes tumbling down.”

[source]

Priti Patel, just below, devoted two years of her life to working for Jimmy Goldsmith’s loony Referendum Party. But UKIP, she says, is “completely different”. Another A-Lister who campaigned for the Referendum Party was Zac Goldsmith, who worked for his dad in Putney in 1997 — and he has admitted to voting UKIP, too. (It’d probably be too much to hope that someone on the A-List has a background with Veritas.)

(Oh, and I liked the Guardian’s description of Goldsmith as “an old Etonian, poker-playing plutocrat who runs a play farm funded from daddy’s inheritance in Devon.”)

She writes of her past involvement with the loony Referendum Party, where she ran the press office: “Personally I felt that there was a fantastic debate to be had and also that the public were desperate to know more. The Referendum Party was a compelling prospect because they wanted to be very proactive on generating a debate on Europe and they brought in the element of choice… I worked with the Referendum Party for two years and it was a real baptism of fire. It was an amazing experience and I learnt a great deal about campaigning.”

Like my grandmother between 1954 and 1964, Margot James is Vice-Chairman [sic] of the Conservative Party. But the similarities end there, for Margot James’s partner is a “personal shopper” whose TV credits include Hotter Sex.