https://www.newstatesman.com/2017/10/ev ... conferenceQuote:
The Tories love Ruth Davidson
Half the conference auditorium gave her a standing ovation when she arrived. The whole of the room gave her a standing ovation when she left. Then most of them cleared out, which must have made Northern Ireland secretary James Brokenshire feel brilliant, as he was trying to read a speech at them at the time.
In between her two ovations, Ruth mostly spoke about unity: "We're not Leavers or Remains any more. We're just Brits." This is a message you can only send if you don't have to get your hands dirty with Brexit negotiations, but the room lapped it up.
Afterwards she was to be seen making coffee for people at the fake Starbucks in a room called the "London Lounge", just like any other Scottish politician with no ambition to one day lead the Conservative party.
Increasingly think Davidison is a future leadership candidate who is very carefully staying out of the blast radius of Brexit for now. Which is smart. Which suggests we're not being led by the smart folks during Brexit. Hurrah!
Quote:
The Tories still don't grasp the wage problem
Over and over again I heard Tory MPs or ministers congratulate themselves on the record high employment rate. This makes for an incredibly competitive labour market, employment minister Damian Hinds argued.
And yet, if competition for employees was so high, you’d expect wages to be rising, wouldn't you? But they're not: they've basically flat-lined for a decade. And with the pound in free fall, real wages are actually falling. People may be in work – but often it isn’t well-paid or secure work.
"You've never had it so good," strikes me as an argument that will only work when it's actually true.
So why aren't wages rising if employment is so good, then? Why aren't employers competing harder to find employees?
Quote:
Some in the Tory party want to get serious about the housing problem...
Some honourable mentions:
James Jamieson, leader of Central Bedfordshire, who expressed frustration his council didn't have the cash to build more homes, and suggested it might be more sensible to build on some of the scubbier green belt immediately adjacent to London, rather than in commuter towns 50 miles from the city.
Richard Bacon, the MP for South Norfolk, who all but frothed with rage at his party's NIMBY tendencies, and who described Help to Buy as "deeply intellectually flawed and bad".
The leader of a Thatcherite think tank, who told me: "I increasingly think the state should start building again."
It shouldn't be any surprise that the Tories are panicking about the housing crisis, since there's compelling evidence that the precipitous fall in home ownership is a major factor behind the collapse in the party's support among the under 50s. And yet...
...a lot of them don't
There are still plenty of Tories who are far more vocal in their opposition to development than in their support for solutions. And so far, the only significant housing policy coming from Downing Street is yet more funding for Help To Buy, a Cameron-era programme premised on the mystifying assumption that throwing more money at demand for housing will somehow make it more affordable.
The Harrow East MP Bob Blackman summed up the problem when he said: "How do we ensure affordable housing for young people without reducing value of homes people already live in?" Well. Quite.
The Conservatives should be panicking about the "youth" vote. I say "youth" because the crossover age -- the age at which you are more likely to vote Conservative than Labour -- is now 47. People under 45 are 2/3rds Labour voters. This isn't just about idealistic teenagers who will grow out of it, this is people well into middle age. And there's strong correlation between swings against the Conservatives and people who can't afford to get on the housing ladder -- a demographic that is growning fast (
analysis here.)