So we now know that David Cameron sometimes feels like shaking Gordon Brown. The great ‘clunking fist’ should not be too worried though, we all know that it is actually ‘Dave’ who shakes all the time, in fact he has not stopped ‘wobbling’ for months. Yesterday we witnessed Mr Cameron’s latest wobble as, once again, he moved (or was he pushed?) further to the right or as Polly Toynbee put it ‘deeper into the recesses of her (Thatcher’s) handbag.’

In fairness the task before Cameron is a monumental one. He leads a party that is desperate for power and since his election as leader in 2005 (yes it has been that long) he has set out to show that he is a winner, that he can change his party and restore it to its position as the natural party of government. What Cameron is now grasping, however, is that leading change is a long, slow and often bloody process. The events of the past few weeks would suggest that rather than the "heir to Blair", Cameron is in danger of going down as the Tories' Neil Kinnock. Yet in many ways this is a grossly unfair comparison. In the end, Kinnock ended up helping make Labour electable. He was willing to take some really tough decisions and he showed real leadership in the face of huge and often hostile opposition. It is easy to forget that the enormous task of ditching some of the most unpopular Labour policies of the 1980s was carried out, not by Blair and Brown, but by Kinnock. It was Kinnock who first challenged the party to dump policies and commitments that had helped to create an image of a Labour party that was soft on crime and addicted to the imposition of punitive taxes.

Cameron views himself as the politician of the digital age, a bold and fearless leader who is unafraid to take risks but most of the changes he has made to his party have been primarily cosmetic (a new HQ, a new party logo) and shortlived (the party's "A" list of candidates). Mr Cameron's Conservatives are made up of the "right kind of people", his people - privately educated and from a background of immense wealth and privilege. Under Cameron, the Tories still believe that the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their political, their economic, and their social views. In 2007, Cameron told his party's spring conference that it needed to change and that the changes needed to be "faster, wider and deeper". Nearly two years later and change in the Tory party looks to be slow, narrow and shallow.
Today, the words of former Tory (now Labour) MP Quentin Davies take on a new resonance. In his letter to Cameron outlining his reasons for leaving the Conservative party and join Labour, he wrote: "Under your leadership the Conservative party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything. It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda."

As the Tory "big beasts" and rightwing press begin to turn on him, how long will it be before Cameron is forced to retreat towards having to peddle past Tory agendas? How long before he is told that he needs to embrace more "traditional" core Tory issues such as Europe, crime and the family? How long before the Tory leader who started out saying his aim was to recapture the centre ground of British politics, is yet again forced (by his own reactionary right wing) to move to the right in an attempt to hang on to the Tory core vote?
Is this what Cameron means by progressive politics? Is ‘do nothing Conservatism’ the replacement for ‘compassionate Conservatism?

The one person who has really been shaken by recent global economic events is not Gordon Brown, it is David Cameron.

David Cameron breaks under pressure as Shadow Cabinet force him to continue letting them rake it in.

In politics if you are not on the attack then you are on the defence, on the front foot or the back foot. For this reason courage is the friend of political leaders and caution, their enemy.


What Gordon Brown has proved in recent weeks is that when a governing party has confidence and self-belief it is far more willing (and able) to offer a lead and to take the tough decisions. What Brown is fast learning is that the British people are often happy and willing to forgive the occasional error and poor decision but they rarely forgive the leader who simply refuses to take a decision because it is too tough. The Tory labels of ‘bottler’ and ‘ditherer’ hurt Brown and for most of the past twelve months the media has been looking for (and occasionally gifted) opportunities to portray the former Iron Chancellor as a bumbling buffoon. The credit crunch has changed all that – or to be more precise, the Prime Minister’s handling of the global economic crisis has helped to restore his reputation for competence and decisiveness.


In contrast David Cameron’s handling of recent events has exposed him to criticism that he is a shallow, one dimensional leader who talks a good game but fails to deliver the big ideas when needed. Cameron has not had a good economic ‘war’ for several reasons. Firstly he has suffered from the perception that both he his party are too closely associated with the City fat cats whose greed triggered this financial meltdown. Secondly, since taking up their present posts neither he nor his shadow Chancellor has ever taken the opportunity to speak out against the dangers of a poorly regulated City. Thirdly, Cameron has not offered a clear policy alternative in terms of what a Tory administration would have done about the crisis had they been in office.

Perhaps now we will see the media turn its attention to exactly how Britain would be different if the Tories were to form the next government. Does Mr Cameron have the courage necessary to lead, to take the tough decisions? I doubt it. He says he wants tax cuts and more spending but with the same money. He says he wants to sort out all illegal immigration, but he opposes identity cards, the one thing essential to do it. He says he against academic selection one day but then backs plans to expand it the next.

Has the Tory party changed? Most of Mr Cameron's reforms have been primarily cosmetic (a new HQ, a new party logo) and short-lived (the party's "A" list of candidates). Today’s Conservative front bench is made up of the "right kind of people", Cameron’s people - privately educated and from a background of immense wealth and privilege. Under Cameron, the Tories still believe that the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their political, their economic, and their social views.

The events of recent weeks have prompted me to reflect on the words of the former Tory (now Labour) MP Quentin Davies. In his letter to Cameron outlining his reasons for leaving the Conservative party and join Labour, he wrote: "Under your leadership the Conservative party appears to me to have ceased collectively to believe in anything, or to stand for anything. It has no bedrock. It exists on shifting sands. A sense of mission has been replaced by a PR agenda." As the rightwing press begins to turn on him, how long will it be before Cameron is forced to retreat towards having to peddle past Tory agendas? How long before he is told that he needs to embrace more "traditional" core Tory issues such as Europe, crime and the family? How long before a newly elected Tory leader who started out saying his aim is to recapture the centre ground of British politics, is yet again forced (by his own reactionary right wing) to move to the right in an attempt to hang on to the Tory core vote?

I love it when I hear New Labourists explain why they would never EVER support the Conservative Party.

My personal opinion about David Cameron, is that he is a hard-right demagogic charlatan. When people say that he has no substance, I wholeheartedly disagree. His policies are the very reason why we joined the Labour party in the first place (don't get me started on marriage incentives for instance, is the first thing a mum of two kids who has recently lost her husband to a car bomb in Basra will be hit with, is a tax hike?)

In Birmingham today when Cameron was on about the so called 'broken society', he was remembering when he visited Wandsworth Prison.

Under-regulated mortgage lenders giving more than they could afford in loans to people who would fail to meet the repayments has led to a world economic crisis. Who was right in Britain? Let's examine the evidence.

Thanks to the scot-free war criminal Saakashvili of Georgia who we are massively funding, ironically Stalin will have the last laugh at our cost!

Why is David Cameron refusing to blame the bankers for the present financial crisis? Perhaps one reason is that the Tories are being bankrolled by a group of hedge fund managers who have been making vast sums of money from plunging bank shares. Channel 4 has unearthed evidence that a small group of City financiers - who have made fortunes from falling stock markets - are paying at least £50,000 a year to Mr Cameron's 'compassionate' Conservative party. These donations entitle the donors to membership of an elite supporters club called the 'Leaders Group' and are given regular access to Mr Cameron and members of the shadow front bench.

If David Cameron wants to convince us all of his compassionate and progressive credentials he should publicly acknowledge that one of the main reasons for the recent failure of the financial markets relates to the greed and moral abdication of those in the City (some of whom are close to Team Cameron) who demanded less regulation and restraint and then ended up abusing it.

Today labourlist.org launches a report - “Dave’s Decline: Tory party membership fall shows no enthusiasm for phoney cameron” by John Mann MP and Mike Joslin. According to the Tories own figures, Tory membership is in decline. From reports to the Electoral Commission, 90% of local associations with a sitting MP report either no recruitment or a fall in members.

http://www.labourlist.org/daves-decline.pdf

McCain now , all of a sudden, seems to be stealing Obama’s change-agent, pro working and middle class, clothes.

The US Tax Policy Institute’s 14 August comparative analysis (reported by Money & Markets) of the two candidates’ proposed tax burden (below) shows that 7-property-owner McCain clearly knows which side of his bread to further butter!

... people with photoshop skills need to create lots of pictures of David Cameron spliced with Margaret Thatcher, the tagline of which is:

"THE REAL TWO-FACE"

Get to it! 

David Cameron’s lecture to the fat and poor in Glasgow yesterday to “take responsibility” was the classic statement of conservatism. If the people are poor, it’s their own fault. Or as Dave puts it, “social problems are often the consequence of the choices that people make”. The Glasgow citizens aren’t merely people suffering unemployment, ill health and poor housing. They have “twisted values” that have “eaten away at our social fabric". And as it’s the 21st century we have an update to this Victorian morality – they’re not just poor but they’re fat. So we can attack them for that too.

Mark Twain once remarked that the wonderful thing about science was the remarkable return of conjecture from a small investment of fact. The same goes for this pair of meaningless by-elections with pundits great and small allowing their analysis to run rings around the limited facts to hand. Actually it's simple. Our vote stayed at home.

The Tory PPC for North Ayrshire and Arran has been criticised for calling former Rhodesian PM a hero