The Cornerstone Group

This is purely my personal opinion. There is no corporate Cornerstone view

Is Brown ‘the Bear’ threatening Cameron ‘the Labrador puppy’?

These animal tags are apparently those that focus groups choose when asked to name an animal representing the two leaders.

Neither is particularly flattering, but the old association of the bear with soviet Russia seems politically apt, given the Chancellor’s core belief – shared with the Prime Minister – in the state as the optimum provider of all good things.

The now daily press conferences from Gordon Brown are putting pressure on David Cameron. There is a danger Brown will start creeping up in the polls. Indeed, The Times reported this week that one poll showed Brown was seen as a stronger leader than Cameron [The Times 15 May].

Today Brown announces that by using yet more taxpayers’ money, (albeit money that has lain dormant in bank accounts for fifteen years or more), he will set up a “national network of sports, youth and arts centres”, with ministers said to believe that £300 million will enable at least one community sports, arts or youth centre to be built in every constituency [Telegraph p 14].

Today’s announcement comes hard on the heels of yesterday’s plans to give teenagers “personal mentors” and allow them to take a day per week out of school to train for jobs. Brown has also pledged to end innumeracy among 11-year-olds and give children a “world class” education. Currently 150,000 are innumerate when they start secondary school. One-to-one tuition is also to be offered.

These proposals look like a case of too little too late, patching up the victims of an education system which under this government has delivered escalating grade inflation combined with over half of all children leaving school with not so much as a C grade at GCSE in 5 subjects, including maths and English, while youth unemployment has risen significantly in spite of Brown’s beloved New Deal.

For more evidence that the bear is wounded, read the recently published FantasyIsland by Larry Elliott, economics editor of the Guardian [sic] and Dan Atkinson (a former Guardian journalist now writing for the Mail on Sunday). This states that “Blair…leaves behind him a seedy dream world mired in debt and bankruptcy, facing a looming crisis of employment and employability.” No wonder, when many new graduates are “no better qualified than those leaving school with A levels a generation  earlier” [Telegraph Business news p B5 16th May].

Let us hope that when the furore over yesterday’s announcement by David Willets [see yesterday’s Thought for the Day] has died down, David Cameron will show the bear that the so-called ‘puppy’ can hurt him if it bites hard on his already wounded flank.

To do that will require a distinctively conservative approach. Sadly, we do not seem to have one yet as a Party, but I shall be offering a suggestion of my own at the beginning of next month.

Edward Leigh is Co-Chairman of The Cornerstone Group

This is purely my personal opinion; Cornerstone has no corporate view.

This morning’s announcement by David Willetts that the type of academic selection exercised by grammar schools “entrenches advantage” [Daily Telegraph, p 4] is a symptom of a false debate.

I do not advocate a simple revival of grammar schools as the solution to our education problems.

What I do say, and have argued in the past [see 'Set the Schools Free', Cornerstone archive] is that schools must be allowed both the freedom to hire and fire staff and to select and de-select pupils. I also believe that pupils should be funded by vouchers, enabling parents to choose, if they wish, to send their children to those private schools that take part in the scheme.

Under the scheme I favour, very few schools would anyway become fully selective.

But we simply cannot, I believe, have an education policy which is identical to Labour’s – forcing all schools to be fully comprehensive.

 Before all but a handful of grammar schools were abolished, they were a ladder out of the ghetto for people in inner city areas.

There were also, it so happens, significantly more students from state schools at Oxford and Cambridge.

And how popular will the policy be? According to Brian Wills Pope, chairman of the Grammar Schools Association, a recent poll shows that 70 per cent of people want a return to academic selection; the same result is confirmed in a poll by the Centre for Policy Studies.

If people knew the widespread evidence about the success of voucher-schemes across the world in giving poor children real opportunities for advancement, the remaining 30 per cent might be convinced as well. If you don’t believe me, read the Economist for May 3.

The subsequent results show that the children who received vouchers were 15-20 per cent more likely to finish secondary education, five percentage points less likely to repeat a grade, scored a bit better on scholastic tests and were much more likely to take college entrance exams.

[The article refers to a Colombian programme used to broaden access to secondary schooling, known as PACES, which provided over 100,000 poor children with school vouchers worth around half the cost of a private secondary school]
 

Edward Leigh is Co-Chairman of The Cornerstone Group

So Tony Blair has gone…Our crypto-Conservative Prime Minister of the last 10 years can no longer distort the classic battle of left and right.

This is a good moment to launch the redesigned Cornerstone website.

We represent traditional Tory themes of nation, family, enterprise and compassion, founded on Judaeo-Christian ethics.

We keep the flame burning because we believe that a vigorous discussion about Conservative ideas can be of immense value to our party in the remaining two or three years to the General Election.

The election results last week were solid, if not spectacular in the North and the Midlands. Nevertheless an extra 911 seats marks significant progress

We have made a very good start. We need to do more.

We have a most attractive, young and personable leader, whom we support as the democratically elected leader of our Party. For Britain’s sake, we must ensure that he is our next Prime Minister.

We applaud our leader’s decision to reach out to people who have yet to vote for us, and for him to talk about environmental and poverty issues, where we have undersold ourselves in the past – and to speak up in favour of marriage. ‘And’, not ‘but’ or ‘however’. And.

We need to recognise that the people, our people, the aspiring people of this country, are labouring under record levels of taxation, regulation and stultifying political correctness.

We need to explain how we will root out waste and inefficiency from our public services.

We need to explain how we will return people’s hard-won earnings to where they belong – their own families.

David Cameron is right that marriage is the bedrock of society. Sadly the selfless coming together of men and women with a genuine attempt at commitment for life is under sustained assault.

We need to explain how we will buttress and support it through the tax and benefit system, as George Osborne has begun to do.

More and more powers are still seeping out of our historic Parliament to unaccountable European bureaucrats. We must explain how we will reverse the trend.

Record levels of immigration are straining good race relations. We must develop tough but fair policies that stem the tide.

Speaking personally, I believe that too many children suffer from indifferent comprehensive schools. As I have argued previously, we must articulate our belief in parental choice, including vouchers and freedom for head teachers to hire and fire, select and de-select, that will set schools free.

We must use tax relief to help more people afford private health care for the irritating non-urgent conditions which the NHS cannot afford to cope with as we all live longer.

Over the coming weeks and months, colleagues will be free to post on this website their detailed ideas for the future.

Let me be clear, there is no corporate Cornerstone view; everybody is responsible for their own words.

Over the coming months there will also be periodic ‘thought for the day’ comments from a Cornerstone member.

All this is offered up in the spirit of making a positive contribution to the Conservative policy development process which reaches its conclusion this summer and autumn.

I believe that our faith in our country, our families and in the hard work of the British people must be proclaimed by a Conservative Party that is rooted in never-changing beliefs and principles.

I hope that Cornerstone members will make a positive and useful contribution to the success of our Party.

Edward Leigh is Co-Chairman of The Cornerstone Group.