Putting purity before power: how many Tories truly want to resist UKIP?

Giles Marshall 11.58am

With Tory cabinet ministers scrambling over each other to assure the party of their Euro-scepticism, one might wonder what the fuss over UKIP is all about. Aside from a matter of timing, it seems most Tories are united on the referendum.  Yet of course, there is more to it.

UKIP is not only a repository for Euro-sceptics. Indeed, Europe is just the hook on which to hang a whole panoply of concerns. UKIP is fundamentally a protest party. For disillusioned Tories in particular, UKIP offers an unrepentant leader in Nigel Farage who contrasts nicely with the more nuanced David Cameron.

Tory members and a significant number of backbench MPs are not happy in coalition, hate the notion of Tory ‘modernisation’ and dislike the thought of compromise. In their black and white - or blue and red - world, there is much virtue in Tory puritanism and Mr Cameron’s great crime is in failing to recognise this.

Mr Cameron, of course, is trying to operate in the real world. His Toryism derives from his upbringing rather than deep political conviction. It was never honed through a party activism that might have brought some deeper, grittier understanding of the party he leads. His Toryism is instinctive, and thus more inclined to accommodate itself to the demands and pressures of the world outside the bubble of the party. That lies behind his chaotic but worthy pursuit of ‘modernisation’ and it still lies behind his desire not to take knee-jerk approaches to such complex issues as EU membership.

Mr Cameron is, at heart, a Tory pragmatist of the type that used to dominate in the twentieth century heyday of the party.

The party he leads no longer resembles that triumphant machine. It is questionable as to how far this change is due to the legacy of the party’s first truly ideological leader - Margaret Thatcher - and how much would have occurred in any case as a result of a growing sense of alienation in the modern world.

Whatever the cause, the Conservative party today is a puritanical beast, railing against the iniquities of the world but struggling to find solutions. Like 16th-century puritans, today’s Tories take comfort in purity and isolation and want nothing to do with the murky waters of compromise politics.

Even before the halfway mark of the Coalition, many Tory backbenchers had been restlessly pushing against its constraints. They have managed to breach some, even to the extent of proposing Bills that challenge their own government.  In such times it is difficult to distinguish backbench Tories from a brand of opposition MP.

Europe - or rather its forced removal - is the great prize. Mr Cameron has tried to feed that appetite but has found its gaping maw remains open no matter how much he tries to satiate it. He is facing the same problem as John Major. Paul Goodman makes the comparison on Conservative Home, and puts the issue down to a failure of leadership on the part of both men.

This is not the whole story. It is not really possible for any outward-facing Tory leader to lead his party. No-one who is not a died-in-the-wool Euro-denier has a hope of gaining the support of Tory backbenchers, and yet when such men are put into leadership they fail to win over the country as a whole.

Europe merely represents the high water mark of the Tory party’s desire to become an unadulterated and unrestrained party of the right. Many members envy UKIP’s easy positions and rather want them for themselves. Many Tories now would prefer purity to power.

David Cameron is no longer simply struggling against the Euro-monster. He is struggling against a much bigger desire to retreat to a position of political comfort, a position that he has tried to force the party to vacate since 2005. It is possible that his failure is due in part to the incoherent nature of ‘modernisation’ itself, which was too Blairite in nature and should have taken stronger account of historic One Nation Toryism.

The big question is if Mr Cameron does indeed fail, whether there is going to be another chance for the Tory party to be a broad-based party of the centre-right, or whether it will simply assume UKIP’s mantle, and stay on the fringe.

Follow Giles on Twitter @gilesmarshall

Set Europe aside, Mr Cameron, and reinvigorate a genuinely One Nation outlook at home

Giles Marshall 10.49am

I’m not sure “Fresh Start” is quite the right name for a group of Tory MPs busy re-hashing what is by now a pretty hackneyed message. The group is publishing a report calling for the repatriation of significant powers from the EU to Britain.

So the same call that has been made by Tory MPs since Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech – a fresh start indeed.

Yet, of course, the group’s report is newsworthy because David Cameron is himself entering the European maelstrom, with a speech due on Friday that advance spin suggests will be redefining the British relationship with Europe and calling for a referendum on the terms of our membership. Mr Cameron is going to complete the work that Sir John Major began with Maastricht it seems, though Sir John himself had rather assumed that the Maastricht agreement was an end in itself.

The problem for Mr Cameron is that of the few policy positions he does hold, a vague Euro-scepticism is among them. This is a Prime Minister viewed with deep suspicion by the majority right-wing of his parliamentary party, and he undoubtedly sees a new Euro-scepticism as just the sort of thing to appease them with.

He should beware. There is no beast so determinedly single-minded as the Euro-sceptic Tory MP, and they will not be appeased by some vague ideas about renegotiation. Nor shall they be too happy about what must seem a far distant prospect of a referendum on Europe under a majority Tory administration, especially given its current unlikelihood.

Hatred of the EU has become part of the DNA of many Tory MPs, to the extent that any rational debate about it is virtually impossible.

Take the Obama administration. After successful reciprocal visits between President Obama and Mr Cameron, you could be forgiven for thinking that this was a transatlantic relationship built on the strongest of foundations. Back to the glory days of Reagan and Thatcher.

Well, in the sense that Reagan consistently belied his own rhetoric by following a US interest that typically denied Britain her own, I suppose it is. For all the bonhomie of Cameron and Obama, the administration has not been slow in making it very clearly known that it regards these European manouevres as unwise and potentially disastrous. A Britain isolated from Europe will not be able to rely on any special relationship with the United States. Her realpolitik views a single European unit as the most useful form of European ally. Any country standing outside of that – including Britain – will be marginalised.

American attitudes are nothing compared to those of powerful European countries such as Germany. Gunther Krichbaum, a key CDU ally of Chancellor Merkel, warned of economic disaster for Britain if she stood outside the single market. Just as British Tory euro-sceptics are vigorous in their call for ‘renegotiation’, so most European players are equally determined that Britain cannot keep treating the EU as a la carte.

Mr Cameron is more Euro-sceptic than Sir John Major. Yet he also appears to be a less effective diplomat. Andrew Rawnsley, in a thoughtful piece for the Observer on Sunday, recalled Major’s tenacious and canny diplomacy (“a gentleman”, according to one of his European adversaries, Ruud Lubbers), which yielded the opt-outs of the Maastricht Treaty.  But, as Rawnsley reminds us, such opt-outs benefited Major not a bit, as he watched his 1992 election triumph dissolve into the ashes of a disastrous party war.

David Cameron is not, as I’ve noted before, a leader with deep roots in the Conservative party. It is something that isolates him, and it would be foolhardy of him to think that he can ride the Euro-sceptic bandwagon. Europe wins few votes amongst the British electorate, but a perception that Britain is an isolated, marginal figure in world affairs does resonate, and in appeasing certain MPs, Mr Cameron is heading in that direction.

He should leave Europe alone, and appropriately enough on the day of the launch of a new book about Tory modernisation, look to reinvigorating a domestic One Nation policy. Therein lies our real chance of reversing decades of Tory electoral decline.

Follow Giles on Twitter @gilesmarshall

There really is no credible reason to deny same-sex couples the right to marry

Nik Darlington 10.32am

The Prime Minister is right to say that society is made stronger by people’s commitment to each other. It should matter little whether those people are husband and wife, husband and husband, or wife and wife (admittedly, the same-sex marriage lexicon needs some work).

I was uncertain about the logic or need for the Government’s opening up the debate earlier this year. Few people were insisting on it, fewer still would place it highly on a list of public policy priorities in the midst of economic pain.

Yet now that the question has been put - i.e. should same-sex couples be allowed to marry? - there is no conceivable way that I could disagree, as a Christian and a citizen (the two aren’t incompatible, mind).

Several Conservative MPs cavil at the thought. One has been quoted as saying the policy would unnecessarily split the party. Considering this caucus consists of many who persist in splitting the party over other issues, not least the European Union, that’s a bit rich.

In a cogent and moving article today in the Times (£), Tim Montgomerie writes:

“Every Tory MP needs to think about how they want their vote on same-sex marriage to be remembered. Young people think homosexuality is as natural as ginger hair, skin colour or left-handedness. Tory MPs should think about the day that their children and grandchildren ask how they voted.”

It’s been a while now since I was a schoolboy so maybe the ‘gay’ taunts that we would all chuck about are relics of the past. That aside, Montgomerie’s point is apt, however uncomfortably direct for some.

Many conservationist Tories (and non-political conservationists for that matter) will quite rightly insist on our not putting that Tesco megastore there, or that new ring road here, for the sake of future generations. As will environmentalists proclaim the precautionary principle.

So however guilt-inducing Montgomerie’s call to arms might be, the teleological line of argument is correct. There is no longer a convincing case (was there ever really?) for civil society to deny same-sex couples the opportunity to marry.

That this is a ‘civil’ matter is fundamental. Part of me had hoped that following the public consultation, the Government would hold firm on its ban on religious groups offering to conduct same-sex marriage ceremonies. Now it seems that they will be allowed to, should they so choose (the Quakers and some Jewish synaogogues have indicated they will). My fear is this will open up legal problems for the churches - such as the Church of England - that do not opt in. The Government, however, seems sure of its legal position and we should hope this is indeed the case.

Opponents within and without the Conservative party claim the Government has no mandate for the policy. Taking 2010 election manifestos into account, those opponents have a point. Nonetheless, the forming of a coalition has oft muddied those waters already and shall continue to do so for the duration of this Parliament.

Moreover, while opinion polling is nebulous (depends on how you ask the question), there does appear to be a broad acceptance of the policy in the country. This after one of the most extensive and lengthy public consultation processes in history (something many opponents that I’ve come across have for some reason remained unaware of).

Above all, if Members of Parliament are not our democratic representatives, what are they? Put the matter to a free vote and, as Sir John Major said over the weekend (£), “the Labour party will vote for it, the Liberals will vote for it, huge numbers of Tories will vote for it.”

You can conceivably wonder why the question was put at this point in time. Yet now it’s been asked, why on Earth not?

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

Big game week on Lord Justice Leveson’s savannah

Nik Darlington 9.28am

The Leveson sideshow is on its way out of town after a stage run of more than 6 months. The press, to varying extents, has afforded the inquiry an importance it probably does not deserve, which is odd considering Lord Justice Leveson’s quarry is the press itself.

This week is ‘big game’ week, when the elephants, rhinos and other titans of the animal kingdom sit in the cross-hairs of the wooden inquisitor, Robert Jay QC.

Yesterday brought a rare sight indeed. Pine martens are seen in public more often these days than Gordon Brown, hidden away as they are in their Scottish refuge. I can drag this analogy further still. Pine martens are said to be reducing Britain’s population of invasive grey squirrels. The Murdochs are not grey squirrels, but for many they have an invasive characteristic; and Mr Brown grumbled into the hearing yesterday with one thing in mind, to eradicate the miserable memory of the Murdoch press.

I have enormous sympathy with Mr Brown for the coverage of his son’s cystic fibrosis. It was a reprehensible and unprofessional act by the NHS worker(s) who passed on the sensitive information to the Sun. And it was a despicable editorial decision by Rebekah Brooks’ to publish the story. On the front page. We have no reason to disbelieve Mr Brown’s assertion that he and his wife were presented with little more than a fait accompli by the Sun’s editor.

But an innocent bystander in the vicious briefing wars that beset Tony Blair’s premiership and his? Gordon Brown is pulling a fast one of the highest order.

The Chancellor, George Osborne, also appeared yesterday, with an air of such relaxed insouciance to be bordering on blasé. The only moments of uneasiness centred on questions to do with his relationship with Andrew Coulson, whom Mr Osborne had a big hand in hiring, though even then he was let off lightly.

Today we have an appearance from the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, who I’m sure shall enlighten Lord Leveson with his sycophantic tailcoat trailing at smug News International cocktail parties.

We will also be hearing from another, greatly more respected, former prime minister, Sir John Major. If Gordon Brown is the leopard that never changes his spots (he might look like a grey elephant these days, but on yesterday’s evidence his memory is not up to a pachyderm’s exacting standards), then Sir John is the august old lion, long retired but still surveying the field.

You don’t have to be much in the know to know that Sir John Major has some very strong views about the role of the press. Who wouldn’t after the treatment unfairly dealt to him during the 1990s? It is unlikely to add anything of material note to the Leveson Inquiry’s proceedings - more colour than censure - but it could be one of the more fascinating sessions of one of the more miserable political inquiries.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

How to thaw the frosty relationship between the political class and the public

Iain Martin 11.07am

George Osborne has to dump this toxic 50p tax rate

Craig Barrett 11.48am

Time and time again, I am reminded of those words of Sir John Major, spoken early on in the Blair maladministration:

“The Conservatives are elected to govern, Labour governs to be elected.”

So nightmarishly often in those thirteen years was policy made on the hoof. We endured a bewildering array of ill-thought out responses to opinion polls, designed to retain an unnecessary lead with no election in sight.

Of all the policies adopted by the last Labour government, none was more cynically designed to make life difficult for a future Conservative government than the 50 pence tax rate.

A lot has been written saying it is unlikely to cover the costs of its administration. But even to analyse its economics is to give Messrs Brown, Balls and Miliband the undeserved courtesy of implying they have any kind of grasp of basic economics.

Put simply, the 50p tax on incomes over £150,000 was designed to be eye-catching, a demonstration to the masses that Labour was prepared to soak the rich until the pips squeaked, so to speak.

Much of Gordon Brown’s fiscal policy during his tenure at the Treasury was less about raising revenue and more about making the tax system too complicated for people to understand.

Faced with a possible Conservative election victory, Brown’s Labour government knew the 50p tax policy was one that a future Chancellor Osborne would find difficult to reverse. The left-wing media would instantly bash it as a tax cut for the rich.

Yet abolish it Mr Osborne must. I have written before about the dangers of punitively high and unjustifiable taxation in a mobile global economy. This applies both to individuals and companies - the news earlier this week that Prudential may shift its headquarters to Hong Kong demonstrates our loss of competitive advantage.

Nearly 30 per cent of all income tax revenue is paid by the top 1 per cent of the earning population. We would all have to work a lot harder to replace one high earner who fled abroad to protect their salary. Many people may not hold much of a candle for high earners these days, but surely it is better that they and their companies remain on these shores so their taxes pay for British hospitals, rather than Chinese ones.

I welcomed the news yesterday that 537 entrepreneurs have written a letter to the Telegraph calling for the Chancellor to abolish the 50p tax rate. I understand that self-assessment tax revenues have fallen by £509 million year-on-year, which these entrepreneurs attribute to the toxic top tax bracket.

A tax that costs more to administer than the revenue it generates is no tax at all. It is just a soundbite. An embarrassing sop.

As the Chancellor prepares this month’s Budget, fully three years before the next general election, he must take note to use the opportunity to announce that Britain is open for business and encouraging of growth.

And there is one lesson he could learn from Gordon Brown, the old master of hiding bad news amidst the details. Just as Brown silently abolished the 10p tax band (doubling the tax rate on the lowest earners), so must George Osborne silently abolish the 50p rate.

Labour MPs, rightly, wailed with fury at that earlier sleight of hand. Conservative MPs will only cheer, rightly, at the sight of the second. The loss of a tax rate whose only effect is to tell the world the UK is not on the side of the wealth generator is nothing worth crying over.

Follow Craig on Twitter @mrsteeduk

Theresa May’s shrill and misleading attack on the Human Rights Act

Daniel Cowdrill 6.10am

As Sir John Major pointed out on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday, the European Union has to change. There is a need for greater fiscal union, and this invokes important questions about our own future in Britain.

However, the debate over our relationship with the rest of the EU must not be conflated with the debate over human rights. The European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a separate treaty enforced by a separate institution.

In May 1949, Britain became a founding signatory of the Treaty of London, which established the Council of Europe. Membership is open to all European nations that are committed to fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the Convention articles. The Council of Europe is an achievement that Britain should be proud of.

Sixty years on, it is disappointing to hear a Conservative Home Secretary demand that the Human Rights Act “must go”, as Theresa May has done. The Act gives a legal basis to the Convention within the UK. When put on the stop, David Cameorn has supported Mrs May, reaffirming the Conservative party’s manifesto commitment to repeal the Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights.

This is the kind of populist pledge that parties are prone to make in opposition. It is not something for responsible governments. One suspects that despite the Prime Minister’s support for his Home Secretary’s comments, ultimately he is not prepared to repeal the Human Rights Act.

Mr Cameron, conveniently enough, blames the Lib Dems for making him go slowly on the issue. The truth is that any replacement of the Human Rights Act would be along broadly similar lines and likely to allow for the same judgements that so offend the likes of the Daily Mail. It is a waste of government time and effort and certainly not worth the internal coalition fight it would create.

Certainly, there has been what one might call ‘human rights inflation’ since the Convention articles were introduced into domestic law but scrapping the Act entirely would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It is the judiciary’s interpretation of those rights - sometimes going far beyond the rulings passed down from Strasbourg - that is at fault.

The main example of this ‘inflation’ is the extension of deportation restrictions on the grounds of the Article 8 ‘right to family life’. These judgements are the product of English courts. They are not stipulated by European courts. The only restriction that Strasbourg case law places on the deportation of foreign criminals is on the grounds of the Article 3 right to freedom from torture.

The Home Secretary is tasked with the maintenance of public safety. However, she would be better advised to aim her fire at the judiciary, who have perhaps been to deferent to their own assumptions about how Strasbour would rule on the same case.

A good argument can be made that the judiciary has failed to use the margin of appreciation permitted under the Convention to apply human rights with the correct sense of proportion.

Instead, the Home Secretary has opted for a shrill and misleading attack on the Human Rights Act itself, so sweeping over all the good work done in resolving miscarriages of justice.

This wrong-headed assault on the Human Rights Act is an unfortunate hangover from opposition politics and the Government should take the first possible opportunity to abandon it.

Follow Daniel on Twitter @danielcowdrill

50p tax is another soundbite tax and the Lib Dems are putting party ahead of country

Craig Barrett 11.12am

“95 per cent of statistics which appear on the internet are made up.” ~ Albert Einstein, echoing an earlier statement by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

As someone who does his mathematics in true Douglas-Home style (with matchsicks), I find statistics, analysis, pie charts and graphs often to be somewhat baffling.

However, one piece of analysis that has emerged - namely that a 50 per cent tax bracket raises no additional revenue - was something that was always patently obvious to me. When this country had a top rate of tax on earned income of 83 per cent, 11 per cent of tax revenue was paid by those who fell into that bracket; when the top rate fell to 40 per cent, the proportion rose to 25 per cent. In the years prior to the introduction of the 50p band, the richest 1 per cent paid 23 per cent of income tax, whilst the top 5 per cent gave an astonishing 42 per cent of tax revenue.

Any fool must be able to see that in order to cover the lost revenue from each individual of those 5 per cent who departs, those who remain must pay more, or more jobs must be created. In a stagnant economy, neither of these options are possible.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how a Tobin Tax is essentially just a ‘soundbite tax’. The ability of companies to shift headquarters for tax reasons is remarkable and one of the reasons why the British tax system must remain competitive. The same is true for the 50 per cent income tax bracket.

The way that some people are talking - with a righteous excess of vitriol - you would be forgiven for thinking that 50p taxpayers pay no tax at all. As it happens, those taxpayers are not the super-rich (who have advantages such as non-dom status, portable capital, expensive advisers etc). Most of the people paying the 50p rate are hard-working middle-class professionals - in other words, net contributors that this country cannot afford to lose.

You do not need to be able to understand a Laffer curve to know that cutting taxes can actually increase the total tax take. What should also be obvious are the subsequent benefits: a simpler tax system is cheaper to administer and police (for both businesses and HMRC) as well as providing for increased spending power.

So what is the point? Well, the 50p rate is just another soundbite tax. A mind that was warped enough to build a tax system that over-taxes everyone, then pontificates about whether to give each individual some of their own money back again is warped (and cynical) enough to create a tax purely for political reasons.

Sir John Major sagely said: “The Tories are elected to govern, Labour governs to be elected.”

Thirteen years of economic and constitutional destruction demonstrate the contempt that the Labour party has for this country and its people, the culmination involving the introduction of a tax designed simply to make life difficult for an incoming alternative government.

The 50p tax brings in no revenue yet it is used by the Left to whip the population into a frenzy by discreetly associating it with the “evil” of the bankers. As such, its retention is supported by a public whose only knowledge of it is what Ed Balls, the shadow chancellor, tells them.

Even worse is the support for the 50p rate in certain quarters of Whitehall. Chris Huhne, a man of the Left at heart, rules out its abolition, which comes as no surprise seeing as Mr Huhne has always seemed slightly more interested in what benefits Chris Huhne than his own country. Danny Alexander, on the other hand, has always seemed so much more sensible.

The Liberal Democrats who support its retention are at best economically naive and at worst, politically cynical.

Julian Glover had an excellent article on the Guardian website yesterday, telling Nick Clegg to remind his party that they are in power.

“To govern is to choose”, said Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor whose reduction of the top rate of income tax created a massive increase in tax revenue. I am afraid that the Lib-Dems need now to choose to do something that is good for the country, however unpopular.

Follow Craig on Twitter @MrSteedUK