The Second Reading...

...of Douglas Carswell's private member's bill is happening right now. It appears to be subjected to fillibusting by Tory whip Brooks Newmark, who spoke for an hour before on Sustainable Communities as not to give enough time to the referendum bill.

Douglas' twitters:

My EU Membership (Referendum) Bill. Seems it's been deliberately "talked out"?

Same old Tories, Europhiles to the end.

Update: Kerry McCarthy twitters:

Think Carswell just had go at Newmark outside. Newmark retorted "I cut it in half!" Carswell not happy, won't get to his Bill.

That Tory Lead

Another poll and more bad news for the Tories, their lead is now down to 5 points. This is worrying for Cameron, a point he acknowledges by unusually consulting his shadow cabinet:

The shadow Cabinet — which has been bypassed for most of Cameron’s tenure — is now being consulted. It met for more than two hours on Tuesday — after the Cameroon powwow in Notting Hill — and had, unusually, a proper discussion of the political situation. One member tells me that almost everyone spoke at the meeting. That this is considered news says a lot about how the shadow Cabinet is normally conducted.

James Forysth's article tries to analyze the question of 'why has the Tory lead halved since December?' (my emphasis):

All of the most trusted members of Cameron’s inner circle were there — George Osborne, Steve Hilton, Andy Coulson, Michael Gove — but the atmosphere was not one of jubilation, or even excited determination. The predominant mood was despair. Osborne put their worries into words: What’s going wrong? he asked. Why are we slipping in the polls, even when Brown is so unpopular?

Forysth makes some good points that the Tories have had a bad start to the year, they made some unforced errors, have lost momentum and don't seem to have a focused message:

Rather, it is to do with the campaign. The Labour message is clear and repeated while the Tory one is opaque. One shadow Cabinet member told me this week that he wished the Tories had a slogan as effective as Labour’s ‘a future fair for all’. Candidates report that voters can remember Labour policies but not Tory ones.

Even the party’s own press people complain — in private — about a lack of clarity. ‘Everyone struggles to articulate what we are really for,’ one told me. ‘We don’t really have a message or a purpose.’ When the salesmen believe they don’t really have a product, then they are much less likely to persuade the media or voters.

All true but there's one subject that doesn't get mentioned.

Here's the Tory lead over Labour since 1st January 2009 up to the latest poll, the vertical line indicates the 1st poll taken after 3rd November 2009.

Here's the Tory lead from 1st January to 3rd November 2009 with an added trend line. all pretty stable, the average lead over Labour is 14 points.

So lets do a comparison between 5 months before 3rd November and 5 months after. Below is 5 months before, slight downward trend nothing significant and the average lead is 14 points.

Then 5 months after the 3rd and...er...whoops, the trend line shows a marked and significant downward turn, the average lead has dropped to 10 points, and is still falling.

The 3rd November was of course the day when Cameron u-turned on a Lisbon referendum, which caused unhappiness at the time within his own party. It's notable also that 12 days after the 3rd the Tories' lead went down to 6 points for the first time in a nearly year (when the banking crisis hit), at the time it was dismissed as an outliner, but now looks to have been a sign of the trend to come.

Cameron has clearly taken a significant hit over Lisbon, though I still think he will scrape through; when voters' start thinking at the ballot box if they want 5 more years of Brown. But ironically by trying to avoid the EU issue Cameron has made a rebellion in his own party more, rather than less likely, because his majority will be smaller than it otherwise could have been.

Quote Of The Day

"Any closer and they'll start kissing".

David Cameron's jibe at Brown and Darling in PMQs today, after Darling's extraordinary interview yesterday.

Amusingly, just after Cameron said this the camera cut straight to Brown looking 'longingly' at Darling with lips puckered. You can watch it here 9.20mins in.

Bullying...

With all the stories of Gordon Brown's alleged bullying swirling around in the last few days I thought a revisit to PMQs from May 2009 might be in order:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

As others have noted today, the Telegraph reports:

Ken Clarke, the shadow Business Secretary, is to hold secret talks in Brussels with Jose Manuel Barroso to assure the European Commission President the EU has nothing to fear from a Conservative government.
The two-day visit to Brussels, which begins on Tuesday, by the most pro-EU member of David Cameron's cabinet-in-waiting is seen by European officials as a signal that a new Conservative administration will work with the EU executive rather battling against it.

It's all so dreary and predictable that I've not much to add, apart from this from the Spectator (my emphasis):

The new Guardian ICM poll has the Tory lead down to seven points and the party on 37 percent....this poll will heighten the sense of nervousness on the Tory side. Even before this poll came out, David Cameron had called a shadow Cabinet meeting for tomorrow which will be held at CCHQ and is scheduled to last for two hours.

Despite facing the most incompetent and hated Government in recent times, the Tories' poll lead has been on a steady but consistent downward trend since last November.

Is it any wonder?

James Purnell Quits

From the Times:

James Purnell, one of the few remaining Blairites with a chance of becoming Labour leader, shocked his party this morning by announcing that he was quitting Parliament at the election.

Insiders said that Mr Purnell had nothing lined up for his life after Parliament.

His departure is another blow to the Labour leadership, because it sends out the message that one of the party’s youngest heavyweight stars sees no immediate future in politics for himself, and probably for his party.

Update: This is unexpected news, and as the Times points out, it sends a message Purnell believes Labour are doomed at this election. For all the talk of Labour closing the gap and a possible hung Parliament, it's interesting that the behaviour of Labour MPs seems to suggest otherwise. What do they know that the polls aren't showing?

The timing is interesting, today is Brown's big speech and tomorrow he launches Labour's election campaign.

Brown Unveils Another Election Strategy

This weekend (my emphasis):

Prime Minister Gordon Brown will unveil the slogan of Labour's general election campaign in a speech at the weekend.

And the BBC has learned he will outline the four main themes he hopes will help Labour to a fourth term in government.

Marvelous, the state broadcaster has learned. No investigative journalistic criticism here, just plain copy writing from Number 10. By a strange coincidence this Sunday there will be this:

and an exclusive serialisation of columnist Andrew Rawnsley's book on the final years of the Labour government.

Is Gordon Brown trying to divert attention away from damaging allegations this weekend? Surely not?! Which indicates that the potential allegations must be 'untrue'.

Victory For Free Speech

I'm not sure why it's taken four months to make the decision, but the PCC has finally rejected a complaint against Jan Moir's now notorious article regarding the sad death of Stephen Gately.

The article itself was published the day before Stephen's mum had to bury her own son, and was liberally sprinkled with homophobic innuendo; describing events leading up to his death as "sleazy" and "less than respectable" and "whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one".

Given the timing of the article it seemed that Moir's aim was along the lines of; 'here's a grieving mum, let's really lay the boot in for fun'. Not pleasant reading and the article received more than 25,000 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission. Despite the poisonous nature of the column, however, I do agree with the PCC's ruling:

As a general point, the Commission considered that it should be slow to prevent columnists from expressing their views, however controversial they may be. The price of freedom of expression is that commentators and columnists say things with which other people may not agree, may find offensive or may consider to be inappropriate. Robust opinion sparks vigorous debate; it can anger and upset. This is not of itself a bad thing. Argument and debate are working parts of an active society and should not be constrained unnecessarily (within the boundaries of the Code and the law)".

Iain Dale thinks the PCC has 'wimped out' I disagree, the PCC have ruled in favour of free speech, and rightly so. If Moir wants to reveal to the world that she's a deeply unpleasant woman then she should be allowed to do so. We don't have to read it or buy the paper.

Aside from the nastiness of Moir, there was another aspect of this whole unsavory incident that seems to be overlooked - the disturbing bullying nature of Stephen Fry's smug and sanctimonious twitter followers. Would the Press Complaints Commission really have received a record number of complaints, if not for this tweet by Stephen Fry:

I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane.

Some of the subsequent tweets by Stephen's followers, attacking Moir, were clearly competing with her for the 'most offensive comment that could be made' award. So much so, you can almost hear the screeching of tyres as Fry seems to make an embarrassed hasty retreat:

I feel sorry for her because I know just what it is like to make a monumental ass of oneself and how hard it is to find the road back. I know all too well what it is like to be inebriated, as Disraeli put it, by the exuberance of my own verbosity.

And it's not been the only time such an incident has occurred, as one twitter user found out when he had the temerity to say that Fry was boring, which led to him being viciously attacked by hundreds of followers, including Alan Davies.

Free speech is only a crime on one side of the political fence it seems. Moir clearly intended to offend, but she has every right to do so. There was no need for the involvement of the PCC - the best punishment has already been imposed; she is now tarnished, forever known as the woman that wrote that article.

Ultimately, the only reputation Moir destroyed was not Gately's but her own.

Petition To Stop Gordon Brown Insulting The Voters

Here:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to stop describing members of the public who question the veracity of Anthropogenic Global Warming as climate change deniers.

As a relative novice at political campaigning, I would have thought the golden first rule, rather like business, is never insult the customer / voter. Not so Gordon Brown apparently:

"With only days to go before Copenhagen we mustn't be distracted by the behind-the-times, anti-science, flat-earth climate sceptics,"

and:

"Those people who have become global warming deniers and those people who have become climate change deniers are against the grain of all the evidence that has been assembled..."

hattip: EUReferendum

The New Tory Poster

Much amusement to be had, so I thought I would contribute one of my own.