DEM not gonna CON dis NATION: Rolling UK politics in the short-lived Cleggeron era

Can't see scaling back the green belt playing that well with core Tory voters tbh.

Tory core voters will vote Tory whatever. Tory core funders on the other hand will be delighted that they can now bulldoze what's left of rural England with impunity.

Dunno, I can see nimbyism winning out here.

tbf I've worked with some planners who were Stalin except mad cuz he's stuck with a desk job.

yeah it wll be interesting to see how it pans out, but i really expect the 'BIG SOCIETY' to have some nasty little detail that makes nimbyism redundant- when it suits.

The 'Community Right to Build' will allow local people and communities across England to decide where to create new homes, shops business and facilities where they want them and where they are needed, not where local councils and central government think they should be

That actually doesn't talk about vetoing developments, when you look at it. It's a right to build rather than to nimby?

Stalin must've spent a fair bit of time at his desk tbf. Stamping death warrants and such.

nah he had someone like me for that kind of thing i reckon

A fair bit of time round at the shredder too xp

i don't get to work the shredder union issues. get a guy from the depot down to press the button.

Tory core voters will vote Tory whatever

^this, apart from the occasional frivolous flirtation with UKIP in Euro elections

But as well as donating £650,000 in cash to the Tories since 2005 and another £88,000 in flights, travel and sponsorship, it has also emerged that Mr Cook has supplied a private plane for Mr Cameron to make 23 journeys since 2007, sparking questions over whether the Prime Minister was aware of the correspondence.

The Prime Minister's spokesman insisted yesterday that the decision to scrap the loan was made purely on grounds of affordability, and sources said Mr Cook's status as a major donor had "no bearing" on the decision which led Forgemasters to shelve its plans to build a new forging press to manufacture parts for new nuclear power stations.

Getting a kind of Springfield Monorail scenario out of that 'community right to build' scheme.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7908485/Coalition-U-turn-over-plan-to-ban-identification-of-rape-defendants.html

A new Tory MP has outraged constituents - by calling them "primitives who hold up their trousers with string".

Diplomat's son Rory Stewart, Eton-educated like David Cameron, caused further anger by making a tasteless "joke" about a tractor tragedy.

Mr Stewart, 37, MP for Penrith and the Border in Cumbria, said: "Some areas around here are pretty primitive, people holding up their trousers with bits of twine and that sort of thing."

The rising Tory star went on: "I have a constituency with 52,000 people and a million sheep. I was in one village where a local kid was run over by a tractor. They took him to Carlisle but they couldn't be bothered to wait at the hospital. So they put him in a darkened room for two weeks, then said he was fine. But I'm not so sure he was." Derek Daley, 76, whose son Noel died after his motorbike collided with a tractor, said: "I take great umbrage at what Mr Stewart has said. It is extremely distasteful."

w t f

Ah, this is the one who tutored yon princes and should really have stuck to...telly presenting.

looks more like a radio face tbh

That strikes me as the sort of joke that immediately has journalists scrabbling around looking for a parent whose child died in a tractor crash. Not sure Derek Daley would ever have heard it otherwise.

Obviously this dude will now be voted out at the next election which is lol in its own right, much funnier than the original joke.

This dude = big big rising Tory star

He's safe. He's got a big majority and most of the people who voted for him probably agree with him. What I don't understand is him threatening to go to the Press Complaints Commission, just let it be ffs. Reminds me of Goldsmith's outrage last week (or whenever it was), these people do understand that some of the press are going to be beastly to them sometimes, right? And lol for saying that what he was really trying to say was that his area needs more support from government.

Anyway, far more importantly, what happened to that film of his life that was in the pipeline, with Orlando Bloom in the role of him?

RIP UK Film Council

that's interesting in a directly-affects-me kind of way

UKFC was going to be merged with the BFI

What you have to understand is that most of these entitled assholes have had press officers and other intimidating minders negotiating their terms with editors/journalists (copy approval, Don't Ask That, etc) for years and now they are elected officials, they are slow to realise that uh political life is different. I find the worst and most flagrant offenders have owned publications or have been editors or writers themselves....

Kind of amazed with the speed at which the Mail as started bashing the government for not following its agenda 24/7.

http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/the-staggers/2010/07/puts-labour-poll-tories-mori

Blimey.

im not surprised. don't claim to move in a wide circle of society, but i just don't think the as-it-were positive aspects of the lib-con project are enthusing anyone (alternative voting? some weird school bullshit? some weird nhs bullshit? the big society? gertcha). and the reality of cuts is shitty for a large number of people.

I think if anything hit voter confidence hard it was the Michael Gove thing, cutting schools when you've said you won't let frontline services suffer = not the sort of thing that endears voters.

ken clarke's prisons policy is also a huge vote loser. not sure why they're doing that as they're never going to win over the left and everyone else will hate them for it.

Got to say I don't think I've ever anticipated a backlash as much in my life.

ken clarke's prisons policy is also a huge vote loser. not sure why they're doing that as they're never going to win over the left and everyone else will hate them for it.

I think probably because Ken Clarke believes it's the right thing to do, and he is a strong enough minister to push it through even if it isn't a vote winner.

+ it saves money/presumably intensifies privatization

Will getting rid of speed cameras and stopping the (non-existent) war on the motorist get them any votes?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-10762590

I'm doubtful, although it will no doubt please the DMail which I suppose it's keen to get back on side?

That probably is a vote winner, tbh

It's a vote winner but they'll still be whingeing unless fuel prices go down.

Good piece from Stephanie Flanders here on how the Tories policy on immigration is at odds with their policies on investment and exports:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/stephanieflanders/2010/07/osborne_in_india.html

I know what it is like in opposition. I did almost five years as leader of the opposition. The temptation to jump on the bandwagon and be opportunistic is always there and it should always be resisted.

It is opportunistic. Way to convince the electorate that you're a party that sticks to its principles, Labour. Admittedly it's about an anorak policy and no one really cares but still, ffs.

Ditto Alan Johnson accusing the Tories of "going soft on crime" by proposing ditching ASBOs. I know its all part of the political game but surely people see through this shit by now?

Oh, I'd be annoyed by Johnson if May's drivel made any kind of sense. I can't wait to find out exactly what she means by "We need to make anti-social behaviour what it once was - abnormal and something to stand up to... rather than frequent and tolerated." and "By coming together, and only by coming together, we can win this battle."

well if the tories are gerrymandering the constituencies it's not opportunistic of labour to oppose it (there may be little in this claim though). also it's a but rich to accuse them of it given the whole 55% thing which is blatantly so.

xps Johnson should have brought up getting rid of speed cameras as a better example of going 'soft on crime' but obviously he's still trying to get the Mail onside.

It is opportunistic. Way to convince the electorate that you're a party that sticks to its principles, Labour. Admittedly it's about an anorak policy and no one really cares but still, ffs.

The way that article presents it, it doesn't sound opportunistic. Essentially it reads like this:

Party 2 has been accused of opportunism after they decided to oppose a bill on Policy A that had been in their own manifesto. A spokesman for Party 2 said "that's not true - we still support Policy A, it's just that the coalition government of Party 1 and Party 3 have decided to make the bill a combination of Policy A and Policy B. We are opposed to Policy B as we think it is unfair and cynically designed to favour Party 1." A spokesman for Party 1 said "What hypocrisy! They supported Policy A and now they don't!". A spokesman for Party 3 said "What hypocrisy! They supported Policy A and now they don't!".

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Admin/BkFill/Default_image_group/2010/7/31/1280608965599/Pakistani-activists-burn--006.jpg

...so Pakistan really isn't a big fan of Cameron at the moment.

This is just astonishingly naive from Cameron, by all means suck up to India, they're important, but I can't think of any way in which this isn't a huge diplomatic clanger.

Aha aha ha ha ha ha haaaaaaaaa

Tories are up tho'.

The LibDems are the scapegoats, the easy targets and the weathervanes here but I'm pretty sure the Tories would love to win outright and get them out of the way as quickly as possible.

LibDem conference should be fun this year, and that's not something I ever though I'd say. Could blow some of the Blair Iraq Labour conferences out of the water.

Tories have done very little to alienate their support since taking office, and will have reassured Tory voters that this coalition isn't actually going to feature any nasty Lib Dem policies. Labour's poll is up more than the Tories, for what that's worth - not much at the moment tbh. None of this spoils the awesomeness of this massive LD slump, which as Matt says should only need to stay steady until conference season to get some brutal and hilarious in-fighting on the agenda. Countdown to breakaway party back on.

Crossing the floor would be more likely than a breakaway party I'd say... I'd keep an eye on what Charles Kennedy does.

Cable is apparently the senior LibDem that hates the coalition most, he was in Alistair Darling's office the day before the agreement pretty much begging him to convince the Labour party to be less intractable, whereas Darling took the "it's over, the numbers don't add up" line.

Interesting if Cable were to cross the floor, as he's still got some credibility from his post slump predictions. Though his backtracking on a cutting the public sector so quickly has no dout dented that somewhat.

'no doubt'