I always enjoy reading ConHome. Montgomerie has certainly got his own point of view, but the comment threads are fairly balanced & show all sections of the party.

My favourite contributors are Malcolm Dunn & Sally Roberts, & I can’t help smiling at the UKIP & Labour trolls as well.

You don’t get many neocons on that site & when Montgomerie talks toss, the majority will point this out to him.

I leave the odd comment myself. But life’s too short to get in their discussions, so I just read them. It’s good to find a site where you can go over a discussion thread & find it genuinely enlightening.

This site is the same.

Oh I don’t deny that. I’m just saying he’s pretty to the right of where his party stands on most policies (except immigration perhaps).

I’m not sure you’re correct on that point, Sunny.

The Conservative party leadership and it’s membership have been disconnected for quite some while (placing TM in a hugely influential intermediate position), however their recent decline in membership may be addressing this imbalance (possibly as a result of TM’s efforts).

Conservative disarmony – it is really the great unspoken. An example during recent researches on airport policy I found about three or four different strands of opinion. The leadership is pretty much taking the newspaper-friendly centre-right/liberal/wet view that protecting the environment (aka Tory voters) is paramount, Boris Johnson is taking a substantial wing fifty miles out to sea in the fog (while overtly trying to paint the opposition to the third runway bright blue). Meanwhile there’s a substantial lot on the right who wonder why on earth the red-blooded capitalists and freedom loving individualists of the Conservative Party are letting namby-pamby euro-commie greenery get in the way of carpeting southern England in runways, and anyway there’s nothing wrong with the damn climate.

Of course, without ConHome I’d have been fairly unaware of this. I disagree with most of what’s on it and some of the writers are monstrous ignoramuses, but it’s a damn good effort, isn’t it?

Mind you I’m still not ready to decide what the reality is – Conservatives as rebranded New Labour or Conservatives as rebranded New Labour that sooner or later turns into rebranded loony culture war Republicanism. Are Iceland accepting asylum seekers?

“Meanwhile there’s a substantial lot on the right who wonder why on earth the red-blooded capitalists and freedom loving individualists of the Conservative Party are letting namby-pamby euro-commie greenery get in the way of carpeting southern England in runways, and anyway there’s nothing wrong with the damn climate.”

Strange that freedom loving individualists would be supporting the state in its theft of private land. There is a libertarian free market private property rights argument sagainst Heathrow expansion.

Richard – it’s this crew I was mainly interested in – http://www.c-fit.org.uk/. Guido is, or appears to be, a fan, possibly for totty rather than libertarian reasons, admittedly. They all look about twelve. Bless.

CFIT is an unfortunate acronym for an aviation pressure group, too.

I’m surprised it’s taken this long to try this to be honest…

“In effect, when New Labour abandoned the grass-roots, so did the Tories because the upper hierarchy at both parties felt they’d be a lot more free without the shackles of internal democracy.”

Actually I’d say the tories did the opposite to labour, and embraced their grass roots and introduced party democracy when labour did the opposite. Its why Kenneth Clarke lost to IDS and the conservatives stayed in opposition.

It is argued that Cameron should be much further ahead of Gordon Brown in the polls than he is now

I imagine most Tory activists think the current lead of 10%-15% is enough. Particularly as it’s hard to think of a single reason why it should shrink…

If this recession lasts for 2 years, a large numbers of small amd medium sized businesses go bust and serious crime rises ,then any party will need a lot more than PR to win an election. A combination of criticism of international finance, a demand for effective and tough policing plus a downgrading of concerns about the environment could undermine Cameron. Someone like David Davis may resonate far more with the electorate.

“At the time, they thought the Party was enamoured by the Liberal Establishment and wanted it to return to its traditional roots. Slowly slowly, person by person, inch by inch, they planned their takeover of the Republican Party. The New Conservatives ousted the old guard.”

Yeah but you know its not as simple as that. The neo-cons who took over the Party in the 1980s had no intention whatever of returning the GOP to its ‘traditional’ roots. Unlike traditional conservatives, neocons don’t think state power is a problem at all, (except when it’s exercised by anti-war Leftists) Since the 90s they’ve succeeded completely in turning anti-government red-staters into power worshippers and supporters of militaristic adventures. From the point of view of a conservative in 1952, The Republican Party of today would be considered as extremely left-wing.

“They don’t want to acknowledge public opinion over abortion rights”

Yeah, a bit like the way this site doesn’t want to acknowledge public opinion on uncontrolled immigration.