So here we are.  After 2 years, 8 months, 12 days and 2,196 blogposts, I’m sorry to say that this is the end for Letters From A Tory.  My website is still funded for another few months so it won’t be disappearing just yet, but this is the last time you’ll hear from me.  Although the closing of this blog has left me on the verge of bursting into tears like a defeated Labour MP who has just taken a look at their CV for the first time in 13 years, I feel that the least I can do is say a few thank yous.

First of all, I’d like to thank everyone who has read this blog since it began back in 2007.  I know that many people prefer to read blogs rather than leave comments on them, meaning that I never really had the chance to say hi or show my appreciation.  I chose the ‘letters’ style of blogging because I thought it was a bit different as well as being a good way of debating topical issues, and with a bit of luck that is how it came across.  I’m sure that even the most ardent followers of this blog have disagreed with me on some occasions over the years but that hasn’t stopped you from coming back again and again to read my letters, and that means a lot to me. 

Second, thank you to all those readers who have commented on this blog.  Some of the people who commented in the past have since departed from this site, while others have joined the fray more recently.  Either way, you have provided me with hours and hours of entertainment, arguments and comedy mixed in with some memorable displays of wit, genius and verbal abuse.  This blog simply wouldn’t have been the same without it.  Shaun, Julia, Bill Quango, Talwin, Patently, Tony, Grumpy Old Man, Mark, Antisthenes, Stu, FLS, Measured and so many others have turned this blog into the greatest distraction from my day job that I could ever have wished for.  You’ve also taught me a lot about a whole host of issues, philosophies, ideas and policies, and for that I’m very grateful.

Finally, I’d like to thank all the people who’ve pushed this blog along by linking to it, praising it, slagging it off, nominating it for awards or even just giving it a passing mention.  It’s all part of the fun / madness of the blogosphere, and I’m sad to be leaving that behind.

All that is left for me to say is best wishes to all of you, and fingers crossed that this country will eventually recover from the long and painful journey it is about to embark on.  Who knows what our economy, our society and our politics will look like in years to come.  It’s a shame that I won’t be there to give my views on how it all plays out, but with so many people blogging and tweeting about our wonderfully insane world of politics, I doubt you’ll miss a thing. 

This is Letters From A Tory, signing out.

This is the final letter that I will ever write, as this blog will sadly be closing down tomorrow (along with a final goodbye from me).  I appreciate that this salient fact may have escaped your attention due to some rather important events in your own life and career over the past few days.  Even so, regardless of the election result, you were always going to be the last person that I wrote to, as there is so much that I’d like to say.

When you became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005, I had barely heard of you.  Along you came, with a superb leadership campaign and a genuine belief that the Conservative Party had to change in order to win an election – which was, of course, entirely correct.  Over the following months and years, we saw the environment take centre-stage, euroscepticism get quietly tucked away and centre-ground political thinking forced onto a somewhat reluctant group of MPs.  It was necessary, but it was a bitter pill to swallow.  Nevertheless, the Conservative MPs on the benches behind you in the House of Commons soon realised that you could deliver a Conservative government, and for that reason alone they kept their mouths shut (most of the time).  However, your inner cabal of strategists, image gurus and modernisers did not have it all their own way.  On several occasions, including the election campaign itself and the election that never was in 2007, your closed circle came under huge pressure from the electorate and your own party.  Yes, they survived, as did you, but only just.  As we approached the recent general election, voters were still unsure about who you were and what you believed in, which is staggering after five years of leading the opposition.  Your desire to keep your cards close to your chest and deal purely in intangibles and soundbytes almost cost you a place in 10 Downing Street.  The public don’t like feeling uneasy about potential Prime Ministers, yet they were fed uneasiness in spades.  Despite all the funding you could have asked for and a crippled government, it so nearly went horribly wrong.

Here we are, just a few days later, witnessing a truly historic coalition between you – a liberal conservative – and the Liberal Democrats.  Ironically enough, everything is completely different yet little has changed.  You still have a group of MPs who will be sitting behind you, watching, waiting, holding their nerve for as long as possible in the hope that you can deliver a truly successful and admired Conservative government.  Common sense tells them to keep quiet rather than voice their anger and irritation.  You will have your inner cabal with you in government as they were in opposition, making decisions that affect everyone and everything despite having shown their incompetence on more than one occasion.  Moreover, the coalition deal has put many of your favoured issues – social justice, a green economy, civil liberties – at the heart of your plans for government.  You didn’t hide your disappointment at not getting a majority in the House of Commons, yet you have gracefully and seamlessly organised a historic coalition with another party.  The question on everyone’s lips now is, naturally, will it last?  I have no idea what the answer is to that question, but then again neither do you.  What I find interesting, though, is not that things could go well or go badly – that is just stating the obvious.  The most incredible element of this coalition is the breathtaking gulf between the best case scenario and worst case scenario for you and the Conservative Party. 

The best case scenario for 2015 is simple enough.  The economy will be growing at a healthy rate and both unemployment and economic inactivity will be reduced.  The welfare state will have been transformed by supporting people into work and punishing those who chose not to get a job.  Our broken society will have begun its long healing process through stronger families, good schools, lower crime and genuine localism taking hold.  Government waste will have been largely eliminated and the state will be much leaner and fitter than it is now.  British people will be put first, civil liberties will be untouchable and immigration will be severely curtailed.  People’s faith in politics and politicians will have been mostly restored.  The Lib Dems will have kept their end of the deal, leaving themselves with absolutely no electoral appeal relative to the Conservative Party and facing annihilation.  The Labour Party will be rife with infighting and weak leadership, making them virtually unelectable given your strong performance as Prime Minister and with the memory of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown fresh in many people’s minds.

The worst scenario, however, is nothing short of disaster.  The coalition falls apart within months as the Lib Dems walk away, accusing you of ignoring them and not delivering on promises.  You look weak and indecisive, with your own party demanding tougher action on any number of issues.  The Conservative grassroots refuse to campaign because you and your inner cabal leave them disillusioned with pointless platitudes and non-traditional policies.  The economy staggers along, still badly wounded, and public sector cuts push unemployment in the wrong direction.  The voters ignore your pleas over the necessity of cutting government spending while every policy announcement is met with scorn and cries of ’spin’.  Your school reforms and localist agenda stumble and fall.  Your welfare reforms leave you branded as abandoning the poor and needy.  Uncontrolled immigration continues unabated and the anger spills over onto the streets.  Your pro-EU stance forces some backbench MPs to break ranks and speak out against the party line.  Labour regroups and, as the only strong opposition party, lap up your failures and convince the floating Lib Dems and disgruntled Conservative voters to join them.  Electoral defeat is little more than an inevitability.

My political crystal ball is of no use.  For the life of me, I just cannot see where this will all end up. Neither the best case scenario nor the worst case scenario are implausible, outlandish or inconceivable, yet the two scenarios are a staggering distance apart.  The only thing that I can say with any certainty is that the future is very uncertain.  The history books will remember the next five years of British politics as one of the most incredible periods in living memory.  I just can’t decide whether that will be for better or for worse.

Good luck, Mr Cameron.  You’re going to need it.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

2. Adam Collyer thinks the Lib Dems have been skewered by the Conservatives.

3. Counting Cats can’t decide between becoming Madonna or the leader of the Labour Party.

4. A Very British Dude wants faster orgasms and First Past The Post.

5. The Great Simpleton laughs at Polly and the rest of the Guardian no-hopers.

- Tory MP Greg Hands, whose wife is half-East German and half-Russian

Ok, ok, I know that we don’t have all the details yet of your coalition with David Cameron and the Conservative Party.  Even so, I think it is worth considering what you have been given by the Conservatives and also what might have been if things had been ever so slightly different on election day.  Regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with the decision to form a coalition government, the apparent mismatch between your bargaining position at the coalition talks and your election performance is quite remarkable.

As I write this letter, I can congratulate you on becoming Deputy Prime Minister as this is one of the very few confirmed posts.  There are also rumours about Vince Cable being given the post of Chief Secretary to the Treasury, which could give him significant scope for taking on the banks, while David Laws and Chris Huhne may be in line for senior Cabinet positions as well.  For the Liberal Democrats, the allure of power seemed too great to ignore.  I am in no doubt that if Labour and the Lib Dems were able to form a majority government together then this would have come to pass rather than a Con-Lib coalition, as the differences in policy, values and attitudes between the Conservatives and Lib Dem could hardly be greater.  That said, the compromises offer some cause for optimism.  Marriage tax breaks and inheritance tax breaks are off the agenda for now while a referendum on AV is effectively guaranteed.  Few Conservatives would oppose your ambition of raising the income tax threshold to £10,000, although during this unsettled economic time I think it is madness to pursue such a policy.  Even so, the Lib Dems have successfully negotiated on a number of key areas and no doubt the senior figures in your party will consider that something of a success.

Despite all this, I am still feeling rather numb this morning.  When a Lib-Lab pact was floated, the rather cruel observation that it would be a ‘Coalition of Losers’ took hold very quickly – and with good reason.  Such a term highlighted one very important fact that I believe some commentators are missing: the Lib Dems are losers.  The 2010 general election was nothing short of a humiliation for the Lib Dems.  At least Labour had low expectations, whereas the Lib Dems were aiming for 100+ seats.  Never before in British politics have I seen a party or individual so comprehensively defeated yet end up with more stature and power than they had before.  If the Conservatives had gained just a handful more seats, your position as leader of the Lib Dems would be seriously under threat and your party would be consigned to a thoroughly deserved period of irrelevance yet again.  In my view, the only reason that the Lib Dems even had a voice at the negotiating table was because David Cameron wanted this to work, not because you or your party had done anything to merit a strong negotiating position.  For a party to end up with one-sixth of the number of MPs as the Conservatives but still be awarded several senior Cabinet roles is incredible.

It seems as though David Cameron’s desire to form a coalition government was the decisive factor in these negotiations.  On the basis of your election performance, you deserved no sympathy and no Cabinet positions.  However, Cameron obviously felt that he was better going forward with someone else on board, even if it came at considerable cost to his own MPs and his support among the grassroots.  This almost unprecendeted coalition has put both you and our new Prime Minister in a perilous position before the new government has even had its first Cabinet meeting.  Whether or not this backroom deal can stand the test of time, or even a few years, remains to be seen.  Even so, when you and your colleagues feel like rebelling or breaking the line or tearing up the coalition deal - which will surely happen before too long – just remember the fate that could have awaited you as you woke up on Friday 7th May 2010.  Your career could have been over by now, were it not for the Conservatives being off their game in the run-up to the election.  Quite simply, you are the luckiest man in British politics.

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

2. Leg Iron lays down a challenge to Labour and the Green Party.

3. Daily Maybe discusses the three elections that never happened.

4. Dick Puddlecote declares that the Lib Dems are a bunch of fence-sitters.

5. Heresy Corner looks back on the strange death of the Lib-Lab coalition.

- a tweet from Lib Dem MP Greg Mulholland

Well, well, well.  You’ve certainly livened things up a bit, haven’t you.  In one of the most cynical moves of this entire post-election period, you have thrown yourself on your sword (at least, that’s what you want us to think) in an attempt to outflank the Conservatives.  While this will definitely have put the cat among the Conservative pidgeons, it is one of the last acts in a truly astonishing political career that has seen you follow your predecessor in falling from grace in the most humiliating and public fashion.

If your political career had ended in 2007 rather than 2010, the history books would have told an amazing story.  A Labour Chancellor who ushered in the longest period of economic growth ever recorded, a Labour Chancellor who abolished boom and bust, stable interest rates, stable growth – it was all so astounding, and it was all a lie.  Your economic reputation has been comprehensively shattered by the recent recession.  Having said that, I do not mean that the recession itself destroyed your mythical status, rather that the recession has uncovered the timebombs that your incompetence planted so many years ago.  You are responsible for the faulty regulation system that allowed the banking crisis to develop over many years, you are responsible for not calling time on consumer debt, you are responsible for ruining the solid economy that you inherited in 1997 and you are responsible for such an appallingly cavalier attitude to public spending that has now left this country facing the sharpest government cutbacks in history.  These timebombs have been ticking ever so quietly in the background since 1997, but they were never going to stay hidden forever.  Just look where we are now.  We’ve just had the worst recession since WWII, government and consumer debt is spiralling out of control, the public sector is running out of control, unemployment is higher than in 1997 and we have 8 million adults not in work.

The history books will also rightly remember the scandals that struck your premiership as well, and they haven’t been in short supply.  The Labour Party donation scandals, ID cards and numerous other attacks on civil liberties, losing 28 million child benefit records, the 10p tax rate debacle, Expensesgate, failing to equip our armed forces properly, several attempts to dethrone you from within your own party (which you only just survived) and – perhaps most memorably – the election that never was.  If you hadn’t dithered at that crucial moment in September 2007, the 2010 election would never have happened and you would still be Prime Minister for at least two more years.  Dithering has become a Brown trademark over the past three years, as all the big decisions have left you floundering around for someone or something to blame other than yourself.  It has been a truly undignified period in your political career.  How fitting that your resignation speech, or should I say the chaos that you hoped the speech would bring, was just as undignified.  That said, I’m sure Mandelson and Campbell have been pulling all the strings since the election result on Friday, and this underhand tactic has their grubby hands all over it.

There is, of course, a wonderful irony to the end of your time as PM.  You plan to remain PM for another three months while a Lib Dem coalition is formed and a leadership contest plays out, which is just farcical.  You also expect the British people to accept another unelected PM following talks with the Lib Dems, which is similarly farcical.  Personally, I think it would have made much more sense for you to remain PM for a little while longer but tell the Lib Dems that you would not fight another election in charge, so that at least they knew who they might be going into a coalition with.  Instead, we get dithering, confusion, poor leadership, cynical positioning and a lamentable state of affairs that will surely leave the public unimpressed.  Just like the good old times, eh Gordon?

Yours sincerely,

A.Tory

2. A Very British Dude thinks PR is just a sideshow for the mess Labour have created.

3. The Blue Idea reminds us that PR is not the only problem with our political system.

4. Next Left is worried that a Labour leadership contest could make things even worse for them.

5. Capitalists at Work warns against misreading Nick Clegg’s latest moves.

- Jonathan Freedland in today’s Guardian (full article HERE)