Can the Tories become the caring party?

Following David Cameron's attempts last week to persuade people that it is the Tories who really care about the poor, I return to the Political Cross Dressing theme in my latest Podcast which is now live. A text version is also available on the companion blog HERE.

"If the Tories take their argument about relative poverty through to its logical conclusion, they will be able to ask some pretty hard questions of Labour come the next election....I have posed the question before in this column whether Mr Cameron’s Tories might end up to the left of Labour, and the week’s events have again highlighted that possibility."

More developments on Political Opinions

The excellent new political blog aggregator Political Opinions continues to add new features. As well as allowing users to create their own homepages featuring their favourite blogs, this is now also available in RSS feed form.

It means I can now introduce a "Best of the Blogosphere" feature onto this blog which will list the five most recent posts from what I currently consider to be the Top 10 political blogs in the UK, namely:

Conservative Home, The Daily, Dizzy Thinks, Guido Fawkes, Iain Dale's Diary, Labour Watch, Liberal England, Political Betting, Skipper, and The UK Daily Pundit.

Andy Robinson

It seems that Andy Robinson is now seeing out his last hours as England Rugby Coach following the team's dreadful performances in the autumn internationals.

I have nothing really to add on this subject to what I wrote on March 13 this year after England lost 31-6 to France in the Six Nations. Quite why it has taken the RFU so long to act is beyond me.

Cameron campaign "the product of a coke crazed ad-exec"

I always had a sneaking admiration for Paul Keating, the former Australian PM given to using somewhat colourful language about his opponents. On one occasion he referred to opposition MPs as "scumbags," on another to the then opposition leader Andrew Peacock as a "gutless spiv." An exhaustive list of Keating's insults can be found HERE.

Of course, such things would never be allowed in our own House of Commons, although the Warley MP John Spellar did once use the word cunts in the Chamber.

But should we be so hung up about so-called "unparliamentary language?" Or should it be fair dinkum for British political parties to go around using words like Inner Tosser?

Norman Tebbit thinks not. He said today: "There is no foul language nor physical or moral degradation which is not now embraced by the current orthodoxy. Unfortunately, the orthodoxy has reached the Conservative Party. It is not a word I would even use about Polly Toynbee."

For my part, I tend towards Guido's verdict on the Tories' new anti-debt campaign - that it was an idea best left in the men's room. "It has all the hallmarks of being the product of a coke-crazed ad exec's inspired idea thought up after lunch in Soho," he says.

A coke-crazed ad-man? In the Tory Party? Whoever can he mean?

Time for a Blog Cull?

"There are now 57 million blogs worldwide and mainstream media have jumped on the bandwagon, often with no more thought about why they were doing it.

"Editors are to blame. First for not recognising that blogging requires specific skills and providing training for those journalists they want to blog. Second, for not working out what is the purpose of these blogs. Third for not reading their publication's blogs and culling those that are serving little purpose."

I am not a protectionist by nature, but Grant Campbell-Adamson, writing in Press Gazette's Discuss Journalism slot, is talking a great deal of sense here.

Nick Clarke 1948-2006

Lots of tributes across both the blogosphere and of course the BBC tonight for Nick Clarke who has lost his battle against cancer, aged 58.

Apart from listening to his mellifluous tones picking apart the big political story of the day on The World at One for nine years - the programme was pretty well required listening for lobby hacks - my most lasting memory of Nick will be of the time he actually interviewed me, in the course of my "15 minutes of fame" back in October 1998.

For those unaware of the story, the previous day I had attended a regional lobby lunch with the then Bank of England Governor Eddie George as the main guest. In the course of it I secured from him the devastating admission that he regarded lost North-East jobs as an "acceptable" price to pay for beating inflation in the overheating South.

It caused a major political furore at the time and Clarke was one of a number of broadcasters who followed-up the story for their programmes. I got the impression he was a bit sceptical about whether George really had said it, but he was unfailingly courteous nevertheless.

As I have said before on this blog, I am not a huge fan of the John Humphreys style of interrupting interviewing, but Nick Clarke was the very antithesis of that.

I rated him alongside PM's Eddie Mair as the best BBC radio journalist of his generation and there is no doubt he will be sorely missed.