The UK Con-Dem Coalition government

The Coalition and the Constitution by Vernon Bogdanor – review

A mortar shell fired at the Cameron and Clegg command centre

David Marquand The Guardian, Saturday 14 May 2011


Meet the voters ... Nick Clegg in Edinburgh, Qpril 2011. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod

Vernon Bogdanor is the leading academic authority on the strange jumble of customs, laws and myths known as the British constitution. To that role he brings formidable learning, a relentless appetite for sniffing out self-serving humbug and a quiet, but insistent radicalism. He deploys all of these to startling effect in this short book. In form it is an analytical study of the coalition's impact on the constitution; in fact, it is the literary equivalent of a mortar shell fired at the Cameron-Clegg command centre. With icy clarity Bogdanor shows that the Liberal Democrats were sold a pup during the coalition negotiations a year ago, that the coalition is making British government less responsive and accountable than it used to be, that it has done nothing to shake the binary assumptions which have dominated British politics since the 1880s and that the real meaning of the whole enterprise is that Clegg and his associates have turned their backs on the social liberal tradition, which was the glory of the Liberal and Liberal Democrat parties for most of the 20th century.


The Coalition and the Constitution by Vernon Bogdanor

The one great concession that the Liberal Democrat negotiators screwed out of their Conservative opposite numbers was the AV referendum which has now blown up in their faces. Not only has the crushing victory for the status quo put back the cause of electoral reform for a generation; it has left the Liberal Democrats with nothing to show for a year of humiliation. To make matters worse, it seems pretty clear that the no voters were not just voting against a marginal change in the electoral system for which the case had not been made, but against the Liberal Democrats' shameless tergiversations since they got into bed with the Conservatives. Part of the point of AV was to normalise coalition politics. After a year of coalition government, the prospect of endless Cleggism stank in the nostrils of the British electorate.

In a further twist of the screw, the coalition's second great change in the electoral system – the combination of more equal parliamentary constituencies with more frequent boundary changes – will almost certainly harm the Liberal Democrats and, for that matter, all small parties and independents. It will also weaken the links between MPs and voters that the Coalition partners say they want to strengthen. The alleged mystic bond between MPs and their constituents that defenders of first past the post invoke has always had a large element of fantasy about it. When constituency boundaries are subject to revision in every Parliament the bond will be about as mystic as that between a Tesco's checkout lady and the shoppers queuing up in front of her.

Far more disturbing than any of this is the damage the coalition's emergence has done to the already threadbare link between voter preference and government policy. There are precedents for a peacetime coalition: the elections of 1895, 1918 and 1931 all procured one. But those coalitions had all been endorsed by the voters, who knew what kind of creature they were voting for. The 2010 coalition was the product of a parliamentary stitch-up, which was never ratified by any kind of democratic process. On the speed and size of deficit reduction – overwhelmingly the most important issue before them – the coalition partners had been on opposite sides during the election campaign. Not only did the voters refuse to endorse the Conservative policy on spending cuts; they voted, by a substantial majority, for the diametrically different policy then favoured by the Liberal Democrats as well as by Labour. Nick Clegg's U-turn on student fees is a trivial peccadillo compared with his infinitely more damaging U-turn on public spending. Though Bogdanor does not say so, the clear implication of his account is that the present coalition is the least legitimate peacetime British government of modern times.

Yet it – and the civil servants who advise it – behave as if it were a single-party government, with an electoral victory behind it. Bogdanor quotes Gus O'Donnell, the cabinet secretary, as saying that the coalition agreement is "the document we, as the Civil Service, work towards": in other words that Whitehall treats it as though it were the manifesto of a normal government, endorsed by the people. The truth, of course, is that the people have not had a look-in: it has been endorsed only by the parties that drew it up. The mandarinate and its political masters would no doubt reply that this was inevitable: the Queen's government must be carried on, as far as possible in the usual way.

To that, the only possible answer is a loud raspberry. The election produced a new political conjuncture, unparalleled for 80 years. The electorate had voted against politics as usual. If ever there was a time for lateral thinking and a more deliberative, less partisan governing style, this was it. The coalition agreement could have been put to a citizens' assembly; less radically, it could have been considered in detail by a Commons select committee or committees. The fact that no one made any attempt to do anything of the kind is not a sign of political fortitude. It is a symptom of constitutional sclerosis. Such sclerosis is only to be expected from the Conservative party. But the Liberal Democrats were supposed to be different. Constitutional radicalism has been their hallmark, their reason for existing. Then why did they succumb so easily to the establishment embrace? Why did they sell their birthrights for a mess of pottage? The terrible answer, I believe, is that their birthrights were no longer to their taste. The Liberal Democrat leaders still talked social liberalism, but as they had foreshadowed in the notorious Orange Book, they walked economic liberalism. The tradition of Beveridge, Keynes, Lloyd George and Asquith, and for that matter of David Steel, Paddy Ashdown and Menzies Campbell – the tradition that stood for a synthesis of freedom and solidarity, procured by a strong, but not oppressive state – no longer spoke to them. They were liberals in the continental mould, not in the British one. Their role model was the German Free Democrats – a party to the right of Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats. They allowed the Conservatives to run rings around them in the coalition negotiations, not just because they were inexperienced and naive, but because they and the Conservatives were brothers beneath the skin. The result is a tragedy for British liberalism, and still more for Britain.

David Marquand is a former Labour MP and chief adviser to the European commission and was a founder member of the SDP.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

Cameron cuts police numbers and resources but, in a shameless PR response to Rupert Murdoch's Sun tabloid, invests remaining scanty resources in a populist wild goose chase:

Madeleine probe 'a ludicrous waste'

15 May 2011


Scotland Yard's review of the Madeleine McCann case is a 'ludicrous' waste of money, it has been claimed

Scotland Yard's review of the Madeleine McCann case is a "ludicrous" waste of money, a senior member of its governing body has claimed.

Jenny Jones hit out at David Cameron's controversial decision to involve the Metropolitan Police and said the move would deny other victims of crime the chance of justice while using up valuable police resources.

The review has already sparked faced fierce criticism amid suggestion the intervention could undermine the independence of the force.

Ms Jones, a member of the Metropolitan Police Authority and the London Assembly, told The Mail on Sunday: "The police should not take this case up in this way.

"It is ludicrous. This could take years and will cost millions. It is very unusual for police to step in like this and it is not an appropriate use of police resources."

She said the MPA would now be asking tough questions of the move, adding: "The Government is closing down the Forensic Science Service because there are not enough funds. This is a crucial part of police work.

"Although it is tragic and I feel for the McCanns, how can the Prime Minister justify spending millions of pounds on one case?"

Her comments echo remarks made by fellow Metropolitan Police Authority member Lord Harris last week.

Writing on his blog, he said: "Whilst no one doubts the desirability of doing what can sensibly be done to find out what has happened to Madeleine McCann, I can imagine that the senior leadership of the Metropolitan Police are not exactly happy about this."

Madeleine went missing from her family's holiday flat in Praia da Luz in the Algarve on May 3 2007, shortly before her fourth birthday.

AOL

Tories gain three points in poll

15 May 2011


David Cameron is the only party leader whose popularity is moving in the right direction, a poll suggests

The Conservatives gained three points in the latest opinion poll to stand just one point behind Labour, with David Cameron the only party leader whose popularity is moving in the right direction.

A ComRes survey for the Sunday Mirror and Independent on Sunday put the Tories on 38%, with Labour unchanged at 39 since last month.

Labour has benefited most from the defection of 45% of the junior coalition partner's 2010 supporters - four fifths of them switching support to Ed Miliband's Opposition, it showed.

Only around one in five (21%) backed Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg's party leadership, with the gap to those critical of him growing from 31 points to 35.

Mr Miliband's rating - 22 - was also worse than last month while those supporting the Prime Minister's performance increased from 37 - a gap of only four points to those disagreeing.

There was some good news for Mr Clegg's efforts to show a more "muscular" influence within the coalition with almost half (49%) giving him some credit for moderating the NHS reform package.

Altogether, the radical shake-up was comprehensively opposed, however, by 62.

More voters now also believe the coalition has been better for the country than a minority Tory administration - by 40 as opposed to 38 a month before.

ComRes interviewed 2,004 adults online on May 11 and 12 2011 and data were weighted to be representative of all adults and by past vote recall.

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David Marquand seems to be talking absolute nonsense. I don't know if that is on purpose or his own naughty choice.

So is this the UK politics thread now?!

Twoody, I know you take an interest in these matters, so tell me...

What exactly have the Lib-Dems gained by going into coalition with the Tories?

Core Lib-Dem support has evaporated, as the recent local government elections demonstrate.

AV (for which I voted YES, by the way) is a dead duck- and any other change to the present voting system will have to wait another generation.

But Cameron has bound Clegg to him with hoops of steel: if the Lib-Dems bail out of the Coalition now and force a General Election, the voters will be unforgiving.

Clegg's blown it, hasn't he?

Eddie, I'm sure you'll remember that the day the coalition was formed I said that it was electoral suicide for the Lib Dems. I fully believed that those at the top of the Lib Dems (Clegg, Cable, etc) thought the same thing. Nonetheless, I believed it was definitely the right thing to do for the country. No doubt thats sounds grandiose, but it is what I think.

I don't think core LibDem support has evaporated, although of course some has. It's just that core LibDem support was actually pretty small in the first place. Most of it's votes came from floating voters and the 'protest voters'. Once the coalition was formed, I struggled to see where the Lib Dem vote was going to come from. I still do. IMO, all the Lib Dems can hope for is that the coalition's economic policies will be bearing some fruits by the fourth year and the cuts would have stopped (although even then it is the Tories that would get the credit). As you say, bailing out now really isn't an option.

eddie wrote:
What exactly have the Lib-Dems gained by going into coalition with the Tories?

Lots of things.

For starters, I don't know about you, but I have recieved a tax cut! But in all seriousness, by far the greatest thing that the Lib Dems have forced the Tories to do is the tax cut to the lowest paid workers. This has already started to happen and by the end of the parliament anyone earning less than 10k a year will not pay a single penny on income tax. That's great. The rest of the lower and middle income earners (like me) will be taxed £200 less. The only tax cut that would exist if there was Tory majority would benefit the richest (the heritance tax cut) - this idea has been scrapped and instead the poorest are (massively) helped.

Reading the Observer's (usually very anti-ConDem) front page today has reasurred me that I am thankful that the Lib Dems are in Government: "The new changes will place Britain at the forefront of the global battle against climate change". http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/may/14/historic-climate-change-deal-agreed-chris-huhne Excellent stuff that wouldn't be happening without LDs in Government... Let's just hope it happens.

I welcome the prison reforms that are ongoing. Despite how much Labour Minister's (and Tory Backbenchers) repeat their mantra that "Prison works".... Prison certainly is not working. I think most changes happening in this department are fantastic, although sadly there is no £££££££££ available, so I really don't know if it's going to work out rehabilitation wise. Hardly LDs fault though.

I think the Lib Dem 'Pupil Premium' policy (targeting extra money to disadvantaged children) is excellent and am thrilled that it is being put into action. Admittedly, a Lib Dem majority Government would be putting even more money in this direction, but it's still good to see it happening. Would a Tory majority be directing anywhere near this amount of money to the poorest children...... Nope. Is this a 1000 times more important to me than tuition fees.... Yes. (Talking of tuition fees, thanks to the LibDems, the poorest in society have a much better chance of attending university... I honestly believe that.)

There are loads of Lib Dem reforms going on regarding the way our democracy works. Getting the AV referendum was huge - I'm truly gutted that it was lost. I (hugely) welcome the reforms that are intended to take place in the House of Lords (which includes them being elected by proportional representation!). Although I will not hold my breath to see this happen now.... The British public has made itself more than clear that reforming our political system is not something they even want happening or care about. Tories have agreed to it, but Labour backbenchers will no doubt stop it happening anyway.

Some of the Lib Dem changes to pensions are fantastic.... ie restoring the link between pensions and earnings with a triple lock to ensure pensioners are protected. In future, pensions will rise with the higher of earnings, 2.5% or inflation. Why on earth wouldn't the previous government do this?

The previous Labour Government were incredibly central and had little respect for civil liberties. I'm glad this is being changed in a number of ways. Labour tried to change the law so that people could be held in detention for over 90 days without charge. Luckily they were defeated so it was made to be 28 days or was it 48? Anyway, the coalition has changed this to 14 days. I also welcome the huge steps that have been taken to put an end to the disgusting legacy of child detention for immigration purposes. Great to see the end of the ID card scheme, scrapping of shitty ASBOs, scrapping of stuff like the ContactPoint database, etc etc... I could go on forever here. I also welcome the clear steps that have been taken to devolve power from central government to councils. I'm big into devolving power from central government, so am happy about this.

I have no idea how influencial the LDs have been in putting an apparent end to the NHS reforms. They are claiming a victory here, although I don't know what's been happening behind the scenes.

Okay, that's all off the top of my head. I could go on... ! None of this would be happening with just a Tory Government. Therefore, I believe that the Lib Dems are actually achieving a great deal in Goverment, especially considering they only have 57 MPs out of 650! Don't get me wrong, there is lots that this Government is doing that I don't like at all... but then that is to be expected: Sadly, the British public overwhelmingly voted for the Tories, therefore they get mainly Tory policies. That's democracy. But I think the Lib Dems are punching way above their weight in this coalition. Do I expect them to get many votes from these achievements? No, not really.

Opinions? Uzi?

The Plot Against the NHS by Colin Leys and Stewart Player – review

Authors anatomise 'the diseased political corpus that has begun to infect the NHS with a commercial ethos'

Richard Horton The Guardian, Saturday 21 May 2011


A demonstration against proposed NHS changes. Photograph: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images

A year ago Peter Martin, the chief executive of Tribal Group plc, which describes itself as a "leading provider of commissioning services to the NHS", presented his view of the future for the health sector in England. He was bullish. Although he described market conditions as "challenging", he saw an "improved flow of service delivery opportunities" that would significantly support Tribal's revenue growth. Andrew Lansley's 2010 white paper would bring "major changes in structure of UK health markets". Martin's goal was to focus Tribal's health business on the profit-making opportunities these reforms would create. He set out five growth priorities: commissioning for GP consortia, clinical support services, patient management services, informatics outsourcing and hospital management services.


The Plot Against the NHS by Stewart Player, Colin Leys

This is the future for the NHS that David Cameron and Nick Clegg have planned for us since the launch of the coalition. Despite their claims to the contrary, they have been laying the ground for wholesale privatisation of the NHS, the destruction (without any democratic mandate) of one of Britain's most cherished and effective postwar institutions, and the transfer of its stewardship and operations to organisations concerned only with maximising revenues and reducing costs. The word "quality" appears nowhere in Tribal's vision as communicated to investors.

How has the NHS arrived at this moment of crisis? Colin Leys and Stewart Player provide an indispensable guide to understanding the origins of what they call a plot against the NHS. Surely this is an exaggeration? Not so. Cameron, Clegg and Lansley are merely continuing two decades of policies – begun by Tony Blair, endorsed by Gordon Brown, and supported by successive Labour governments – aimed at introducing markets into the health service. Where Labour tried to hide its intentions, the only difference with the Conservative-Liberal alliance is their shameless transparency.

Looking back at Labour health policy now, I have to ask myself how so many of us were unable to see through the mists of what Leys and Player call the "misrepresentation, obfuscation, and deception" perpetrated by Blair, Brown, and a host of health ministers all too willing to genuflect to the market zeitgeist. Too many of us – whether doctors, nurses, or just members of the public – were willing to be bewitched by Labour's mellow language of reform. The words are all too familiar now: modernisation, choice, empowerment, diversity, plurality, improvement, contestability, and, most beguiling of all, patient-led.

The Department of Health created a commercial directorate to oversee the plan to privatise the NHS. A group of passionate market advocates were hired to transform a public sector institution into a target for private sector takeover. People such as Mark Britnell, who was the Department of Health's director general for commissioning when Labour was in office and who later joined KPMG – able to sell his experience in government to the world of management consulting – have now been outed as agents for the merciless dismemberment of the NHS. There was a revolving door between civil servants in the department and McKinsey, KPMG and Deloitte. Ex-ministers, such as Patricia Hewitt and Lord Warner, traded their knowledge of NHS privatisation with those who could benefit in the commercial sector.

Doctors' leaders were little better. The British Medical Association's John Chisholm and Simon Fradd, who led negotiations with government to revise the GP contract in 2002, won a huge victory by making out-of-hours care for patients optional. Nine out of 10 GPs stopped offering services to patients from 6.30pm to 8am. This withdrawal of NHS care allowed private providers to step in and take over. After Chisholm and Fradd had succeeded in putting out-of-hours care out for private tender, they set up Concordia Health, a private company, that offered to run those very same services, only now at a profit to themselves.

The networks of health institutions that propped up the case for marketisation and privatisation of the NHS were intricate. They include private providers, such as UnitedHealth (whose president of global health, Simon Stevens, was once a key Labour adviser); thinktanks, such as the King's Fund (whose trustees have included Stevens and Julian Le Grand, his successor in Number 10); and lobbyists, including several NHS outsourcing and private equity businesses.

Having anatomised the diseased political corpus that has begun to infect the NHS with a commercial ethos that will increase costs, cut services and reduce quality, Leys and Stewart try to look to the future. They mount a strong defence, claiming there is no evidence the NHS is in urgent need of fundamental reform. Given the statement by Steve Field, who is leading Cameron and Clegg's pause to review the Lansley reforms, that the current Bill could "destroy key services" and destabilise the NHS, it seems that the gathering momentum for markets as the solution to whatever ills the NHS might have could be about to stall.

But we should be sceptical that any real change in direction is likely. Although there might well be a pause in plans for privatisation, there is no serious counterproposal to strengthen the NHS without the entry of private providers. The only source of political opposition to private markets in healthcare can come from Labour. But as one shadow spokesman said to me recently, Labour opposition leaders are like "invertebrate slugs". Labour in opposition is too inexperienced, too busy defending its legacy, too frightened to offer policies that might sound like spending commitments, too bankrupt to think beyond shoring up its own survival, and too lacking in imagination to bring in independent policy experts to strengthen its thinking.

And new thinking is urgently needed. I don't fully agree with Leys and Stewart that NHS reform is unnecessary. Consider one example: child health. The unfortunate truth is that the care offered to children with cancer, asthma, meningitis and pneumonia, among other chronic conditions, is inferior in Britain compared with many of our European neighbours. We should not be complacent about these failings. Markets and privatisation are certainly not the answer. But neither is defending an NHS as if it were perfect with no problems to solve.

Richard Horton is editor in chief of the Lancet.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2011

PM: Lib Dems prevent tougher action

June 20, 2011


David Cameron says the Lib Dems are preventing him from taking tougher action on immigration and stripping the workshy of benefits

The Liberal Democrats are preventing David Cameron from taking tougher action on immigration and stripping the workshy of benefits, the Prime Minister has said.

Mr Cameron firmly rejected claims that only Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was being forced to compromise in the coalition.

"We've all had to make compromises," he told BBC Radio 2's Steve Wright in the Afternoon.

"If I was running a Conservative-only Government I think we would be making further steps on things like immigration control or making sure that our welfare reforms were absolutely making sure that if you're not prepared to work you can't go on welfare.

"I think we'd be tougher than that," he said.

"We make compromises, we make agreements, but as a Government I think we're delivering a lot of good things for the country."

Mr Cameron conceded that the coalition "has its problems" but that it was generally working well.

He denied that major policy issues were decided between himself and the Deputy Prime Minister in their regular Sunday evening telephone calls.

"We often have a conversation on the phone on a Sunday night to scope the issues that we need to settle, the problems that the Government faces and some of the issues that are under discussion in the following week, but we also have very ordered meetings, as we did this morning," he said.

"I think the coalition works well. We haven't had one for 65 years, it's very different. "

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Top Tory found dead at Glastonbury

June 27, 2011



The death of senior Conservative figure Christopher Shale at the Glastonbury Festival is under investigation

Detectives are hoping toxicology results will shed light on the death riddle of a senior Tory in a Glastonbury Festival VIP toilet.

Christopher Shale, 56, a close friend of David Cameron, was discovered slumped in a cubicle in the backstage area on Sunday morning. The Prime Minister's constituency chairman had been reported as missing by worried family members at 900-acre Worthy Farm on Saturday.

It is feared his body may have lain undiscovered for up to 10 hours.

Police found his body as he was quoted in the Mail on Sunday bemoaning difficulties his party faced in recruiting new members. He was reported to have written: "No reason to join. Lots of reasons not to."

Downing Street was understood to have contacted Mr Shale on Saturday to warn him that the note he had written had been leaked to the newspaper.

Mr Cameron said he was "devastated" as he described Mr Shale as a valued friend and a "big rock" in his life.

Confusion reigned at the site after Michael Eavis said the wealthy businessman's death could be a "suicide situation". But police dismissed the claim, with sources saying he was thought to have suffered a heart attack.

A police spokesman said: "The results of the post-mortem combined with the inquiries conducted into the circumstances surrounding the death indicate it is not suspicious.

"Therefore Avon and Somerset Police are not treating the death as suspicious. Further tests will be conducted to establish the exact cause of death."

Festival founder Mr Eavis expressed his "deepest sympathy" as the police probe was launched.

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Australia has a similiar situation with the Labor party governing with the help of 2 independents and a Green member.
I had hopes it would lead to a better sysyem as regards parliamentry procedure . However sadly it is no better with the opposition trying to destabilise the government at every opportunity.

I can't believe I typed all that out, I must have been a bit tipsy. Cheers for the copy&paste reply though Eddie, made it all worth while.

Simulacrum wrote:Cheers for the copy&paste reply though Eddie, made it all worth while.

Sorry, but I've been a tad preoccupied.

For another cut & paste response, please supply below your thoughts, however tipsy, on the late Christopher Shale MP's opinion that there are no reasons for joining the Tory Party and plenty of reasons not to: "graceless, voracious etc."

eddie wrote:
For another cut & paste response, please supply below your thoughts, however tipsy, on the late Christopher Shale MP's opinion that there are no reasons for joining the Tory Party and plenty of reasons not to: "ungracious, voracious etc."

I'm not sure what you're asking me. Do I see any reasons to join the Tory Party?.... God no.

Or are you asking me if he was killed by the Govt? If so, I would say No he wasn't.

Simulacrum wrote:Or are you asking me if he was killed by the Govt? If so, I would say No he wasn't.

You know, that possibility had never even crossed my mind, but now you mention it....

An equally interesting question might be what on earth a senior Tory was doing in a portable toilet at the Glastonbury music festival in the first place? Perhaps I take a simplistic view of these matters but I just don't associate Tories with an event of this kind- indeed, if the truth be told, I don't associate Tories with having fun AT ALL. As Brendan Behan once remarked about even SPEAKING to a Tory, "God, it'd put years on you". Margaret Thatcher considered that travelling on public transport after the age of 30 was a sure sign that one had failed in life. God only knows to what unspeakable outrage young Margaret Hilda was exposed on a train to Grantham, Lincolnshire but, whatever it was, it clearly scarred her for life- mingling with the proles, I mean.

I don't for a moment underestimate the distress his untimely demise must have caused Mr Shale's family and friends, but the laws of Karma are strange indeed. Visitors to London I deal with every day at work are baffled and distressed by the almost complete dearth of public toilets in London. Margaret Hilda closed them all down in the 1980's because they represented the unacceptable face (bottom?) of public convenience. Now the wheel has turned full circle and a senior Tory has been found dead in proletarian earth closet at the Glastonbury music festival after expressing serious reservations about the popular appeal- indeed, the very philosophy- of his party.

Autres temps, autre merde.

eddie wrote:Perhaps I take a simplistic view of these matters but I just don't associate Tories with an event of this kind- indeed, if the truth be told, I don't associate Tories with having fun AT ALL.

Good grief....Errr yeah, I think I'll agree with you on the simplistic bit.

Simulacrum wrote:

eddie wrote:Perhaps I take a simplistic view of these matters but I just don't associate Tories with an event of this kind- indeed, if the truth be told, I don't associate Tories with having fun AT ALL.

Good grief....Errr yeah, I think I'll agree with you on the simplistic bit.

^^

Graceless, voracious....



...Tory dancing.

Graceless, voracious...


Francis Ford Coppola's Bram Stoker's Dracula's Tom Waits' Renfield.

...Tory wining and dining.

Graceless, voracious...


Michael Howard.


Christopher Lee.

....both have "Something of the night about them", according to Howard's former colleague Ann Widdecombe.

Graceless, voracious....



...Tory having sex.

Graceless, voracious...



...Tory sunbathing.

From The Daily Mail:

"Mr Shale’s death coincided with the publication of a leaked Conservative Party strategy memo in the Mail on Sunday, in which he said there was ‘no reason to join. Lots of reasons not to’. He said the constituency party was ‘not always an appealing proposition’, adding: ‘Over the years we have come across as graceless, voracious, crass, always on the take.’

Mr Shale argued that the local party needed to change to boost membership, and said the Prime Minister’s own association had gained only 22 new members in the past year..."

I really haven't followed this story at all, but it seems to be: 'Someone that knows David Cameron died at Glastonbury Festival'.

... Although, anyone who has been to a large weekend festival will know that dying in one of those toilets is a pretty horrific way to go.