NO CLAUSE FOUR, JUST PLUNKING FOR WAY THREE:

Cameron urges Tories to back him against right (Julian Glover, February 28, 2006, Guardian)

David Cameron will ask Conservative members today to back a radical redefinition of his party's goals in an effort to crush unease on the party's right wing over the scrapping of cherished policies.

In a speech to party activists in London tonight the Conservative leader will appeal, over the heads of what he believes is a minority of disgruntled MPs, to the party membership which elected him with a commanding majority in last year's leadership election.

He will launch a document drawing together for the first time the party's central goals and call on party members to debate it and back it in a ballot. [...]

It sets out eight defining ambitions for the party, emphasising a compassionate agenda that focuses on helping the disadvantaged. The plan starts by pledging to put "economic stability and fiscal responsibility first" which it says "must come before tax cuts", and pledges that resources would be shared over time between better public services and reducing taxes.

The test of Tory policies must be "how they help the most disadvantaged in society, not the rich", it says, reversing Margaret Thatcher's famous phrase to declare "there is such a thing as society". It promises to improve schools and hospitals "for everyone, not help a few to opt out", but insists that public services "don't have to be run by the state".

Government can be "a force for good", it declares, supporting aspirations such as home ownership, saving for a pension and starting a business, as well as supporting families and marriage, carers as well as sport, the arts and culture. "The right test for our policies is how they help the most disadvantaged in society, not the rich," the document argues.

The document echoes Mr Cameron's emphasis on the environment, calling for a "long-term, cross-party consensus on sustainable development and climate change". It also picks up on last year's mass campaign to end developing world debt, arguing that "it is our moral obligation to make poverty history".

Last night some Conservatives - although not Mr Cameron - argued that the document and party ballot was an attempt to define the modern Conservative party in the way Tony Blair's scrapping of clause four defined New Labour in the mid-1990s.

"I think the right thing to do is to put out what the party stands for and is fighting for," Mr Cameron told the BBC last night. "We don't have a clause four so I'm not asking the party to junk something."

Back to Thatcherism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 28, 2006 7:20 AM