Call him old-fashioned. But, as Chief Whip, Michael Gove believes that every Conservative MP ought to campaign in the Clacton by-election for that party's candidate, the 1980s sitcom actor and forthcoming Doctor Who guest star, Giles Watling.
Gove also wants to encourage people who have previously voted Labour or Lib Dem to vote for Watling. I know. The very idea. Not that Labour is having any of it. Again, who'd have thought?
"LibLabCon! LibLabCon!" shriek the shriekers. The same LibLabCon whose incumbent MP was made the UKIP candidate by Nigel Farage's televised fiat. As the young people used to say, hold that thought.
But during the last 24 hours, I have received communications from two of the inside track persons whose paths and mine have crossed over the years and who continue to find me useful, as I continue to find them.
One from each main party, they are both exercised, and hold other people to be so at the very highest level, by Ed Miliband's rather successful revival of the One Nation Labour theme that was first set out, at least in relatively modern times, by John Prescott in his speech to the 1995 Labour Conference.
My Conservative correspondent counsels that a scheme is being devised to reassert his or her party's One Nation credentials in, it must be said, a pretty drastic fashion.
Announced by the Leader as everything now is and then it is so, the intention is that, more or less immediately upon next May's defeat, the manner of choosing both parliamentary candidates and the Leader will be changed out of all recognition in order to re-establish the Conservative claim to be the national rather than a sectional party, and as a challenge to Labour to match it.
Any member of the Conservative Party of at least two years' standing and who met the statutory requirements to become a Member of Parliament would be eligible to apply to become a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate.
All of the applicants' names, plus a short statement with no other permitted form of campaigning, would go out to a ballot of all councillors above Parish or Town level in the constituency, regardless of party, if any.
The two highest-scoring candidates from that ballot would then go out to a ballot, conducted at polling stations rather than by post, of all registered electors in the constituency. The winner of that second ballot would be selected.
And any Conservative MP would be eligible to stand for Leader. All of the applicants' names, plus a short statement with no other permitted form of campaigning, would go out to a ballot of all members of the House of Commons, regardless of party, if any.
The two highest-scoring candidates from that ballot would then go out to a ballot, conducted at polling stations rather than by post, of all registered electors in the country. The winner of that second ballot would become the Leader.
Meanwhile, my Labour interlocutor imparts that next year's incoming Labour Government intends to consolidate its One Nation credentials by inviting Labour backbenchers, Conservative backbenchers, Lib Dem backbenchers, and the MPs from the smaller parties taken together, to elect two of their own number to attend each Department as if a Minister, by voting for one candidate and with the two highest scorers being elected.
All participants thus elected would be obliged never to vote against the Government, and in the policy area in question never to speak against the Government, in or out of Parliament.
Those in each of the four categories would elect one of their number to attend Cabinet on Privy Council terms. The Prime Minister would also hold regular meetings with each of those four groups of quasi-Ministers.
Secret ballots all round, of course. There is the possibility that if there were very few Lib Dems in the next Parliament, then the system would instead be three Labourites, three Conservatives, and three others.
In any event, the Labour Left and the Conservative Right could expect to get someone into each Department, specifically the Labour Left and the Conservative Right figure most interested in that Department, and thus otherwise most likely to be awkward about it.
The announcement that this was going to be the case would go out from 10 Downing Street in the early hours of the Miliband Premiership, and that would be that: it would just happen, there and then. Other parties could threaten to withdraw the Whip from participants, but the sacred press release would specify that the parties would be those under which MPs had been elected.
Again, there is the sense of a gauntlet being thrown down to the other side, in this case to promise to keep up this arrangement in future. Whether my sources have ever even met, never mind conversed, I do not know. But both used the same term to me: "a Pearl Habor moment."
Obviously, both of these proposals have the air of first drafts and of wish lists. The answer, my answer, to each of them was, "You are never going to get that." But look out for diluted versions of both of them early next summer.
Each party really is this desperate to establish institutionally and constitutionally that it, and not the other one, is, as someone once said, the political wing of the British People as a whole.
Gove also wants to encourage people who have previously voted Labour or Lib Dem to vote for Watling. I know. The very idea. Not that Labour is having any of it. Again, who'd have thought?
"LibLabCon! LibLabCon!" shriek the shriekers. The same LibLabCon whose incumbent MP was made the UKIP candidate by Nigel Farage's televised fiat. As the young people used to say, hold that thought.
But during the last 24 hours, I have received communications from two of the inside track persons whose paths and mine have crossed over the years and who continue to find me useful, as I continue to find them.
One from each main party, they are both exercised, and hold other people to be so at the very highest level, by Ed Miliband's rather successful revival of the One Nation Labour theme that was first set out, at least in relatively modern times, by John Prescott in his speech to the 1995 Labour Conference.
My Conservative correspondent counsels that a scheme is being devised to reassert his or her party's One Nation credentials in, it must be said, a pretty drastic fashion.
Announced by the Leader as everything now is and then it is so, the intention is that, more or less immediately upon next May's defeat, the manner of choosing both parliamentary candidates and the Leader will be changed out of all recognition in order to re-establish the Conservative claim to be the national rather than a sectional party, and as a challenge to Labour to match it.
Any member of the Conservative Party of at least two years' standing and who met the statutory requirements to become a Member of Parliament would be eligible to apply to become a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate.
All of the applicants' names, plus a short statement with no other permitted form of campaigning, would go out to a ballot of all councillors above Parish or Town level in the constituency, regardless of party, if any.
The two highest-scoring candidates from that ballot would then go out to a ballot, conducted at polling stations rather than by post, of all registered electors in the constituency. The winner of that second ballot would be selected.
And any Conservative MP would be eligible to stand for Leader. All of the applicants' names, plus a short statement with no other permitted form of campaigning, would go out to a ballot of all members of the House of Commons, regardless of party, if any.
The two highest-scoring candidates from that ballot would then go out to a ballot, conducted at polling stations rather than by post, of all registered electors in the country. The winner of that second ballot would become the Leader.
Meanwhile, my Labour interlocutor imparts that next year's incoming Labour Government intends to consolidate its One Nation credentials by inviting Labour backbenchers, Conservative backbenchers, Lib Dem backbenchers, and the MPs from the smaller parties taken together, to elect two of their own number to attend each Department as if a Minister, by voting for one candidate and with the two highest scorers being elected.
All participants thus elected would be obliged never to vote against the Government, and in the policy area in question never to speak against the Government, in or out of Parliament.
Those in each of the four categories would elect one of their number to attend Cabinet on Privy Council terms. The Prime Minister would also hold regular meetings with each of those four groups of quasi-Ministers.
Secret ballots all round, of course. There is the possibility that if there were very few Lib Dems in the next Parliament, then the system would instead be three Labourites, three Conservatives, and three others.
In any event, the Labour Left and the Conservative Right could expect to get someone into each Department, specifically the Labour Left and the Conservative Right figure most interested in that Department, and thus otherwise most likely to be awkward about it.
The announcement that this was going to be the case would go out from 10 Downing Street in the early hours of the Miliband Premiership, and that would be that: it would just happen, there and then. Other parties could threaten to withdraw the Whip from participants, but the sacred press release would specify that the parties would be those under which MPs had been elected.
Again, there is the sense of a gauntlet being thrown down to the other side, in this case to promise to keep up this arrangement in future. Whether my sources have ever even met, never mind conversed, I do not know. But both used the same term to me: "a Pearl Habor moment."
Obviously, both of these proposals have the air of first drafts and of wish lists. The answer, my answer, to each of them was, "You are never going to get that." But look out for diluted versions of both of them early next summer.
Each party really is this desperate to establish institutionally and constitutionally that it, and not the other one, is, as someone once said, the political wing of the British People as a whole.
"The political wing of the British people as a whole". That invocation of a One Party State was rightly identified by Peter Hitchens as the most terrifying line in the New Labour manifesto, and the precursor to their deliberate destruction of the Constitution and weakening of Parliament to clear all opposition out of their way.
ReplyDeleteBlair's decision to cut back on the amount if time he had to spend answering MP's questions so he could the country like a Monarch talking to hand picked "audiences" summed it up.
That phrase is so terrifyingly totalitarian and un British it reminds one of Edmund Burke's claim that a pure democracy would be "the most shameless thing on Earth".