Only by calming down shall EU rebels get what they want, or have any colleagues left to share it

Nik Darlington 9.54am

Yesterday on these pages, Giles questioned whether the Tory party truly wants to resist the UKIP surge, or whether the Tory party in fact embraced it. This morning on ConHome, Paul Goodman questions whether Tory MPs even want to win the next election.

For some “lunatics”, to paraphrase Mr Soames commenting yesterday, this is not wide of the mark. The MP for Ketting, Philip Hollobone (majority 9,094), is insisting on parliamentary time to debate a referendum bill and “if it ends the coalition, so be it”.

That would, in all likelihood, end the Tory party’s tenure in office. It would not, in all likelihood, end Mr Hollobone’s tenure in the House of Commons.

There are however many hard-working, bright colleagues who would be sacrificed at the alter of Mr Hollobone’s (and others’) capricious whim.

To recap, John Baron (Basildon & Billericay: majority 12,398) posited a motion criticising the Queen’s Speech for not including an EU Referendum Bill. Coalition with the Liberal Democrats precludes this, however David Cameron has since announced the independent publication of a draft bill that is presumed will be taken on by the first name out of the hat for private members bills.

Mr Baron and supporters - including Peter Bone (Wellingborough: majority 11,787) and the reinstated Nadine Dorries (Mid Bedfordshire: majority 15,152) - have extracted this significant concession. Yet they press on. And on. Today’s Times (£) cartoon puts this best.

Has the Prime Minister handled this badly? Of course he has. Should a doomed stand be made against the muddled, undemocratic ranks of the Labour party, the Lib Dems, Greens and the rest? Yes, it should.

Europe is a salient issue for voters and the British people deserve a say on EU membership, pending the Prime Minister’s negotiations. For what it is worth, looking at the status quo, on balance I would vote to stay in; but it would be a close call.

It would not take much to convince me otherwise. The ‘out’ lobby has a war chest of momentum, funding and evidence. The ‘in’ lobby does not. In fact, I fear supporters of EU membership have at worst largely forgotten why they support it, and at best are relying on out-dated evidence.

Nevertheless, Europe is not the most salient issue for voters. It does not even come close. The crucial consideration in this sordid episode is that the Conservative party is being poisoned by myopia, desperation, and fears the wrong enemy.

Lance the boil. Have the debate about a referendum bill. Expose opposing parties. Be done with it.

Demonstrate to voters what this Conservative-led Government has achieved in the realms of welfare reform, schools and immigration; ram home the paucity of Labour’s alternative; press on with vital reforms to healthcare; and continue the hard but necessary work of rebuilding Britain’s economy.

Only by doing so shall the Conservative party have a hope of winning in 2015. Only be doing so shall there be a chance for an EU referendum. And only by doing so shall those MPs in safe seats who yearn for that referendum, have any colleagues left to ensure it.

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In praise of £9,000-per-year university tuition fees

Matthew Plummer 10.58am

Children in their last year of school are gearing up for what one contemporary Scottish philosopher calls ‘squeaky bum time’. A-level exams in the summer suddenly don’t seem so far away, and shortly the contents of acceptance and rejection letters from institutions will start being broadcast in Facebook status updates up and down the country. 

The deadline for art and design schools is later this month, and last week I had coffee with a student I mentor to look at her portfolio and university application. Her work showed plenty of promise, but as we talked I realised that while she was desperate to do a photography degree, she wasn’t particularly interested in using it as the foundation for a career taking pictures – she just liked the idea of studying photography, and would do something different after her graduation.

She’s by no means alone. We have a large number of students in creative tertiary education, many of whom realise during their studies that enjoying something at A-level (often taken as an alternative to boring ‘academic’ subjects) isn’t enough to sustain them through the long hours of working in the studio at their university. Others quickly find out that that their work simply doesn’t cut the mustard when they enter the saturated graduate marketplace. And – being completely blunt – the tertiary sector’s vast oversupply of creative graduates unable to work in areas where their degree have prepared them for is nothing short of scandalous. 

To someone with a rose-tinted view of the whole university experience this probably sounds harsh. University is about growing up, finding one’s feet in the world, etc. Yet the ease in justifying a degree in the creative arts is symptomatic of the distance we have yet to travel in shifting society’s attitudes towards tertiary education.

The wretched ‘50 per cent of school leavers going to university’ aspiration was a misplaced and profoundly damaging New Labour ploy to seduce parents. It was also politically very smart: ‘thanks to the government my child is the first in our family to have a university education’.

The policy flooded the workforce with graduates, and sent a clear signal to students that choosing not to do degrees made them second best.

At the drop of a hat sixth formers saw areas like photography that really should only be one or two years in duration as the gateway to the newly hallowed university education – albeit in a technical subject that doesn’t give them the transferrable skills and intellectual rigour that employers associate with degrees in subjects like history or geography. Private schools also need to take some of the blame: it’d be a rare headmaster who tells parents that their child isn’t university material having taken £150,000 in fees over the past five years. Better a degree in photography, music journalism, etc, than no degree at all, or so their logic flows. 

The danger is that students are supposedly now paying for the bulk of their education. Fundamentally this is a good thing: America’s dominance of the top 100 universities is plainly and inescapably due to their system of fees – not my analysis, but that of Tony Blair in his autobiography, who (rightly) points out that when it comes to recruiting academic staff “those who paid top dollar got the best”.

Tuition fees also address the small matter of successive governments failing to fund universities properly. And as a Head of Sixth Form friend of mine pointed out, “if you’re not intelligent enough to realise that £9,000 a year to go to a top Russell Group university is a bargain, then you really shouldn’t be applying to those places in the first place”.

The scrum of blue chip firms recruiting on Britain’s top campuses hammers home the value of forking out for the best education the UK can offer, and the new fee levels will help ensure that graduates from UCL, Cambridge, etc, can expect their qualifications to stack up globally (with salaries to match) and help ensure our universities continue to churn out world leading research.

Incidentally, as someone who mentors students in two of South London’s most deprived schools, I was really pleased to hear from the teachers there that the new fees structure and bursary support is more favourable for those from less affluent backgrounds than the previous government’s scheme – which is exactly as it should be. Nevertheless I remain to be convinced that many of the wide-eyed UCAS applicants for photography and music journalism degrees will actually find that their three years of undergraduate study has transformed their employment prospects.

More importantly, will their studies enable them to repay much of the £18-£27k in tuition fees that they’ve taken on, full of enthusiasm for whatever creative A-level subject they dabbled in at school? Or will they find they’ve been sold a pup by institutions who are desperate to prop up their student rolls with courses of dubious value? It’s interesting to hear Pam Tatlow of the Million+ think-tank (representing many former polytechnics) describe this year’s small increase in university applications as a “recovery”, whereas the market behaviour from this year’s students seems to indicate that for some of the institutions Million+ represents the decrease in rolls of 50-60% could well be terminal. And while this plays out the Treasury’s exposure to the student debt it underwrites grows and grows – after all, the government pays for your education until you’re actually in a position to reimburse it.

So where does this leave my enthusiastic photography student? Higher student fees are here to stay – Mr Blair himself saying that “once introduced as a concept, there [is] no looking back”.

For some disciplines this must surely spell trouble for the idea of three year degrees. The higher end providers of vocational courses will flourish, but institutions without the cachet of the Slade and LCC may well have to rethink how they deliver education to increasingly savvy consumers. Photography, journalism, graphic design, etc. are hardly lucrative careers, so the American concept of shorter ‘associate’  degrees for some vocational and creative subjects seems very sensible: students avoid the £10-15k involved with a third year of study, and employers provide the final polish in the initial stages of paid employment.

My student wants to experience tertiary study, so understandably a single year course doesn’t appeal. I did a two-year photography diploma in New Zealand, and by the end of it I was desperate to finish and get stuck into winning clients and getting proper commissions, as well as avoid an expensive third year – the money saved being more than enough to buy a decent studio setup.

Why is it then that our creative universities stubbornly persist with courses that seem aimed at lining their own pockets and propping up a ill-conceived system? Sure, politicians and society at large need to take some responsibility for fostering the often dubious allure of ‘going to uni’, but there’s a horrible irony in institutions aimed at nurturing creativity being so painfully regimented and unoriginal in what they offer today’s young talent – and cheerfully milking them dry at the same time.

Matthew Plummer is a commercial photographer. Follow him on Twitter @mwyp

All those people went to private schools? Really? The Sutton Trust is better than this.

Nik Darlington 11.02am

What do you like to do to celebrate a big milestone, a birthday or anniversary? Throw a party?

Or compile a list of lots of important people, tot up which schools they went to, and dress it up as a bit of serious research to get into the papers?

Enter stage left, the Sutton Trust. To mark their fifteenth anniversary, the education charity has scoured the depths of Wikipedia to give Times (£)readers the knowledge that David Dimbleby attended Charterhouse, Andrew Rawnsley went to Rugby, and Ray Winstone went to a grammar school (when they still existed). It is also covered by the Daily Telegraph (next to the now-obligatory image of young Etonians in tails, as though that’s how EVERY public schoolboy looks) and doubtless by others.

The Times has happily obliged the Sutton Trust’s hard work by putting together a colourful illustration of photographs and bar charts. I’m sure the newspaper’s editor James Harding (St Paul’s and Cambridge), not to mention leading writers Giles Coren (Westminster and Oxford), Brian Glanville (another Carthusian) or Hugo Rifkind (Loretto and Cambridge), to name a few, would have approved.

Dr Christopher Ray, high master of Manchester Grammar School, wrote for the Telegraph last week about the “demonisation” of private schools, by politicians and the media class (many of whom benefited from the brilliant education many of those schools bestow).

We’ve come to the point where the most important aspect of the new Archbishop of Canterbury’s character (note: character) is that he is an Old Etonian, just like those other toffs David Cameron, Boris Johnson, George Osborne and the vast majority of the Cabinet (okay I made the last two up, but because any number of journalists still can’t be bothered to check that the Chancellor went to St Paul’s or only a small handful of ministers are OEs, it doesn’t really matter any more).

Surely the more interesting thing about the Rt Rev Justin Welby is that only recently he was an oil industry executive? No. He wore a waistcoat and tails to school forty years ago. Got to be more important. He probably eats swan and hates poor people.

What the Sutton Trust’s ‘research’ demonstrates is a failing of basic education. That so many leading lights in British industry, politics, the arts and religion attended private schools is proof that those schools are preparing their pupils for certain careers better than the vast majority of other schools. Not Haverstock, of course, don’t you know Tulisa from the X-Factor went there? And the Leader of the Opposition?

The Sutton Trust would do better concentrating on ways to make all schools better, rather than sneering in language to suggest that private schools are invidious. As a line of debate goes, it’s cheap and it’s been overdone to death.

I’ve no doubt that the Sutton Trust has done wonderful things for social mobility in its fifteen years, produced countless excellent and thoughtful reports, and contributed meaningfully to the advancement of education in this country. But it’s better than this.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

New charity to offer boarding school places to disadvantaged pupils - good, we need more of the same

Nik Darlington 11.26am

Boarding schools have many detractors. They also have many supporters. Singer James Blunt said being sent away to boarding school aged 7, “is as great an inspiration as any songwriter could have”. Actor Ruper Everett, on the other hand, said he went to boarding school aged 7, “and cried and cried”.

Each to their own.

The closest I got to writing songs was some ropey piano and guitar playing and producing an album for a band named after a rubefacient menthol sports spray. Life skills.

Yet I’m in the Blunt camp. Boarding school was a wonderful experience and I’d recommend it to anyone.

Coming from something of a different angle is former Labour education minister Lord Adonis in this morning’s Times (£):

“Boarding schools…offer a unique type of education - security, structure, pastoral care, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I know from my own experience that boarding schools can make all the difference to children who are in care or who are growing up in chaotic or floundering families.”

Perhaps that is why it has always been the schooling of choice for the aristocracy.

Lord Adonis argues the virtues of a boarding school education need to be offered to a wider number of pupils, from all walks of life.

“But too few children who could benefit get the chance of a boarding education. There are only a few dozen state boarding schools and only a tiny number of private boarding schools, such as Christ’s Hospital, in Horsham, with charitable foundations able to pay the fees of large numbers of poorer students.”

The Labour party spitefully abolished the Assisted Places Scheme in 1997, so denying an opportunity to thousands of children (80,000 participated in the scheme between 1980 and 1997).

Thankfully, numerous independent schools and charities are stepping in to offer bursaries. Lord Adonis praises Rugby School’s pioneering Arnold Foundation (I declare an interest as a committee member), which since its launch in 2003 has provided full bursaries to scores of youngsters. The aim is to have 10 per cent of Rugby School pupils supported via the Arnold Foundation (for boarders) or the Lawrence Sheriff Bequest (day pupils) within the next decade.

Lord Adonis also mentions a new charity launched today called SpringBoard, based on the Arnold Foundation, which will offer hundreds of boarding school places to disadvantaged pupils. SpringBoard hopes to be assisting 2,000 pupils within a decade.

The snobs of the education establishment will hate it, but ignore them. For many children who have not been born into privilege, and who otherwise see little future for themselves, a boarding school education could be the best thing that has ever happened to them. To deny them the chance is to deny potential, and organisations such as SpringBoard are to be applauded for offering it.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

‘Winning with the Coalition’: full text of Stephen Dorrell’s speech to the TRG

Nik Darlington 7.19am

Full text of the Rt Hon Stephen Dorrell MP’s speech to the Tory Reform Group in Parliament yesterday evening.

WINNING WITH THE COALITION

The TRG has always had a soft spot for Disraeli. His most ardent admirer couldn’t describe Disraeli as an unbending man of principle. (He had a more obvious – though often no less flexible – competitor for that accolade). But he was a supreme practitioner of the art of politics – and he can lay a better claim than anyone else to be the founder of the modern Conservative Party.

One Nation

Indeed so attractive is Disraeli’s combination of humanity and purpose that Ed Miliband is the second Labour leader in 20 years to attempt to cloak himself in Disraeli’s clothes. Like Tony Blair before him, Miliband is attracted to the slogan “One Nation” but, also like Blair, he faces the problem that his party cannot reconcile Disraeli’s aspiration with its own inherited prejudices.

Does Miliband celebrate success, or does he envy it? Does he embrace excellence and challenge others to emulate it, or does he regard it as evidence of injustice? Does he want to empower the innovators, the people who get there first, or does he prefer to preserve the appearance of equality by moving at the pace of the slowest?

In short does he believe that human progress is powered by disruptive individuals who challenge the societies in which they live, or does he believe that progress is a collective endeavour?

Disraelians have clear answers to these questions. They draw on the traditions of Burke, Pitt, Canning and, ironically, Peel. They know that successful societies evolve and that inherited institutions provide continuity and stability; but they also know that they must be constantly changing in response to new challenges and that it is the interests of every citizen to ensure that individuals are responsible for their own actions and, critically, encouraged to test out new ideas.

As David Cameron puts it – “There is such a thing as society; it’s just not the same thing as the state”. When Ed Miliband can repeat those words to his party conference and receive a standing ovation he will have earned the right to speak of One Nation.

England does not love coalitions

But it isn’t that aspect of Disraeli’s legacy on which I want to focus this evening. Instead I want to address directly his famous dictum that “England does not love coalitions”. This observation is often quoted to challenge the present government – and to suggest that it is somehow abnormal for politicians with different personal and intellectual roots to work together to create a stable government.

Such people misunderstand both the historical context of Disraeli’s remark and, more importantly, the conclusions which he and his successors drew from it.

It is ironic to reflect that until Disraeli lost office to Gladstone in 1868, his only experience of stable single party government was the government of Robert Peel which he worked so hard to destroy during his first parliament as an MP.

Seen in this context, his observation about coalitions was less an observation on the normal state of mid-nineteenth century politics, and more a statement of a problem which is faced by all leaders in an open political system.

If a government is to achieve results which endure, it has to give itself the political space to achieve substantial change. It needs authority – what the Romans called auctoritas – and that cannot be achieved if the survival of the government itself is always subject to negotiation in the shifting sands of parliamentary politics.

It was his experience of those shifting sands in the 1850’s which encouraged Disraeli to build the foundations of the modern Conservative Party in order to provide himself with a stable Parliamentary majority – and with it the political authority he needed to carry through the social reforms for which his government of the 1870’s is remembered.

He understood that his generation would never form a stable Parliamentary majority solely on the basis of its traditional support from the landed interest. He therefore challenged his party to reach out beyond its comfort zone and win support in the fast growing cities of Victorian England.

He repeatedly declared it to be his central purpose to “improve the condition of the people” – and he went on to organize and mobilize them to give him the authority to deliver on that pledge.

Salisbury and Chamberlain

Furthermore, and perhaps even more surprisingly to his party, Disraeli’s successor, Lord Salisbury, a representative of the landed interest if ever there was one, continued Disraeli’s work by attracting into the Conservative Party the Chamberlain Liberals – who became the foundation of the “Birmingham” tradition which played such an important role in the Conservative Party during the first half of the twentieth century.

There are, therefore two key lessons for us in the story of Conservative politics in the second half of the nineteenth century.

First, the whole point of the Party organization which Disraeli created was to reach out beyond the party’s core constituency and create a basis of support for Conservative politics among people who would never previously have thought of themselves as Conservatives.

Second, Salisbury’s alliance with Chamberlain introduced into Conservative politics the radical, non-conformist spirit of Birmingham which ensured that the new party organization was able to express the ideas and aspirations of the new voters whose support it was seeking.

Cameron and Clegg

The fact that Disraeli adopted the name Conservative for his new organization was part of his political art. He would have understood the absurdity of Blairite rhetoric about Britain as a “young country” – and he would undoubtedly have been memorably sarcastic about it – but he also understood something which is ultimately more important.

If a political party is to secure sufficient authority to allow a government to govern it has to reach beyond its comfort zone. It must challenge itself to broaden its appeal. It must learn to articulate the ambitions and aspirations not just of its established supporters, but of those whose support it seeks.

Disraeli was not interested in creating an instrument for the complacent defence of self interest; he sought to maintain the trust of the traditionalists while reaching beyond them to embrace a changing world.

Our challenge is, as it always is, to do exactly the same.

That is why David Cameron was so right to lead the Conservative Party into coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, and why the record and programme of the Coalition Government are so deserving of the support of all Conservatives.

It is worth reminding ourselves about the choice that Cameron faced.

He could have relied on the ideological certainties of the comfort zone. He led the largest party in Parliament so he could have formed a minority government drawn from a single party which had been supported by 36% of the electorate and set out to deal with the most serious economic recession since the 1930’s on the basis that every important vote in the House of Commons would have required him to negotiate a new coalition of support.

It would have been to re-create, almost precisely, the circumstances which led Disraeli to make his remark about coalitions – it was made at the end of the budget debate in 1852, just before a critical vote which brought the government down as a result of a parliamentary deal on the opposition benches.

The alternative course was to learn from the experience of Disraeli, Salisbury and Chamberlain. They demonstrated the importance of looking beyond parliamentary deals and creating a stable government based on a parliamentary majority which reflects popular support.

The Coalition Agreement of 2010 has provided the basis for a government which has a parliamentary majority of 78, drawn from parties which were supported by 59% of the electorate.

Coalition succeeding and retaining public support

Sceptics argued at the time that the Coalition Agreement would not hold and that the government’s authority would prove to be illusory. They said that ministers would be unable to work together. They were wrong about that. They said that the Government’s parliamentary majority would prove to be unstable. They were wrong about that. They said that party members would not support the Coalition. They were wrong about that too.

In fact the Coalition has so far confounded the sceptics on virtually every count. They expected it to be a weak government which was unable to confront the key issues facing our country. In the event it is proving to be an effective government which is carrying through necessary but uncomfortable changes across the full range of government activity – and retaining remarkable levels of public support as it does so.

Mid term opinion polls can usually be relied upon to produce lurid headlines for governing parties – and voter support for both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats has certainly fallen since the General Election. It is however worth noting that despite these mid-term doldrums, Labour has been unable to establish even a minimal lead in public opinion over the combined votes of the coalition parties.

Voters are well aware that our country faces major issues and they would rightly be unforgiving if they felt that their government was absorbed by the machinations of parliamentary politics. In fact, while they don’t like everything it does, they see a government which has secured and is using the political authority necessary to address the challenges we face.

Economic change

From the day it was formed, the most urgent challenge facing the Coalition has been the need to restructure our economy to allow us to compete successfully in the global market place. Meeting that challenge requires the Coalition to address two issues, both of which are work in progress.

First, it was essential from the beginning, and remains essential today, that the government has a credible plan to bring its own budget under control.

You don’t have to believe that the banking crisis was “made in Downing Street” (which it wasn’t) to recognize that the scale of our government deficit was the result of decisions made there – by, among others, Ed Balls and Ed Milliband. Despite their protestations of political virginity, the two Eds were in it up to their elbows. They spent when they should have saved; they ran deficits when they should have run surpluses.

The result was that the Coalition inherited a structural deficit in our public finances which qualified us for life membership of Club Med and threatened Britain with a crisis of confidence in financial markets.

The fact that Britain has retained its triple A rating and, more importantly, is able to borrow at roughly German interest rates despite running a government deficit comparable with Greece, is due to the fact that the Coalition has demonstrated that it is willing to take the steps necessary to put our public finances back on to a sustainable basis.

The broad basis of its support is key to its political success. Some elements in the Coalition would have preferred sharper spending reductions (for example on overseas aid spending, or possibly on health); others would have attached a lower priority to holding down the tax burden. But none of them would have been able to carry their policy either in the House of Commons or, more importantly, with the public because they did not command sufficient public support.

The Coalition exists because none of its members believe, like the two Eds, that the solution to excessive debt is more borrowing. The electorate took a decisive step away from that approach in 2010, and the Coalition has agreed a deficit reduction programme which commands the confidence of the financial markets in part because its broad political base enhances its credibility.

The two Eds continue to argue that we need to borrow more – indeed it is an interesting intellectual speculation to wonder in what circumstances they would acknowledge the need to borrow less – but the fact of the Coalition has made it impossible for them to win that argument.

Growth

But economic policy is not just about deficit reduction. When governments borrow too much they undermine the stability of an open economy which destroys the opportunity for growth. Having established a credible programme of deficit reduction, the Coalition has also recognized the need to ensure that the engine of growth is reignited.

Growth is not created in Whitehall. It is the result of businesses meeting demand for goods and services at prices which consumers can afford to pay. It is a process of continuous product, service and process enhancement driven by new insights about a changing world.

Furthermore it takes place in markets which are always changing, and where the pace of change is quickening all the time. Continuing technical advances, instant communications and the continuing process of globalization, represent unprecedented forces for economic change which are generating new growth opportunities, in particular in emerging economies, which, in turn lead to new challenges and opportunities for western economies.

For virtually every business this combination of circumstances creates a demand for radical change. The challenge for our society is to ensure that our political and social structures reflect the sense of urgency which this relentless process demands.

That is why the Coalition has introduced a wide range of measures to target investment funds at priority areas and reduce regulations which restrict the ability of businesses to respond to the demands of their customers. It is also why the House of Commons will tomorrow be considering further changes to the planning system to reduce its ability to constrain economic development.

Once again the Coalition is able to draw strength from the breadth of its base. Economic change is uncomfortable; it impacts on the daily lives of every one of us. It requires us to surrender the familiar and trust in our ability to conquer the unknown. It requires us to unlearn the old lesson about “holding on to nurse, for fear of finding something worse”.

That is why it is important to engage people in the process – to demonstrate that growth is not motivated by a desire to pour more concrete on green field sites in order to pay higher bonuses to bankers. Growth provides the means to deliver environmental objectives, housing improvements, as well as improved job prospects and improved public services. But growth can only happen if businesses are able to change in response to the demands of their customers.

Establish a Growth Commission

An idea was suggested to me recently which I believe the government should consider as a way of further reinforcing electoral and political support for this process of economic change. It is based on the experience of Sweden in the 1990’s, when they faced some familiar economic challenges – unsustainable public finances coupled with an uncompetitive private sector.

The Swedes established an Advisory Commission, independent of government, which performed the dual function of challenging government to make changes which were necessary to allow their economy function more effectively and – by making the case for such changes in public from outside the political world – help the government win public and political support to carry them through.

It is not unlike the system of independent advice, publicly given, which John Major’s government established after Black Wednesday to improve the quality of policy making on interest rates in the days when they were determined in Whitehall. No-one argues for a return to “political money”, but the Swedish precedent provides an interesting option for maintaining, and further reinforcing, the Coalition’s core commitment to build a more open and competitive economy.

Reforming public services

No political priority is more sensitive than the requirement that all public services, and in particular health and education, must deliver equitable access to services which meet high quality standards as well as high standards of efficiency.

This sensitivity arises because we are all involved both as funders through our taxes and as actual or potential service users. If the whole community feels itself to be affected by decisions taken about these services, it is inevitable that the  politicians will also take an interest in those decisions – indeed the politicians would be taken to task by voters if they did not.

For example the changes which are currently faced by health and care providers are as fundamental as the changes faced by any global trading business. Our hospital sites may now look relatively modern following the substantial investment of recent years, but the system in which they work is fundamentally ill-suited to the times. In healthcare, as in every other sector, consumer demands and developing technologies are driving a ferocious pace of change.

But the changes which are required – which will lead to a smaller hospital service and much greater emphasis on community-based services – will challenge public perceptions; people will be asked to transfer their trust from visible structures to largely invisible systems, which experience has so far taught them are often unreliable. They will be inclined to believe that service levels are being reduced – although all the evidence actually points to significant improvements in outcomes if the system is refocused towards early intervention and prevention.

Health and Wellbeing Boards will have the ability to prepare the way for these changes by looking beyond the silos created by history and re-imagining a care system built around the needs of the patient. Their roots in local communities will strengthen their ability to carry through radical change, but it is also – once again – the breadth of the political base of the Coalition which offers the opportunity to carry through fundamental change.

Public services need to be open to disruptive new ideas. Closed systems are too easily convinced of their own excellence; mediocrity goes unrecognized and shiboleths go unchallenged. We need to encourage challenge in a system which instinctively distrusts newcomers.

But if we are to maintain public confidence during this process we need to demonstrate both nationally and locally that changes are being implemented in order to improve the quality of service delivered – not simply to save money. It is a task to which the Coalition is singularly well-suited.

Europe

The final issue on which I want to touch this evening is another which, contrary to general perception, I believe the Coalition is well placed to address.

Most observers will tell you that they have been pleasantly surprised that Coalition minsters have been able to agree policies on deficit reduction, student fees, planning and civil nuclear power, to name but a few, but they go on to say that “they’ll never agree on Europe”.

In other words, we have been wrong every time so far, but we are right this time.

In fact the Coalition parties have a broad measure of agreement about Europe.

No-one favours joining the Euro; nor does anyone favour joining the economic union which it is increasingly clear that our continental partners intend to create.

Those are decisions made, but the debate in Britain continues to muse about the likelihood of the failure of the Euro and the “threat” of a developing superstate.

The real issues we need to face are quite different.

The developing economic union is our largest overseas market. It would be odd if it were not – it is the largest market in the world and it is on our doorstep.

It is sometimes argued that we run a trade deficit with the economic union and that it therefore has more at stake in its relationship with us than we do with it.

That is vainglorious nonsense on two counts. Firstly we are a significantly smaller share of their total trade than they are of ours; secondly, and much more importantly, it ignores completely the biggest shared economic interest of all between Britain and the economic union which lies in the City of London.

London is quite simply the world’s premier financial market. It is hugely in the interests of both Britain and our partners that Europe as a whole is able to benefit from the opportunities that London’s pre-eminence creates.

Financial services may not be the fashionable theme of the moment, but sometimes in life it helps to be uncool.

London’s financial services sector is part of our national competitive advantage. We should nurture it and promote it – and we should understand that to allow it to be separated from its natural economic hinterland is simply absurd.

Absurd from the UK point of view – but equally absurd from the point of view of an economic union which badly needs access to all the capital resources and trading opportunities it can create.

In other words I believe the European argument has changed fundamentally over the last decade. Our partners have decided to create an economic union and we have chosen not to be part of it. It is a decision made. On both sides. Job done.

It will be for our grandchildren to decide whether we were right; they will write the history, not us. Our job is to make our decision work.

And that is where the role of the Coalition is so important.

Different parts of the Coalition will express this analysis in different language, but there is a shared understanding of the importance of the endeavour. Just as the broad basis of the Coalition helps it to win authority to tackle difficult issues of economic and social change, so I believe it can be the ability of the Coalition to reach beyond the comfort zone of a single party which creates the opportunity achieve a real change for the better in our relationship with the rest of Europe.

Conclusion

And so we are back to Disraeli.

He built the Conservative Party as a permanent coalition between the landed interest and the Victorian cities. His coalition was further broadened when Chamberlain made Birmingham a Conservative slogan.

That coalition held office for two thirds of the twentieth century, but towards the end of the century it ignored Disraeli’s challenge and retreated into its comfort zone.

In 2010, David Cameron challenged both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to leave their comfort zones and face the realities of office in a Coalition that has the right to speak for the majority its compatriots.
In doing so the Coalition has demonstrated both its ability and its willingness to face issues which other governments have regarded as too hot to handle.

The Coalition Agreement is David Cameron’s answer to Disraeli’s challenge.

The issue for the future is simple.

The Coalition Agreement comes to an end.

Disraeli’s challenge does not.


ENDS

Tory ex-minister Stephen Dorrell tells sceptics that the Coalition remains uniquely placed to face Britain’s challenges

Nik Darlington 9.59am

This evening in Parliament, Stephen Dorrell, chairman of the Health Select Committee and TRG patron, will give a speech billed as a robust case for the Coalition.

Mr Dorrell will invoke the memory of Benjamin Disraeli, the great nineteenth century Tory prime minister and novelist, as he argues that the Coalition is treading a similar ‘One Nation’ path. Ed Miliband’s ‘One Nation Labour’, on the other hand, which we covered on these pages, cannot achieve the same breadth. Moreover, he isn’t the first Labour party leader to try.

“So attractive is Disraeli’s combination of humanity and purpose that Ed Miliband is the second Labour leader in 20 years to attempt to cloak himself in Disraeli’s clothes. Like Tony Blair before him, Miliband is attracted to the slogan “One Nation” but, also like Blair, he faces the problem that his party cannot reconcile Disraeli’s aspiration with its own inherited prejudices.

“As David Cameron puts it – “There is such a thing as society; it’s just not the same thing as the state”. When Ed Miliband can repeat those words to his party conference and receive a standing ovation he will have earned the right to speak of One Nation”.

Mr Dorrell will remind Tories that Disraeli had a vision for a broad-based Conservative party, not narrowly defined nor narrowly represented.

“Disraeli was not interested in creating an instrument for the complacent defence of self interest; he sought to maintain the trust of the traditionalists while reaching beyond them to embrace a changing world.

“Our challenge is, as it always is, to do exactly the same. That is why David Cameron was so right to lead the Conservative Party into coalition with the Liberal Democrats in 2010, and why the record and programme of the Coalition Government are so deserving of the support of all Conservatives.”

It is on economic policy that the Coalition is strongest and most pertinent. The economy is the reason for its creation and will be the benchmark of its success.

“The Coalition exists because none of its members believe, like the two Eds, that the solution to excessive debt is more borrowing. The electorate took a decisive step away from that approach in 2010, and the Coalition has agreed a deficit reduction programme which commands the confidence of the financial markets in part because its broad political base enhances its credibility.

“The two Eds continue to argue that we need to borrow more ….  but the fact of the Coalition has made it impossible for them to win that argument”.

The Coalition also offers a prime opportunity for radical and broad public services reform of the sort that one party alone might struggle to achieve. Tony Blair struggled to enact necessary public sector reforms at a time of boom; it is something of a miracle that the Coalition is managing to reform the likes of health, welfare, education and justice (including the police) at a time of bust and recovery.

“Public services need to be open to disruptive new ideas. Closed systems are too easily convinced of their own excellence; mediocrity goes unrecognised and shibboleths go unchallenged. We need to encourage challenge in a system which instinctively distrusts newcomers.

“But if we are to maintain public confidence during this process we need to demonstrate both nationally and locally that changes are being implemented in order to improve the quality of service delivered – not simply to save money. It is a task to which the Coalition is singularly well-suited”.

Moreover, contrary to general perception and media speculation, Europe is a subject that the Coalition is uniquely “well placed to address” - a passage that ConservativeHome not-very-shockingly omitted from their own preview of the speech.

“In other words I believe the European argument has changed fundamentally over the last decade. Our partners have decided to create an economic union and we have chosen not to be part of it. It is a decision made. On both sides. Job done.

“It will be for our grandchildren to decide whether we were right; they will write the history, not us. Our job is to make our decision work.

“And that is where the role of the Coalition is so important”.

Stephen Dorrell will conclude by saying that the Coalition between David Cameron’s Conservative party and Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats has managed to tackle tough political issues that other governments ducked, fudged or got wrong. What is more, the spirit in which the Coalition was formed should outlive it.

“[Disraeli] built the Conservative Party as a permanent coalition between the landed interest and the Victorian cities. His coalition was further broadened when Chamberlain made Birmingham a Conservative slogan.

“That coalition held office for two thirds of the twentieth century, but towards the end of the century it ignored Disraeli’s challenge and retreated into its comfort zone.

“In 2010, David Cameron challenged both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to leave their comfort zones and face the realities of office in a Coalition that has the right to speak for the majority its compatriots. In doing so the Coalition has demonstrated both its ability and its willingness to face issues which other governments have regarded as too hot to handle.

“The Coalition Agreement is David Cameron’s answer to Disraeli’s challenge.  The issue for the future is simple.  The Coalition Agreement comes to an end. Disraeli’s challenge does not.”

Previewing the speech, Tim Crockford, chairman of the Tory Reform Group, had this to say:

“In the days after the 2010 election, the TRG was the first Conservative group to call for a Coalition with the Liberal Democrats. As a Party, we must continue to support the Coalition as it carries out these essential reforms.

“The Coalition with the Liberal Democrats has evolved into a stable government enabling it to carry out its One Nation programme. David Cameron has moved the Conservative Party out of its comfort zone. Our One Nation values hold wide public appeal. We must continue to occupy the centre ground of British politics: that is where we win elections.”

Many teachers are still wary about the need to raise exam standards - they mustn’t be

Nik Darlington 11.03am

Half of teachers in England oppose Michael Gove’s plan to replace GCSEs with a new English Baccalaureate (EBacc), according to polling by YouGov.

Nearly three-quarters (74 per cent) believe that grades should be based on a combination of final exams and coursework, as is currently the case with GCSEs but wouldn’t be under the proposed EBacc.

However, both teachers (77 per cent) and the public (82 per cent) agree with the Government in one respect: having one exam board per subject. I have criticised the current exam boards arrangement in the past, on these pages and elsewhere, as a corrupt and harmful presence in our education system. I have even claimed that the free market is failing the country’s children. So evidently I welcome this support for abolishing the practice of multiple competing exam boards.

There should be some concerns about YouGov’s sample size: at fewer than 700 hundred teachers in England, it is unimpressive. Factor in that this includes primary school teachers, with no direct involvement in GCSEs, and it looks threadbare.

We should also remember that while half (50 per cent) of teachers oppose the changes, that means the other half do not oppose the changes. True, only 22 per cent state they actively support them; but it is hard to form a definite opinion on something until you’ve seen what it is. The EBacc is still an idea, not an exam.

Much of the concern in the teaching profession seems, anecdotally at least, to be based on the likelihood of fewer children passing exams. The real issue here is one of raising standards, not necessarily pass rates. And if a new exam system raises standards to a comparable level with superior systems abroad, at the loss of higher pass rates, in the long-run it is a price worth paying.

I am told by one teacher with many overseas children in their classes that a mere glance at their textbooks demonstrates just how far behind our GCSEs are compared to the exams they would sit in their home country: “their GCSEs are equivalent to our AS levels”.

Significant parts of the teaching profession might be in denial or opposition of Mr Gove’s suggested reforms. And often with good intentions, I don’t doubt. But if we are to do the best for Britain’s children, we cannot continue to cheat them the opportunity of as rigorous an education as their peers overseas. In a globalised economy, this becomes ever more crucial every year.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

Tory Modernisation Needs A New Chapter

Samuel Kasumu 12.04pm

Following the recent reshuffle, many people could be forgiven for believing that the Conservative party has taken a step backwards in regards to becoming a more reflective of Great Britain.

Not only was the only ethnic minority Cabinet member, Baroness Warsi, moved on, but there was a feeling among many commentators that the party has also failed to make progress in extending opportunities to more women. Opponents of ageism also had a cause for concern as the elder statesmen were forced to retire… before they actually wanted to retire. It all paints a bleak picture for Tory modernisers.

So where do we go from here? To put it simply, we have to start winning through delivering strong and fair policy during these very tough times. We must be more affective in conveying ideas and must accept that we have neglected certain communities for far too long.

Conservatives today must start to speak up for the things that are so important to the groups that struggle to contemplate ever voting blue. We all already know that women, ethnic minorities, those with a faith, and many within inner city areas, are among the least likely to vote Conservative. Many people have analysed the reasons behind this, such as Lord Ashcroft, who published Degrees of Separation earlier this year.

But the time has come to stop debating among ourselves and start engaging with these communities before it is too late. There is nothing worse than a politician turning up a few weeks before an election having been out of site since the one five years before.

For single parents, we need to demonstrate that it is not our priority to make their lives more difficult via the long list of welfare reforms. The Universal Credit has to be better sold to those that are scared of being unable to work while bringing up a family on their own. More needs to be channelled into dealing with marriage breakdown and absent fathers must be forced to take responsibility for their children.

We must also better communicate the need for education reforms to parents across the country. We spend more than £80 billion on education but are globally ranked between 20th and 30th for English, Maths, and Science.

For ethnic minority communities, we need to end the so called war on immigration and admit that whether we like it or not our world is becoming increasingly global. Yes, borders must be tightened; but that is already happening so let’s advance the conversation and stop using cheap rhetoric to appeal to the so-called “core vote”.

This is the same “core” that was unable to deliver a majority in 2010, so perhaps it is time to start appealing to the rest of the country. The Labour party introduced the points-based system, which means non-EU migrants can only come to Britain if they are appropriately and highly skilled.

We all know that the real elephant in the room is currently uncontrollable migration from EU member states, and frankly until that is dealt with current immigration policy can be seen to be pure and simply insufficient and borderline racist. More needs to be made of the ‘transitory measures’ available to the Government.

The list could go on and on in regards to how we can develop and better communicate policies to various communities in order to demonstrate we are the correct party to choose.

In my new book, Winning the Race, launched this Thursday, I tell my story of how I joined the Conservative party as a twenty-year old, working class black male. I have never regretted the decision and can see the potential for the Tories to become the party of choice for so many people like me that are entrepreneurial and value the role of communities, family, and individual responsibility.

As Britain continues to evolve and faces an increasingly competitive global economic environment, there will be an increasingly important need for a strong government with a clear strategy for the future. One Nation Conservatism is far from an expired way of thinking. The TRG and everything it stands for must remain at the forefront of where we need to be to win a majority. For its philosophy of combining compassion with efficiency represents a way of governance that is both fair and firm, with universal appeal.

Follow Samuel on Twitter @samuelkasumu