Powell, Hannan and going native...

Urrrrgh.

They're at it again

. LabourList have for the first time in a while gone down the

old sensationalist route

that it was founded on and needs to be careful not to recreate the hysterical tone of its previous editor. TB can barely be bothered to humour Labour's latest attempts to smear Dan Hannan. Others have done so in a far more erudite fashion than a sleepy bear can muster:

Guido:

Powell was cited by him in a list of influences which included Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek – all of whom were ideologically opposed to immigration restrictions. The fact is that Hannan and his ideological fan base (such as it is) are more liberal on immigration policy than the official Labour Party position…

Working Class Tory:

Labour MP Parmjit Dhanda has now got involved with the Daniel Hannan "controversy" by making a statement which I don't think could possibly state the opposite of the truth with more precision:
"Last week Daniel Hannan attacked the NHS. Now he's talking up Enoch Powell as a key influence for Cameron's Conservatives."
Why don't you read the damn interview you moron? It quite clearly says "Who are your political influences? I've seen you reference Ron Paul, I believe you have referenced Hayek and Freidman on your blog."

Alex Massie of The Spectator:

If a politician expresses admiration for Winston Churchill do you immediately think that he's a great fan of, among other considerations, casual indifference to the Bengal famine, the use of chemical weapons in Iraq or the pulverisation and total destruction of German cities? Of course you don't. But when a politician says he admires Enoch Powell it's as if he'd decided to fill the Tiber with blood by scurrying around the country and slaughtering the children of every immigrant in the land.

And, just to be clear, if Hannan had bigged-up Powell's views on immigration while he was talking to Reason* the chances are that he'd have been challenged on them. That's because Reason's a libertarian magazine that, you know, is pretty relaxed about the free movement of people and generally disapproves of border supremacists and absolutists.

Anyway, whatever you think of Hannan's views, isn't it unpatriotic - if we must travel down this dreary road - to suggest that he be bullied into silence?

Please, people, let this Summer of Stupidity end soon.

So there we have it, Labour have failed again. Perhaps this would be the perfect time to quote Enoch: "A politician complaining about the media is like a fisherman complaining about the sea." Something Dan has no doubt thought in the last twelve hours.

What did come as a surprise however is the reaction of a particular tory to this pathetic attempt at a smear by Labour.

The World of JR

is the blog of one the UK's few card carrying Conservative student union sabbatical officers.

Andy "JR" Hartley

is a sabb at Manchester Met University and is a member of the Conservatives. He also claims to be a conservative. He posted

this

last night:

OK, now Hannan has had it!
I ask David Cameron to please get rid of this idiot.

This isn't the first time JR has shown

less-than-open-minded

views to other party members and is taking an increasingly authoritarian/NewLabourish stance against Hannan on his blog.

It would be a terrible shame if this former poster boy for all those tories who want to get involved in student politics and take the fight to the NUS has gone native, but it is looking increasingly like that.

Maybe there is a lesson to be learnt there.

News from very Liberal Youth

Change the record TB hears you cry, but one final story about youth wings and party staff. It's been awhile since TB turned his attention to his old friends over at Liberal Youth. Since their member of staff resigned from Cowley Street five months ago,

Elaine Bagshaw

everyone's favourite Labour-hack-turned-yellow, the Chairman of Liberal Youth has mysteriously not managed to find a new staffer.

With jobs to work in a party HQ normally going like hot cakes, especially considering the generous pay package associated with the job, this does seem mighty odd. It comes as no surprise given her track record that the gossip is now doing the rounds that Elaine has been deliberately impeding the selection process, leaving her organisation understaffed and all the while making a big song and dance of how much work she has to do and hard she's working/great she is.

Now the word has reached Tory Bear that Elaine is trying to get an amendment through their conference in November* - making the LY Chairman position a sabbatical one. So TB imagines that also means she wants to install herself as the sabbatical chairman for a third term. This can only be a good thing, given the fact that the hideously incompetent and unelectable Bagshaw will eventually run LY into the ground. There was even the ridiculous suggestion that she wants to move the Liberal Youth office oop north closer to her home.

Now that's just lazy... and as for the rest of the rumours TB has been hearing about what Elaine has been up to? Well apart from her ordering a grands worth of seeds to give out in freshers packs (WTF?) and approving 3k for a website, (TB thinks you might have got done over there guys,) the rest are unprintable, for the time being.

Sounds like the LY "Activate Weekend" was err... rather active though.

*TB was semi-invited to speak at the Liberal Youth conference later on in the Autumn. Does that offer still stand?

Who was Deep Throat?

When TB first started blogging it was to a handful of Conservative Future activists who wanted to hear libelous gossip about each other. Things have grown a lot since then, but TB still relies on his sources for most of his insidery stuff, be it con, lib or lab. Most people sadly now refrain from talking candidly in front of TB, but that doesn't mean you can't let him know what you know anonymously. For those who are new to the site please find Tory Bear's updated contact details below. TB has let things go a little in the last few months, but he is looking to up his game and devote more time to the blog in the run up to conference...

What do you know?

Email: editor@torybear.com
(drop TB a line if you want to speak on the phone and he will call you back.)

Twitter

@torybear

BlackBerry: 210250F0

Head in the Sand

Paul "Scoop" Waugh at The Standard

has what could potentially come a big headache for Brown:

"Gordon Brown ignored a stark warning that "toxic" bank loans could lead to global financial collapse, a leading US hedge fund chief has revealed.

Jim Chanos said that Mr Brown, while Chancellor of the Exchequer, was given a briefing that predicted banks were in dire danger - more than a year before the crisis hit last year."

Cheers Gordon.

Image via

The Rascal

Banter:

Tip of the hat to

Holyrood Patter

for this one.

Things Can Only Get Better...

Well it wouldn't be hard to beat this:



Clue number one to some conference fun TB has planned...

The Sound of Music

This is awesome:



Via

Trixy

In Out of the Loop

TB has blundered. Apparently CF has recently appointed a full time member of staff, working out of CCHQ. In light of his recent post it seems the time has come when no one ever tells him anything. That's what he gets for going away for weeks on end. His post did however have the interests of the organisation at heart.

Given the great things he is heard and some of the freshers stuff he saw tonight, it sounds like that Kate Fuller is doing a wonderful job. TB has been there and knows how hard the freshers campaign is, and it is particularly heartening to hear that the CF members database is being conquered.

Kate there is a TB bag-for-life in the post. Keep up the good work.

Please can TB have one of those Party for Change t-shirts he understands are going out?

Sister Bear hits the Blogosphere

Sister Bear has started blogging for the Spectator's new

Cappuccino Culture

blog. TB has been trying to get her to start a blog for ages but seems she has gone straight for the big league!

Read her musings

here

.

It stinks...

A few weeks back the Sunday Times nodded to the fact that Mandelson had met with David Geffen in Corfu, and surprise surprise the Government are now proposing draconian changes to how they counter file sharing. Apart from a bit of follow up on some blogs, TB included, the story went pretty much under the radar.

A few people dismissed TB pushing the story hard as idiotic and deluded, tin foil hat nutter etc...

Well finally the Lobby have

started to listen

.

Better late than never boys.

Prison Works?

Scottish Labour blogger, and Holyrood gossiper

Yapping Yousuf

had this little snippet of intrigue yesterday:

"Apparently Megrahis former inmates at Greenock prison are fuming as Gadaffi had previously paid to give Megrahi Sky TV in his room and under the rules of the prison if one inmate receives a facility then they all get it so everyone was enjoying SKY TV until now."

WTF? Excuse TB while he goes a little hang em' and flog em' but who the hell allowed the Libyan President to pay for Scottish murders and rapists to watch endless repeats of Top Gear on UK Gold?

Surely, by the same rules, every single life prisoner in Scotland who gets cancer will be let out?

No? Didn't think so.

Young, Rich and err Green

Given that the Conservative Future executive are currently deliberating over the co-option of three new members in the run up to the election, TB got a thinking...

Apparently the response to the recruitment drive has been top notch with the current Exec having a wealth of candidates to choose from for the three new roles. This is all in spite of it being a completely unpaid position, without provision for as much as a train fare. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats have paid up staffers running their youth operations, but not the Tories...

And now it seems so

do the Greens

:

The Young Greens are recruiting a new Co-ordinator. The post is 7 hours per week to be carried our over 1 full day or 2 half days and is based in North London at Green Party head office plus occasional travel/weekends away in the UK. You will be line managed by Young Greens' Chairs and Green Party Head of Office. Salary pro rata is c.£17,500.

This is ridiculous. The Conservatives cannot simply rely on the momentum behind them in order to run and recruit to its youth movement. Yes of course this helps, but at the end of the day, deep down, everyone knows that Conservative Future could be a much greater machine and aid the main party to a much, much greater extent.

When what is essentially a pressure group with lofty ideas of grandeur can afford to have a paid youth staffer, then surely the party that is set to form the next government, with the most money coming in, must concede that there is some merit to the idea?

Anyone? No...? Anyone...?

More Guardian nonsense...

Dear Peter Jones,

You are a moron of the highest order

. Come the counter revolution you have my written word that you will be the absolute first against the wall.

Lots of love

Tory Bear

Gordon's Alive...

Brown managed to

find time to congratulate

our cricketing heroes but not a squeak about a scandal that could potentially bring down his government.

Quote of the Day

TB was chatting to some people while MacAskill was giving his ridiculous justifications for releasing a mass murderer. A certain silver fox piped up with this absolute gem:

"I can't believe they clap in the Scottish Parliament. It's like a student union."

So true. On so many levels.

Oh no she didn't...

...oh yes

she did

.

Home Sweet Home.

After a fairly mammoth drive from the south of France, TB came out of the tunnel to the last half hour of the cricket. He has just got home for the first time in five weeks and was greeted to these two great images when he sat down to check his email.

Brown is in deep shit

, well done to

Drudge

for highlighting this to his millions and millions of American readers. After three fantastic weeks in the US, where conservative politics is done properly and two blissful weeks in the south of France, as well as the pending real world TB has to face, coming back to the UK was quite hard work, but what great news to come back to. Brown is on the rack again, the SNP have destroyed any semblance of credibility they once had (no confidence vote in Holyrood anyone?) and England have won the Ashes.

It's time for the Conservatives to seal the deal, it's nearly conference season. Labour's will be a bloodbath but the Tories cannot just sit back and watch. Apologies for the quiet blogging of the last few weeks, but panic not...

Things are going to get very interesting again, very quickly.

Something for the weekend...

TB is going to be in transit for most of the weekend driving back from France, so he will be rather quiet. In the meantime here are some of the long awaited pictures from the

Young America's Foundation

conference in DC a few weeks back. Seems Tory Bear has a whole legion of new fans, including Kate Obenshain of Fox News fame...

American girlies, if you fancy coming to the

Young Britons' Foundation

conference in October then you should probably take a look at

this

.

Get writing those essays if you want to see see the bear again...

Brown and Out

When it comes to this...

Dear Prime Minister,

The decision by the Scottish Justice Secretary to release Mr al-Megrahi on compassionate grounds has been widely condemned, including by President Obama.

As I said yesterday, I believe that the decision to release Megrahi was wrong. He was convicted of murdering 270 people, and I do not believe he deserved to be released on compassionate grounds, or returned to Libya.

The scenes of him receiving a rapturous welcome at Tripoli airport on his return will have distressed many people. I note that Colonel Gaddafi’s son has now publicly thanked not just the Scottish authorities but the British Government for its stance, raising questions about the British Government’s role

You have not commented on the decision since it was announced yesterday. This morning your Foreign Secretary refused several requests to say what he thought of the Scottish Justice Secretary’s decision.

The fact that the decision to release was taken by the Scottish Justice Secretary does not preclude you, as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, from now expressing your opinion on a subject that is of great public concern, and which affects Britain’s international reputation and our relations with our allies.

It is curious that while others have commented, Britain’s own Prime Minister has not.

I hope you will now take the opportunity to do so.

We are entitled to know what you and your Ministers have said to the Libyan authorities on this matter, and to the Scottish Justice Secretary.

Above all, I believe that the public are entitled to know what you think of the decision to release Megrahi, and whether you consider it was right or wrong.

I hope you will now take the opportunity to make your own view clear.

David Cameron

..you know the Prime Minister is a disgrace.

The grumbling is starting again...

This Observer isn't very happy

with Conservative Future and has some interesting words of encouragement that could be paraphrased with "kick" "up" and "backside":

"Since I joined the party in February, I have had precisely nil contact from Conservative Future. Indeed, had I not been an avid reader of political blogs I would not even have known that the organisation exists.

If the party genuinely wants to engage young people with politics. If it goes to all the bother (and presumably expense) of setting up a youth organisation to achieve just that, then it really should be making sure that everyone can get involved.

Doing that wouldn't be hard. All it means is regular e-mail updates to eligible CF members. It wouldn't cost much and the extra numbers of campaigning young people that might end up on the streets as a result could be huge."

Looking forward to hearing who the new co-options onto the National Exec for the election campaign are. They need to hit the ground running and instill some much needed energy into a exec that has been going close to 18 months now.

Nominations have closed and the selection process is apparently underway. TB has been assured it is completely independent of CCHQ, which fingers crossed means we might get some sound people.

You'll know when he knows.