Training | 2010.03.15
Hugh Muir's diary
They learn their trade in training camps. How to attack, how to fight. Beware these Tories
• A problem for Labour now we know that a squad of Tory election candidates have been through intense indoctrination at the "Conservative madrasa" run by Donal Blaney\'s Young Britons\' Foundation . They get to shoot guns, if that\'s their thing, and when the clips are empty, take instruction from leaders who justify waterboarding, dismiss global warming as a scam and deride the NHS as the "biggest waste of money". And it is a problem, because having been through the training, they are out there in the community. But they are not all swivel-eyed. How to identify them? It\'s a toughie but if it helps, we know that among those tutored by the YBF are Conor Burns, the candidate in Bournemouth West, and Mark Clarke, the Foundation\'s director of outreach, standing against transport minister Sadiq Khan in Tooting. Also Michelle Donelan, spokeswoman for Conservative Future, pitted against housing minister John Healey. And Karen Allen deployed to South Shields against David Miliband. Jesse Norman is embedded in Hereford South, and is cited as a graduate on a YBF flyer. But having checked his diary, he says that\'s wrong, and we believe him. Others will undoubtedly blur the issue. The only real protection we have is vigilance.
• And what chance of extra training for shadow culture spokesman Ed Vaizey (pictured), who last year called for the selling off of Radio 1, only to have that aspiration ruled out by his betters. And who last week urged the BBC to save digital station 6 Music, having initially voiced support for the corporation\'s right to close it. And who, , having claimed that Samantha Cameron may well have voted Labour, was obliged to withdraw that statement as having "no justification". Steady. Too much humble pie can make a man feel sick.
• Roll up, roll up! Brought to you by the Sunday Express without benefit of irony. The headline: "An insult to democracy." The author: Neil Hamilton, disgraced former MP.
• And here\'s Carol Vorderman, David Cameron\'s maths adviser, speaking before last week\'s disastrous speak-your-weight-machine appearance on Question Time. "They\'ve been asking me for years," she told Easy Living magazine. "But I feel ready for it now. In for a penny" Yes, into the deep end.
• Will there ever be peace in the sniper-strewn jungle that is theatre criticism? We fear not. For history will record that Ian Shuttleworth, the FT\'s man, referred Tim Walker, his counterpart at the Sunday Telegraph, to the Press Complaints Commission complaining that an article by Walker referred to him and was "fattist". He lost. Walker wrote about the hostilities. Shuttleworth complained to the PCC once more. He has just lost again. And that should be the end of it, as Walker has apparently promised to maintain a "graceful silence". But who can tell? Hate stalks the landscape still. Enmities run deep.
• Finally, he was the darling of the right and the catalyst for momentous change in the eyes of the Daily Telegraph. "The beginning of the end for political correctness: the counter-revolution has begun in Doncaster," his friends there said. But it never quite felt that way, and now, under the erratic reign of the English Democrat man Peter Davies, it feels like things are unravelling. Since the audit commission jetted in, hoping to make sense of chaos, councillors have passed a vote of no confidence in the man who praised the Taliban. And in the interim, there has been the leaking to the Yorkshire Post of a confidential report written by his officials, including the chief executive. Officers allege that they have been "subject to strong pressures to change or not give professional advice on important and sensitive matters," it says. Advice "given in good faith has been poorly received and ignored". Davies won\'t agree with that interpretation, but still, he has another pressing problem – that councillors have voted for a 2.95% council tax rise when he promised the electorate a 3% reduction. Is it "the beginning of the end for political correctness"? Or just the beginning of the end?
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/mar/09/hugh-muir-diary-ed-vaizey
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