New Tories show some saving grace (From The Northern Echo)

New Tories show some saving grace

10:02am Thursday 4th March 2010 in

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I MAY have been too nasty to the next crop of Conservative MPs heading to Westminster and would like to set the record straight.

A few weeks ago, I expressed horror at a survey that found a puny nine per cent believed MPs had an obligation to send their children to a state school – with 91 per cent eager to go private. How could MPs too highand- mighty to use their local school have any commitment to funding them properly for the rest of us, I asked.

Well, that criticism still holds, but a further survey has thrown up more attractive characteristics among David Cameron’s wannabes – trends for which the Tory leader deserves credit.

According to a Times poll of 100 candidates in the most winnable seats, no fewer than 65 per cent believe gay couples have “exactly the same rights as heterosexuals”, while 52 per cent view multiculturalism as a “good thing”. One candidate even named assassinated San Francisco gay rights champion Harvey Milk as his hero. The blue-rinse brigade will be reaching for their smelling salts.

These are remarkable turnarounds from the current crop – changes unthinkable before the easy-going Mr Cameron pushed so hard to find a different type of Tory.

But that is where the good news ends. Because the rest of the survey confirms that the next generation truly are Thatcher’s Children – no matter that she is 20 years gone.

No fewer than 32 nominated the Iron Lady as their political hero, making her the comfortable winner ahead of Winston Churchill (26) and the likes of William Wilberforce (eight) and Nelson Mandela (six).

Just nine per cent side with the overwhelming view of scientists that climate change is “largely man-made”, a plunge from 27 per cent among current Conservative MPs.

Meanwhile, a separate poll of 101 candidates found that 72 per cent wanted a “fundamental renegotiation” of Britain’s relationship with the European Union.

Fascinating stuff, but also, I believe, results that perfectly mirror the path followed by Mr Cameron himself in the four years since he seized the leadership.

He genuinely is a new type of Tory, comfortable with modern, socially liberal Britain – even if, by his own admission, he came late to supporting gay rights.

But, whereas Tony Blair truly challenged and changed the Labour Party – over public ownership, high public spending, trade union power – Mr Cameron has repeatedly ducked similar confrontation.

On so many issues – Europhobia, grammar schools, massive spending cuts, hostility to the state, tax cuts for the rich and for marriage – he has settled for the easy life, rather than unpopularity in his own party.

Yet, with the banking scandal, most of the country has rejected free-wheeling Thatcherism – the reason, perhaps, why the Tory poll lead is shrinking fast.

IN this week’s edition of Parliament’s The House Magazine, gaffe-prone Tory communities spokeswoman Caroline Spelman talks of her “joyful feeling after a safe delivery”

of her shake-up of planning rules.

On that delivery day, I made repeated, unsuccessful attempts to put to Ms Spelman the criticisms, from across the North, that scrapping regional development agencies and regional spatial strategies will be a disaster.

Sadly, she appeared to be in hiding – proving it is easy to claim success if you duck the tough questions.