Cicero's Songs

The weeks pass and the position of the Conservative Brexit government grows ever more unreasonable. Many people who voted to leave the EU would still have been perfectly happy with an "economic association", indeed it was the default option for probably the majority of those who voted to leave: "we should have an economic not political union". Leaving aside the practicalities of how much economic issues require political engagement, the idea of limited economic cooperation is not unreasonable. However the current position of the Conservative government is that Brexit means the end of British membership of any European cooperation groups, whether political or economic. Brexit means not merely withdrawal from the EU, but the outer group of European Free Trade Area (EFTA) nations that are members of the EEA. It even means the withdrawal from the EU customs union. This total withdrawal is not the majority position of the British people: 48% voted to remain full member...

As Theresa May forms her new government, she has certainly sprung a few surprises. The appointments of Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary, David Davis as the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU and Liam Fox as International Trade Minister have placed a large part of the future interaction between the UK and the EU in the hands of the Brexit campaigners. Some regard this as a subtle plan to ensure that the Leave campaign takes responsibility for what they have wrought. To be honest I think the jury is still out. The utter chaos of the last few days has been largely down to a proven lack of responsibility amongst the leaders of the Leave campaign. Mrs. May is given points for Machiavellianism in forcing the Leavers back into the Conservative tent, however what she has also done is that the Conservatives must now take responsibility for the future process of EU-UK relations. The Tories are now irrevocably the party of Brexit. The problem with the "Brexit mean Brexit" discou...

The fact is that the Brexit camp is fighting an dreadful campaign.  The fish rots from the head, and leadership is the first problem that the Brexiteers face. Farage and Johnson posture, but do not lead. Meanwhile Michael Gove has made his case and quietly returned to government. Only IDS continues his angry way, irritating his Conservative colleagues, but not really landing a blow.  In the engine room, controversial but not competent figures such as Arron Banks or Dominic Cummings  have a set a hostile and provocative tone which has even alienated their own supporters. The campaign is divided- unable to put forward a clear vision of a post-EU future, because they can not agree on whether that should be completely separate, an association agreement, or full membership of the EEA. Meanwhile, despite the large amounts of cash available, the campaign is disorganised and increasingly dispirited. The polls are running increasingly against the Leave campaign. A badly le...

With 100 days or so left until the EU referendum, it is clear that David Cameron is getting a good air war. The "leave" campaign is a shambles, and through a mixture of incompetence (Boris Johnson) and his own ruthlessness (Michael Gove), the Prime Minister is seeing off his political enemies. The betting is all one way, and perhaps the PM will maintain his position as one of the luckier and more astute political figures of the past decade. However, post referendum, the clouds are already beginning to darken for both the Prime Minister and his party. Mr. Cameron has already said he will stand down before the election due in 2020. When and how he does so will dictate not only the future fortunes of the Conservative Party, but even, quite possibly, its survival. The problem is that the Tories remain split top-to-bottom on the subject of the EU. More than half of Conservative MPs and probably a far higher percentage of the party membership are strongly in the "leave...

The UK opinion polls are volatile and extremely difficult to read. it has become a cliche that the next election is both uncertain and very open. The only certainty is that the chances of a hung Parliament seem very high. In fact in the face of such uncertainty I can claim no special knowledge ahead of the result. Yet I think that there are actually some significant shifts which are now on the political agenda. There is still a chance that at the last gasp either the Tories or more likely Labour can snatch a single party mandate under the current system. Nevertheless although Labour have an advantage in that it takes far fewer votes for them to win each seat, there remains the imponderable of what impact any SNP surge might have on their overall total. For what its worth, I think that, as in the referendum itself, and as so often before, the SNP confidence will prove highly misplaced, and what might be a quite promising result of -say- 15 seats will be deemed a relative failure and...

The British Conservative Party is an extremely successful electoral machine. Over the nearly 170 years since it was founded in 1834, it has been in government more than half the time. It is currently the most powerful political party in the UK, holding the largest single bloc of seats in the House of Commons, the largest number of Peers as well as being the largest single British Party in the European Parliament (holding 25 of the 72 British seats) and being a dominant force in local government too, with over 9,000 councillors. In the face of such a record it may seem absurd to even question the future of such a political success story. Yet the fact is that the Tories are facing a mounting series of challenges which could certainly lead to electoral defeat and potentially political irrelevance within a pretty short period.  To me, the fundamental problem remains the unresolved merger of economically liberal ideas, which in the Conservative Party, are usually deemed "right-wing...

Over the last week the global financial crisis, as it affects Europe, has changed direction. Several of the critical uncertainties that were dogging the Euro have now been resolved. The German constitutional court has ruled that German participation in the current rescue plan is legal, and that future plans are a matter for votes in Bundestag. The Dutch electorate have sung solidly behind pro-EU parties, and the European Central Bank has begun to deploy substantial firepower directly in the markets. The countries that have advocated greater Eurozone integration seem to be winning the argument, and the focus of debate has moved on towards how and not whether a new European Federation can be constructed. Many on the right in the UK are determinedly contemptuous of these increasingly dramatic developments. As at the Messina Conference , where the founding members of the EEC sent Ministers, while the UK sent a junior civil servant, the UK has- by default- taken a decision not to be ...

Although the opinion polls say different, there is an emerging consensus among the chattering class that the Conservatives are likely to achieve an outright majority at the 2015 election. Yet, our old friend "events" could well conspire to frustrate this, and after my recent visit to Westminster, I am beginning to wonder if the old Greek adage, "whom the Gods would destroy they first make mad" might not apply to the Tories. The obsessive hostility to the EU which comes not simply from the old guard of Euro-sceptics, but also from many of the new intake elected in 2010 comes badly. The fact is that despite the serious crisis at the heart of the Euro-zone, British withdrawal from the European Union is an extremely radical and uncertain step. The British Conservative Party does not advocate withdrawal - that policy is supported only by UKIP- yet many of the new MPs particularly are loud in their determination that Britain should indeed leave. For them, it is self evi...

The election of a new Scottish Conservative leader is not usually an occasion of great moment in British politics. From being the preeminent force in Scotland in the 1950s the party now has only the rather gauche and lumpen David Mundell to represent them at Westminster, and even that is by the thinnest of margins. Yet the choice that the Scottish Conservatives will reveal tomorrow will mark a significant change. Either they will choose the uncertain risk of Murdo Fraser, who has said openly that he intends to remake and even rename the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party or they will vote for an apparently safer choice in Ruth Davidson,who is said to be the choice of the London party leadership, but who is otherwise both rather inexperienced and a rather unconvincing proponent of the discredited status quo in the party. In my view, whether Murdo Fraser wins or not, he has already opened up an intriguing possibility for Scottish political realignment. The Socialist hegemony...

The election for the next leader of the Scottish Conservatives has become increasingly rancorous. Murdo Fraser, the current deputy leader has put forward an interesting and brave idea that the "Conservative" brand in Scotland is so toxic that it needs to be changed. The remaining four candidates reject his analysis and suggest that the way forward is simply to be more vehement about where they stand now. The fact is though, that the Conservatives stand nowhere. They long ago lost the support of the urban proletariat, then the Kirk, then latterly even industry, and now farmers. Without renewal, they are condemned to die out- and the greatest part of this renewal is to stop reminding the Scottish people how much they opposed the new constitutional arrangements.  A huge number of erstwhile Conservative voters have defected to the SNP, and yet the message does not seem to have come home to the party as to what this means. The backbiting, both in public and in private agains...

Most political journalists in the UK are looking for a story of the break up of the Liberal Democrat-Conservative coalition. Any spat between the two parties is examined to see if it poses a terminal challenge to the government itself. Of course there are disputes, but the surprising thing is that the disputes between the two parties remain less numerous and less rancorous than the disputes between members of the single-party Labour government. Indeed, because the two parties do not expect to agree on everything, so a certain amount of live-and-let-live is inevitable. However, there is an emerging threat to this generally courteous and professional relationship. It is not that there are fundamental disagreements over such issues as the NHS- although there are. Neither is it because of David Cameron's determined leadership of the No-to-AV campaign. It is not even because the Conservatives are focusing on a numbers game in immigration, although that is in the view of many Liberal De...

It has been an interesting few days since Mr. Cameron made his first offer of a coalition to the Liberal Democrats. Now the coalition agreement is published and it is a thoughtful and quite well crafted document . Many will be unhappy that the Liberal Democrats have gone into coalition with the Conservatives, but to my mind there was neither the numbers nor the will for Labour to even come to the table. In the end we will have to place a degree of trust in Mr. Cameron's word: but it is trust which rests on the knowledge that any betrayal of the agreement would be seen as such and either side may be punished if they fail to follow through on their commitments. The agreement includes a commitment to a fixed Parliament: so the next general election date should be already set for the first Thursday of May 2015: personally I would prefer an October electoral timetable, but May it will now have to be. It includes provisions for a referendum on AV for the House of Commons and to address ...

The 2010 general election has certainly had its twists and turns, culminating in a cliffhanger result. Now, however, it is clear what the shape of the new government will be: a Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition. It is not going to be an easy ride. However, the impact of Liberal Democrat voices around the cabinet table could well be profound. In any event, the very nature of a coalition will mean a more open kind of politics. There is also the matter of electoral reform: a referendum has been conceded by the Conservatives as part of the government programme. There is now an agreed programme on education - where in truth the parties' policies were not that different. It is the economy that is now the most important focus, and with Vince Cable taking a senior role, we can at least hope for some coherence and forward thinking here. The two exhausted negotiating teams should be congratulated on coming out with a detailed programme. Nick Clegg should be congratulated on sticking f...

The opinion polls have made very interesting reading this morning. I imagine that the Conservative and Labour leadership and their advisers are feeling somewhat concerned about their prospects. Both parties are going backwards in this campaign. The problem that both Labour and the Conservatives face is that the surge in support for the Liberal Democrats is not just about the good performance that Nick Clegg put in to the first television debate- though this may have come as a surprise to them, used as they are to Prime Minister's question time, where he is usually marginalised. The fact is that Liberal Democrat support was already growing well before the debate took place: Vince Cable had already won the Chancellors debate, and the Liberal Democrat manifesto was also well received. The " Clegg surge" has not come out of a clear sky: there had already been signs that the Liberal Democrats were set for a good performance. The other two parties are now facing something th...

The Blair decade was supposed to see the end of ideology in British politics. Socialism was dead, and what mattered was what works: managerialism pure and simple. The electorate was invited to choose the party that looked like the most credible management for the country. After all, the cold war - and even the economic cycle of boom and bust- was over and therefore it was simply a question of administration. As we approach the 2010 election, the Conservatives too seem to be approaching the electorate with the same message: "after the disaster of Brown, you need to change to better managers of the country". However, the Tories beyond articulating a nebulous message for "change", have deliberately avoided putting a coherent set of ideas- an ideology- before the British people. David Cameron bitterly resists any labelling of "Cameron-ism". In that sense he truly has been the heir to Blair, who also resisted such labelling, and indeed in office governed with...

it has been a pretty ho-hum week for David Cameron. Despite a good performance on Prime Minister's question time, he has had to consider a swathe of polls all showing Labour support up, and the Conservatives down. Many Conservative commentators are coming out of the woodwork to give advice to Mr. Cameron- and the chorus has increased in intensity with every percentage point the Tory lead falls. Amongst the various voices trying to steady the ship, there is a growing voice of simple perplexity: "how", they think, "can the Tory lead be in danger, when Labour has so manifestly failed?" Benedict Brogan's piece in the Telegraph this morning is a classic of the breed. And of course he is right: Labour has failed, and the voters are indeed heartily sick of Gordon Brown. But that is not the same as saying a Conservative victory is inevitable, or even desirable. Fraser Nelson in the Times , I think, comes quite close to explaining why. He points out that winning o...

Oh dear! the deselection of Liz Truss by Norfolk Conservatives is something of a challenge for the so-called modernisers around David Cameron. To most people these days, the deselection of someone because they had an extra-marital affair several years ago looks pretty absurd. These days the majority of the population are understanding about the pressures that can cause marriages to fail, and know that the idea of blaming someone is often wide of the mark. Nevertheless it is only to be expected that Conservatives would be more concerned about the issue of marriage and morality. Social Conservatives pay a great deal of attention to institutions, and are naturally conservative about maintaining them. There is indeed a real cost to society from the failure of such institutions, but while Conservatives try to defend the institutions themselves, a Liberal will focus of the role of individual rights and responsibilities, rather than an imposed sense of -often hypocritical- social morality. G...

I had meant to blog on the profound ignorance that both the Conservatives and Labour have displayed on the subject of Latvian history. That the history of the Baltic could become a political football in the UK is the result of the frankly disgraceful way that Labour have tried to target the Conservative alliance with the Latvian For Fatherland and Freedom Party in the European Parliament as somehow being an alliance with "Nazi sympathisers". The lone MEP from this party is the former finance minister, Roberts Zile, who I have met several times. Quite frankly he is no more a Nazi than I am, and it is ridiculous to cast this thoughtful and humorous man in the manner that, for example, David Miliband has tried to do. I said I was going to blog, but to be honest, this piece from The Times by Ben McIntyre says it all so precisely that I don't need to repeat him. I think the Conservative alliance is absurd, but it is not absurd because of their alliance with Roberts Zile. It is...

The release of the Conservative Home poll on the eve of their party conference creates a real headache for David Cameron. Even as it was, the Irish Yes vote on the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon would have put Europe higher up the agenda for the conference that the leadership would have probably preferred. The problem is that in the details of the poll: only 16% suggesting that the treaty of Lisbon should be accepted and nearly three quarters want a complete renegotiation of British membership. Perhaps even more extraordinary, about 40% of Conservative activists actually want to withdraw from the European Union completely. The scale of Europhobia amongst the Conservatives is pretty dramatic and leaves the young Conservative leader with very little room for manoeuvre. The plain fact is that even with a filibuster by the right-wing President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, all of the members of the EU- including the UK- are likely to have ratified the treaty by the end of 200...