David Cameron’s keynote speech at the Conservative’s Spring Conference in Brighton

It was a bit like a schoolboy dare. “I dare you to speak without notes!” Dave did, almost stumbled twice, but got through it like a trouper.

The overall impression was rather juvenile, lacking fresh content and resonating phrases. He got over-excited at times and seemed anxious to please when what was called for was a Prime Ministerial speech of authority and substance.

Yes, it was eye-catching. Quite an initiative, in fact. But it lacked weight, and his constant slurping from a glass of something on a table reminded us of a chap who has almost missed last orders and wants to get another in before stop-tap.

Summary: It was just what Tony Blair would have done. Clownery before gravitas.

Two sidepoints: 1) The one big cheer came when Cameron said he would abolish Labour targets and petty interference — Tory red meat. For the rest, it was tepid clapping. 2) He mentioned patriotism, but there was little to back it up. He should have gone to Canada where the Olympics sparked a national orgy of patriotism. Canada is an independent country with its own lawmaking powers intact. Britain is not.

This will probably do as a holding operation, but I fear it will not reverse the crash in the polls. Boris Johnson says to watch the bookies instead, people are gambling real money there. True, but how many favourites end up losing?

If this is it, what a God awful campaign it’s going to be. Brown and Mandelson will put a couple of clunking fists through this screen of tissue paper on day one. For the Conservatives, it can only get worse.

Cameron desperately needs to secure the affections of the core vote now. They may be as loyal as the Brigade of Guards, but they won’t vote for Tony Blair Mark II.

Contrary to what he seems to think, this doesn’t mean singing Land of Hope and Glory on every occasion, nor even using the words “patriotism” and “country” now and again, like a couple of cloves in an apple pie. It means securing the nation’s independence and reinstating its broken Constitution. He all but promised that once. But then allowed the pledge to lapse because of the actions of others. No backbone there, then.

I have grave doubts that what we saw and heard yesterday has the power to galvanize the country, despite the horror of Labour and Gordon Brown. This election may be stolen by gerrymandering and a cloud of lies and false accusations.

It’s enough to make you weep.

John Evans

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Eerier things have happened, I’ve no doubt, but my Saturday Ramble column written yesterday and titled, What if Labour were to win? is eerie enough for a Sunday morning.

We awoke to a dark, rainy dawn, right in the middle of the Conservative’s Spring Conference in Brighton, and to a Sunday Times headline: Brown on course to win election. A You Gov poll puts the Tories just two points ahead, not enough to overtake Labour.

Of course, that number presumes an even swing across the country, which won’t materialize. Oddly, the poll result was altered between the first and second editions. The change clipped three points off the Tory lead, according to Greg Dyke on the Marr show.

It’s certainly not as bad as that. However, I don’t resile from the scenario that a very low turnout could work against them, even though that upsets the conventional wisdom.

Syntagma will be watching David Cameron’s keynote speech today with hawk eyes and bats’ ears for some attempt to plug this hole in his strategy. (See Election Notebook tomorrow).

The depressing new slogan, “Vote for change” is relying too much on Brown’s unpopularity. Those of us who follow politics are aware of the technical detail of the policy agenda, but most voters aren’t. They need a good solid reason to go out and vote. Here’s a list of possibilities:

1. Announce a post-election enquiry into Labour’s cynical and destructive immigration policy, which has many people I know seething with anger. The announcement will be enough, and would mean the party will not need to elaborate on immigration during the campaign. It would, though, whack the ball into Labour’s court, something that shamefully hasn’t happened yet.
2. Cancel the TV debates, they will bore the electorate and give voters a reason to stay at home.
3. Offer some broad, sweeping incentives to vote. A promise of a trade-only agreement with Europe would galvanize the core vote and suck in Ukip supporters, as well as some in the BNP.

I believe that would win a comfortable majority for the blues.

Some Conservative bloggers frequently complain that the Daily Telegraph is not a Cameroon paper, nor even a Tory one for that matter.

Strangely, I find a strong congruity of purpose between my own views and many of the writers on the paper. Although I agree with Iain Dale that Simon Heffer’s evisceration of George Osborne yesterday was way over the top of the previous top, Janet Daley and Charles Moore both got to the heart of what is a widely perceived problem: David Cameron has not hooked the Tory core vote.

As I pointed out yesterday in Saturday Ramble, it could cost them dear. A supporting, but intelligently critical, newspaper should be listened to, not rubbished.

I hear that Dave is going to talk about his “patriotic duty” today at the spring conference. I do hope he gives hard examples that will resonate with the faithful. If it’s all window decoration, it will not heal the gap.

Annoyment of the Week
A Gordon Brown Free Zone

We don’t want “change” per se, we want improvement.

Is this Dave going all Obama on us? Times change, but change remains an empty slogan.

I can’t get worked up about Ukip’s Nigel Farage’s attack on Herman Rumpy Dumpy’s appearance and personality in the so-called European parliament.

For one thing, I don’t regard jibes at what someone can’t help as fair game. While I despise what the man stands for: increased European integration, his personal characteristics are the sphere of shock-jock comedians, not politicians or decent people.

Or is Farage more alternative comedian than politician?

Equality Bill hardliners are probably delighted that it will put pressure on schools not to insist on girls wearing skirts. The reason? It may offend trans-sexuals.

I’ve strained my mind to its limit but I can’t make tail nor tail of it.

If we are to follow this to its logical conclusion, what about Transylvanian vampires? Won’t they feel let down by laws against biting people?

With the massive intake of migrants from Eastern Europe under Labour, there must be at least a couple of dozen now in the country.

I don’t expect the bruvvers to bother too much about them, though, as they seem to be mainly Counts and so inevitably Tory voters.

Let’s hear it for the bloodsuckers, especially as there are few jobs in the City for them now.

Boris Johnson, or BoJo in common parlance, is conspicuously AWOL from the Conservative election battle so far.

Remember his effort at the Party Conference in Manchester? A couple of corkers like that would go down a treat during what promises to be an arid and humourless campaign. Labour has no one to match him.

When the Duke of Wellington surveyed his men before the Battle of Waterloo, he remarked, “I don’t know about the French, but they scare the wits out of me.”

He might say the same about Boris.

John Evans

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John Evans, Headbanger — not me.

Gordon Brown’s speech at the Mansion House last night had an air of the valedictory: a last throw of a man utterly out of his depth, despised and ridiculed by everyone in sight, including his closest colleagues.

The more he bellowed about a “global society” and “global institutions”, the more he resembled some ten-a-penny dictator stamping out democracy at home while deflecting attention abroad.

His “global vision” is nothing other than the defeated international Marxism of his youth, in which a cross-borders’ working class was urged to band together to overthrow greedy capitalists. The only difference is, the workers are replaced by a political elite.

There was something almost deranged about his obtuseness and desperate attempts to cling on to a failing dream. It was “global solutions”, with no bulkheads in between, that brought the world crashing down in 2007. More of the same will not do any better.

Now he has in mind to allow the UN to tax us and impose controls on our energy usage. Thank God for the US Senate which would rather blow itself up than pass anything of the sort.

Conservatives should beware of getting caught up in this contagion. It was their own Virginia Bottomley, in 1989, who signed us up to the UN’s Convention on the Child, which led to her unworkable Children’s Act and allowed the representatives of grizzly dictatorships to criticize how we bring up British children.

The Tories should seek to emulate the US Upper House in its intransigence to global solutions. Only failed and fading politicians grasp at such straws.

Following on from my Saturday piece on, among other things, climate change, today’s Times carries an article by Dr Stuart Clark of Princeton, which brings fresh information to the argument. Writing about the continuing “sunspot crash” he makes some interesting points:

“… if the trend continues at its current rate, the Sun will lose its ability to produce sunspots by 2015. That would take it back to its condition in the latter 17th century, when hardly any sunspots appeared for 70 years — and Northern Europe underwent the worst years of the so-called Little Ice Age.”

In that case, let us hope that man-made pollutants do warm us up a bit. Cutting them back now might be disastrous.

His point though, is that it’s an ideal time to measure these effects and settle the climate debate once and for all. For that, we need open and honest scientists to take the measurements and trustworthy politicians to draw the correct conclusions.

We certainly shouldn’t allow people like Gordon Brown or the Miliband brothers anywhere near the action.

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A Gordon Brown-free zone

Some people love to stand out from the crowd. As a rugged individualist myself I have no objection to that, provided it’s an improvement on the norm, and is not done purely for attention-seeking purposes.

What BBC man Evan Davis wears in bookshops has no interest at all for me, although the last time I saw him on TV, he was so thin he could have been a bundle of sticks in a suit.

When it comes to professional activity on the BBC’s Today programme, though, some line must be drawn. This is a show listened to largely by a middle-aged and elderly audience. The programme’s content and presenters mostly reflect that fact.

Last week it was discussing the Rosetta project. Rosetta is a spacecraft designed to land on a passing comet in 2014. To build up sufficient velocity to get to the rendezvous, it has to be swung around the Earth and Mars three or four times, rather as a discus thrower will twirl around before launching his projectile down the track.

Who on earth thinks up these schemes? Surely this one must come from the same stable as our chum, the Large Hadron Collider? Yes, it’s the European Space Agency, and we are paying for it. Warm glow? Thought not.

Rosetta is currently being swung around the Earth, by the way, hence the interest.

Anyway, Evan’s contribution to the project was groanworthy. While both the newsreader and the science correspondent, Pallab Ghosh, used “miles” to describe its trajectory around our planet, our hero preferred kilometres.

Grinding of gears as ageing audience attempts to divide by eight and multiply by five, thus missing the rest of the item.

Oh dear!

A word of thanks to Google.

A couple of weeks ago I complained that I had been relegated to page 3 of the search engine’s results for my admittedly rather common name “john evans”. Top of the bill was a John Evans who could carry “very heavy weights on his head, including bricks and cars” (pictured above).

Now while I have enormous admiration for my namesake, and certainly couldn’t emulate him in the motorhead stakes, page 3 was the equivalent of a Siberian salt mine compared to the top-five slot previously held.

I’m delighted to report that the Google guys have relented and yours truly is back in third spot. Thanks to everyone at the Googleplex.

Now could you please restore our PageRank of 5 to this site?

The by-election result in Glasgow North East was welcomed by a drowning Labour party much as a shipwrecked man might clutch at a floating matchstick in stormy seas.

The idea is that they now have the incumbent SNP on the run north of the border. The newly “insurgent” Labour party believes it can retain at least some of its traditional stronghold base in Scotland at the General Election.

I’ve no doubt it can, but much good will it do them. However, I must admit to having a secret wish for a Labour wipeout in all its heartlands, even if it entrenches the nationalists in Edinburgh. Alex Salmond is reported to have a pact with David Cameron on events following a Tory victory in England, Wales and possibly Northern Ireland.

One thing’s for sure, he’s going to find it hard to win a breakaway referendum under current economic conditions. The United Kingdom is not the European Union and 300 years carries a darn sight more weight than 37.

A Glasgow smile, anyone?

Bo Jo, or Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, if you’re not in the loop, is fighting a splendid battle to save the City of London and those love-to-be-slimy bankers who burrow like Hobbits there.

He’s fighting on two fronts. Brown seems determined to give them a good kicking before he slopes off into sullen oblivion in May. The European Commission, backed eagerly by the French, are hell bent on denuding Britain of its massive colony of alternative investment managers — Hedgies, to you and me.

It looks like a lonely battle. The Conservatives are reluctant to throw their weight behind unpopular bankers and are currently hiding behind a wall of technical adjustments.

Have no fear, Bo Jo, Syntagma is with you all the way!

John Evans

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Google slipped up yesterday. The search engine highlighted a story that Michael Jackson died in 2007.

Oops, wrong Michael Jackson.

So who was this posthumous star enjoying his 15 minutes of fame? According to Wikipedia:

“Michael Jackson was born in Wetherby, West Yorkshire. He went to King James’s School in Almondbury and became a journalist, most notably in Edinburgh where he first encountered whisky. On his return to London he briefly edited the advertising trade journal Campaign.

“Jackson became famous in beer circles in 1977 when his book The World Guide To Beer was published. This was later translated into more than ten languages and is still considered to be one of the most fundamental books on the subject.”

Ah, sanity!

Rest in peace, Michael Jackson, journalist and beer lover.

On the Today programme last week there was a throwaway line from a presenter that went like this: “The Foreign Office wanted to do something about Iran, but was overruled by Brussels”.

No gasp of indignation followed, no protest at the disastrous state of Britain’s foreign policy, they simply moved on to the next item.

Your diarist is made of sterner stuff. Lord Palmerston sprang instantly to mind. What would he make of the once mighty British Foreign Office being slapped down and “overruled” by a provincial town in Belgium?

We all know the answer to that. A gunboat would have been dispatched to Ostende and an immediate grovelling retraction obtained.

In reality, little David Milband, Foreign Secretary and heir to Michael Portillo, waved his banana and Britain was humiliated.

The truth is, whenever Labour are in power, the country acts as if it lost the Second World War rather than won it.

Let us hope that William Hague, biographer of William Pitt — the great war leader — inherits something of the Victorian spirit when it comes to British independence and projection of will.

If so, he could go down as one the great British Foreign Secretaries.

In the same area, Peter Hitchens wrote a thought-provoking blogpost last week in the Mail’s website.

It outlined in some detail why Britain is stuck in the sterile structures of the European Union and why the country should leave. Here’s a taster:

“It was undoubtedly a mistake on British terms. We gained nothing economically or politically by it, losing what remained of our special Commonwealth trading links, losing our territorial waters, our foreign policy independence and our ability to make our own arrangements for regulating and subsidising our industry and agriculture. We also lost our political independence, and control over our own borders.”

Brown’s and Miliband’s further surrender of Britain’s foreign policy over the past year is eloquent testimony to the proposition, held by Syntagma, Hitchens, and a majority of the population, that Britain is being wiped off the map by the sort of continental power it fought for centuries to stop developing in Europe.

Joining in hasn’t worked, only by leaving will we regain the power of action.

Watching Ed Balls (roughly Education Secretary in the government) on Andrew Marr this morning was a lesson in all that is wrong with New Labour.

The message never faltered: Tory cuts were the the biggest danger facing the nation; Labour “investment”, plus yet more tinkering with the school system, is the way forward.

Considering that few people watch such a show at 9am on a Sunday morning unless they possess a sophisticated knowledge of current affairs and politics, pushing the much-rebutted “line to take” doesn’t really make sense.

Balls’s body language was equally bizarre. Holding his hands apart and parallel with each other, he continually moved them, first this way, then that. Like a fisherman claiming his catch was a whopper, there was an element of fantasy about the whole performance — a whopper indeed.

But the worst bit was when he claimed the Tories would cut spending to fund inheritance tax breaks for a few very rich people.

If memory serves, George Osborne promised to cut inheritance tax at the Conservatice conference just when Brown was planning a snap General Election nearly two years ago.

The substantial and sudden swing to the Conservatives in the opinion polls forced him to scrap his plans. The following month, Brown ordered his Chancellor to adopt similar measures in the Pre-Budget report.

So, another lie from Labour. Do they now have much support left among the regular audience for the Andrew Marr show?

It seems unlikely.

The Queen is said to have warned the government against mixing up the celebrations for her Diamond Jubilee in the summer of 2012 with the multiple shenanigans of the London Olympics.

One can see her reasoning. The Games are currently set to cost a whopping £10 billion, and that figure will undoubtedly rise.

HM wants a much less extravagant celebration, aware that the effects of the continuing depression will still be with us. Wisely, she has called in Lord Sterling, former head of P&O, who masterminded both her Silver and Golden Jubilees, and knows her mind.

The fact is, the Conservatives will then be in power nationally, and the Tory Mayor of London will be in a re-election year. I’m sure they can arrange matters so that both milestone events will be totally free of “political correctness” and electioneering.

Eh, Boris? Eh, Dave?

The word “globalization” is still widely used as a touchstone of modernity and wealth-creation. The Left, in particular, has fabricated its own version, “progressive internationalism”, for which read, “international socialism”.

The vast apparatus constructed since WW2 in support of international trade and relationships, is just that, Marxism without nationality — and therefore without democracy.

If globalization is so good for us then, why have international banks retreated back to their own countries now there’s a financial war on?

In Britain, almost all lending by foreign banks has ceased, leaving damaged local institutions to pick up the pieces. So far, they remain like wounded bears, confined to their caves.

The point is, if globalization only works during market highs, why stake so much on it? Every intelligent commentator knows the framework will be untenable during prolonged recessions?

The reason is that the present global superstructure of institutions creates a false picture of the benefits, while ignoring the downsides.

Players who should never have been in the field are being stuffed with taxpayers’ cash they can ill afford. The “carry trade” is a good example of what can happen. International bubbles are much worse than national ones.

Without the existing infrastructure, only the best and ablest would cross borders, and they would not expect bailouts during hard times. They would generally be more successful in the long term.

True to form, current economic conditions have not stopped Gordon Brown floating a scheme for another £60 billion a year to underpin yet more “global warming” funds for inadequate companies and greedy politicians. How will that help the British economy?

We need to treat anything global as a field for those who are strictly on their own, and not tacitly promise they will never be allowed to fail.

And finally, back to Ed Balls.

Can’t you just imagine the scene at the Cooper-Balls’s breakfast table. Ed is trying to get the children to eat up their breakfast. With his hands held six inches apart, he coaxes, “This is how much I want you to eat.”

Yvette leans forward earnestly, “It’s the right thing to do.”

Ed continues, “Then you’ll all grow up to be just like daddy.”

Yvette hesitates, examining her husband’s bulgy eyes and manic grin.”

“Time for school, kids.”

“Hold on, Yvette, I was just about to explain neo-classical endogenous growth theory. They really should know about it. … Where are you going?”

John Evans

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Bank holiday mornings are usually dreary affairs, endured to the sounds of shrieking children and rain on the windowpanes.

This morning, as compensation, we have a few zingy articles in the press to cheer us up. Over at The Guardian, Jackie Ashley refers to David Cameron’s exceptional “chutzpah” — does she mean chutney?

When was the last time such positive thoughts for a Tory leader pinged from the bullet banks of the old Manchester teeth-grinder? I mean the paper, not Jackie Ashley.

So, let’s dig liberally into the chutney and hope that chutzpah is enough to win the next General Election.

I thought Dave looked a little chubby on Andrew Marr yesterday. Maybe he’s at the chutney too.

Boris Johnson was also heard moving in the undergrowth again at The Telegraph. Adding to the din of calls for a swift General Election he cites the dreadful state of legislation spewed out during the last 12 years. We need a House of Rebels, he writes, and, by implication, not shoppers and diners-out.

Why do many Tories sound so Cromwellian now? Aren’t they supposed to be Cavaliers, not Roundheads? Boris is a born Cavalier. A feather in his cap would utterly transform him.

But he’s right. We do need Parliamentarians for a complex technological age: MPs who will cut up badly drafted law and hurl it back at a slipshod Executive, forcing it to do better. Perhaps some Eton schoolmasters should be drafted in.

The floor of the House needs the capability to overcome government when it underperforms. That means a much higher quality of MP. Falling back on Esther Rantzen and Joanna Lumley would be total desperation. How good has Glenda Jackson been? Or Gyles Brandreth? Or that Leftie Shakespearean actor who went to Brussels?

Horses for courses. Ask any bookie.

But Derby winners, please.

Since we’re all in a rather bilious mood of rebellion against our leaders, here are two possible reforms to Government off the top of my head.

1. American Cabinets are not drawn from Congress as a rule. They are normally appointed from distinguished experts and public servants. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, for example, was at the New York Federal Reserve before the call came from Washington. Like us, there’s probably not the talent or expertise among career politicians on Capitol Hill.

Would they want to mop up 100 or so of the people who vote the money and pass laws for everyone? The “separation of powers” is bigger in the States than here, although I believe we invented the concept. Maybe that’s what’s gone wrong.

Gordon Brown tried a similar idea with his GOATS (government of all the talents). One by one the goatlings have fallen by the wayside, usually for lacking political savvy. Lord Myners slipped up over Fred the Shred’s pension. Others have left to take up motor racing, or got caught out for being human — a dreadful sin these days.

Digby Jones was probably the best, but he was stuck in some minor post as Prince Andrew’s bag-carrier. One suspects Brown’s heavy-handed incompetence destroyed the exercise.

Cabinet Ministers, especially Secretaries of State, must be selected from the best we have. They should also be vetted by Parliament before they are confirmed in office.

Prime Ministers must not have it all their own way. Often, as with Brown and Blair, they are the blockages that keep excellence out of government.

2. Why should leaders in the Commons choose the people who will revise their legislation in the Lords? Let’s remove the government’s power to stuff the second chamber with its placemen.

If you were up on a murder charge, you’d be astonished if you could choose anyone you wanted for the jury.

Improvements, such as these, need to be made now, when politicians are weak. The tragedy is, the old system ensures only they can make the necessary changes.

And turkeys don’t voluntarily jump into ovens at Christmas.

Gorbals Mick, otherwise known as the Speaker of the House of Commons, is almost history now.

But do you remember the Gorbals Die-hards? They were in a different class from the old black-robed sheet-metal worker.

You don’t recall them? Maybe Dickson McCunn will jog your memory. A retired Glasgow grocer, High Class, of course, Dickson — in his sixties — was the self-appointed leader of the Die-hards, who were a group of young boy tearaways, led by their Chieftan, Dougal. I wonder how that juxtaposition would play in today’s climate?

No, then how about Huntingtower? Or The House of the Four Winds?

Last chance: John Buchan.

Yes, I hear you shout — a bit late, if you ask me.

I left out the third book in the series, Castle Gay, because it’s taken on a wholly different meaning since Buchan’s day. More Graham Norton than Richard Hannay.

I mention the Die-hards because not everything narrow, puce-faced and boring came out of the Gorbals. The novels are wonderful confections of adventure, fights to the death, swashbuckling characters, and the kind of wild possibilities that appeal to teenage boys (and many older ones) almost everywhere.

It would be an interesting experiment to try out Huntingtower, written in 1922, on a modern comp-educated class of teens. Once they got over the very different morality and beliefs of the post-WW1 world, I’m sure the exhilaration of the story, far-fetched as it is, would grip them. After all how far does Harry Potter demand the suspension of disbelief?

You can download the Gutenburg version of the novel here.

I picked up my copies from a secondhand bookshop while still at school. They were very tattered but part of that great orange Penguin series that can still be found on sale all over the country.

I mention all this because every time I see Gorbals Mick presiding over the House, I think what a disapointment he would be to Wee Jaikie and the other Die-hards.

One of the great journalistic duels is taking place in the Business section of the Sunday Telegraph.

In the blue corner: Ambrose “Mr Deflation” Evans-Pritchard. In the red corner: Liam “Mr Inflation” Halligan.

Both are brilliant journalists and masters of their field. They differ in their assessment of the current economic circumstances, especially for the United Kingdom.

Ambrose admits to being “tortured by self-doubt” over his analysis. Liam is ruggedly certain of his.

Ambrose believes “two-thirds of the world will be in deflation by July”. Liam points to the climbing oil price which will wipe out all the stimulus effects of quantitative easing.

I suspect that both are right. Some parts of the world will fall into deflation — many countries already have. But inflation is the underlying wealth-destroying genie that has, once again, popped out of the bottle, thanks to Central Banks and politicians covering their backs against a 1930s-style Armageddon.

It may be a few years down the road, though, and deflation has to be fought now, as the Bank of England implies by its continuing policy of buying gilts. But it will let rip eventually.

As always, it’s a case of Up-To-A-Pointism. We are nowhere near out of the woods yet.

Once again the European Union is interfering in the running of the British state.

Not content with forcing us to adopt the useless mercury-filled light bulbs prescribed by them, we are now expected to switch from Watts — named after a fine Scottish gentleman — to “lumens”, a continental concoction that means nothing to the British.

Soon a size 9 shoe will become a 43, calories will be “joules”, after a long-forgotten Frenchman, and the English Channel will be called the German Waterway.

Why do these things happen? Because our politicians are not worth the spit they lick on their freebie postage stamps.

John Evans

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