Britannia Radio

Today's ConservativeHome top features

ToryDiary: The Financial Times identifies ten weaknesses of Cameron's leadership

Columnist Andrew Lilico: How should Britain think of herself and how can we become what we aspire to be?

Roger Scruton: The Conservative Party is failing to define and promote its vision

Lord Ashcroft: Why yesterday was such a proud and exciting day for me at the new Bomber Command Memorial

Local government: Nick Botterill chosen to be new leader of Hammersmith and Fulham

The Deep End on 1950s America... When culture was popular

WATCH:

• An Elected Lords wouldn't have been in the Queen's Speech, says Andrew Mitchell, if the Conservatives were governing on their own
• Labour ordered Jump Jets. The Coalition cancelled the order. Now they're ordering Jump Jets again.
• Ed Miliband says Cameron and Clegg are out of touch with their own parties as well as the country.

Today's ConservativeHome newslinks

David Cameron braced for revelations about links with Murdoch media empire when Andy Coulson testifies at the Leveson Inquiry -Press Association

• Andy Coulson is likely to have attended sensitive meetings without proper vetting, No 10 admits - Guardian
• Coulson 'could do enormous damage' to Cameron, warns Lance Price -ITV
• Cameron's constituents think he became too close to Murdochs -Independent

Business groups say only one of 19 Queen's Speech bills will boost economy

"The Prime Minister defended the Government’s record and said that the Coalition had introduced a series of radical reforms in welfare, education and other areas over the past two years. Senior Tory sources said that the Budget in March had helped business by cutting corporation tax and reducing the top rate of income tax." - Telegraph

• Business leaders yesterday blasted David Cameron — claiming his blueprint to kick-start the economy had turned out to be a lame duck -The Sun
• Businesses warn that new parent leave law could be "nightmare" to administer - Daily Mail
• The Wall Street Journal says some draft Bills will get in the way of business.
• "We are in an economic emergency, not in normal times. The fact that the coalition displayed so little imagination yesterday bodes ill for its long-term survival." - Allister Heath in City AM
• If the public sector became as productive as the private sector, it would act as a very powerful boost to growth - Andrew Haldenby in The Telegraph

> ConHome yesterday: Think tanks give lukewarm reception to the Queen's Speech, urging more radical economic measures

Labour plans to side with Tory rebels to disrupt coalition's Lords reform bill - Guardian

• Cameron urges Tories to back Lords reform - Telegraph
• There is as much chance of agreement on Lords reform as there is of the sun shining in May - Steve Richards in The Independent

The Tories can't win without the boundary review - Peter Oborne in The Telegraph

> Paul Goodman on ConHome yesterday: Cameron cannot gain a workable Conservative majority without the boundary review

Queen's speech fails to mention gay marriage leaving campaigners baffled - Metro

• "With his endorsement of gay marriage on Wednesday, President Obama electrified his liberal base, incensed cultural conservatives and may have ensured that a debate on social issues will play a part in the debate ahead of the November election." - USA Today

Queen's Speech not Conservative enough, says Mail

"The overall picture is surely clear. As has invariably been the case throughout the Coalition’s two-year existence, the Lib Dems, though representing only one sixth of the Government in terms of MPs, get their way over a very much larger proportion of Government measures." - Stephen Glover in the Daily Mail

Daily Mail comment: "Of course David Cameron is hampered, as he now admits, by the need to keep his Coalition partners on side. But with almost nothing distinctively Tory in the Speech, this looks more like a surrender than a compromise. In the depths of crisis, Britain demands better."

Some welcomes for thinness of Speech

• "It does not worry me that the Speech was light on new bills. The UK is scarcely short of laws. Much of what needs to be done now requires competent administration rather than lots of  new legislation. The health, welfare and school reforms require patient and purposeful execution and follow up." - John Redwood
• Times leader (£): "The best Queen’s Speech in a year of highly publicised alternatives would have been: “My Government will complete the bold and necessary tasks it set itself two years ago.” But would that have warranted the coach and crown?"
• Express leader: "What Britain really needs is not more laws and regulations but fewer. If the bonfire of quangos and red tape that ministers customarily promise were to actually take place then the economy might start growing again."

Other Queen's Speech verdicts

• "Not for the first time, Lord Ashcroft got it right this week when he observed that the government needs a sense of direction not a change of direction" - Martin Kettle in The Guardian. The article in question by Michael Ashcroft was on ConHome yesterday.
• Tim Montgomerie and Polly Toynbee in The Guardian
• Cameron still not speaking our language saysThe Sun

> ConHome's full list of Queen's Speech Bills

Hate cleric al Qatada loses right to extradition appeal - Sun

Dominic Raab MP in The Express: "Yesterday’s hearing was held in secrecy. The verdict was not written down. Nor did they give reasons. It was just announced by a court lackey. Imagine the uproar if a British court behaved in such an arrogant way. The estimated taxpayers’ bill for this legal wrangling now tops £3million. But, is the end in sight? The artful Qatada will try every legal trick to stay here. But our courts are expected to approve hi s deportation within weeks. Then, Qatada will probably launch another appeal to Strasbourg Expect Strasbourg to call on Britain to suspend his deportation again, whilst they navel gaze for months – and possibly block his deportation anyway."

Fox getting blamed by "senior Government figures" for Jump Jets U-turn - FT (£)

• The Scotsman warns against the threat to merge the Black Watch and Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders.

Michael Gove has demanded new safeguards to protect girls in children’s homes from being groomed for sex by organised gangs of men - Times (£)

David Aaronovitch in The Times (£) - there IS a link between Islam and the grooming rings: "Of course it is no more a tenet of Islam that girls should be seduced than it is of Rome that altar boys be abused. But the fact that it happens must tell us something. And this is the something that I think Rochdale suggests. It reminds us that misogyny is a huge problem in many cultures, and in some more than others. Many Muslims and Muslim communities are modern in their desire for equal freedoms for men and women, boys and girls. But others most certainly are not."

Number 10 attacks Right-wing "losers"

"One No 10 source describes the proposal to solve Conservatives’ problems with a sharp turn to the right as “demonstrably absurd”. Special contempt is reserved in Team Cameron for the suggestion that duff election results can be explained by an excess of social liberalism. “The idea that we lost seats because of gay marriage or anything like that is just false,” says an aide. The demands for a change of course are dismissed as carping by “the usual suspects” – losers in old leadership races and career troublemakers." - Rafael Behr in the New Statesman

> Yesterday evening's ToryDiary reported attacks on Cameron's critics from Cameroonian loyalists

Murdo Fraser MSP welcomes Labour's success against SNP - ToryHoose

400,000 public sector workers will strike today over pensions - BBC

"Thousands of police officers are due to march through central London on Thursday in protest at funding cuts. The demonstration, organised by the Police Federation – which represents rank and file officers – is aimed at drawing attention to the 20 per cent reduction in central government spending on police forces and its effect on public safety." - FT (£)

'Britain treats Europe like a self-service restaurant' claims new French president Francois Hollande in swipe at Cameron - Daily Mail

Highlights from yesterday

 

ToryDiary: Cameron hails the Queen's Speech as doing right by "the do-ers, the strivers, those who work hard and play by the rules"

Local government: Labour/Conservative coalitions to run Aberdeen and Stirling

WATCH:

• The Queen's Speech outlines the Government's economic priorities for the next session
• Dennis Skinner MP's usual Black Rod heckling: "Diamond Jubilee, double dip recession, what a start!"
• David Cameron: "This is a Government that is taking the tough decisions to help families who work hard and do the right thing, acting for the long-term, governing in the national interest"
• Vince Cable: Shareholder activism "is healthy, that's how this problem should be dealt with"

Local government: Fewer children should be in children's homes

Bill Cash MP on Comment: The Coalition prevents the principles the Conservatives and Liberal Unionists merged to fight for a century ago today