Letters From A Tory Daily views on British politics and the Conservative Party from a centre-right thinker who writes letters on his blog to politicians, journalists and many others.

Welcome to ‘Letters From A Tory’, covering British politics from a conservative perspective. Please leave a comment if you have any thoughts about today’s letter, and don’t forget that you can CLICK HERE to get my letters sent to you by RSS every morning.
First came ‘Change That Works For You. Building A Fairer Britain’ [...]

Dear David Cameron,
It’s been a rocky few weeks to say the least, although you seem to be just about keeping your head above water in the national and marginals polls.  Today Gordon Brown will make a speech about the economy at the same time as more bad news pours in.  I’m not a fan of [...]

Dear George Osborne,
Last week I wrote a letter to David Cameron expressing my extreme irritation and frustration at the stumbling, confused and downright incompetent campaign that the Conservatives have run thus far.  The only reason that you didn’t get a letter from me yesterday was that Gordon Brown’s bullying allegations took the media by storm.  [...]

Dear Alistair Darling,
I’m sure No 10 and No 11 are tempted to feel quite smug at the news that more than 60 senior economists have signed two open letters that back the chancellor’s decision to delay government spending cuts until 2011.  The letters in the Financial Times say that any measures to trim the budget [...]

“The UK is a must to avoid. Its gilts are resting on a bed of nitroglycerine.”
- Bill Gross, co-founder of California-based fund managers Pimco (who are one of the world’s biggest buyers of bonds), dealing a severe blow to the Government’s hopes of claiming credit for reviving the British economy.  His remarks, whose pronouncements on [...]

Wow.  Just a matter of hours after Obama gets humiliated in Massachusetts, he hits back in spectacular style with major banking reforms.  His proposals are twofold: first to stop banks from proprietary trading – where a bank bets on markets for their own gain, not for their customers; and second, to limit the pace of consolidation to [...]

Dear Gordon Brown,
It wasn’t long after Kraft’s audacious takeover bid for Cadbury got the green light that the unions starting stomping their feet about potential job losses.  The deal ends more than more than 150 years of independence for the maker of Dairy Milk, which will now be subsumed within the world’s second-biggest food company.  [...]

“Due to severe weather conditions, we are closed. Sorry for any incontinence caused”
- notice outside a Halifax branch in Barnet, Hertfordshire

Dear readers,
I’ve seen a couple of interesting news clippings that have uncovered almost identical poll results from completely different questions, so to start off this week I thought I would find out what you make of them…
In the foxhunting corner:
In a landmark legal ruling, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the Hunting Act does [...]

This is John Varley - the chief executive of Barclays.
He thinks London’s role as a leading financial hub may be “damaged” by the new bonus tax.  He told the BBC that “banks are competing globally – this bank, Barclays, competes with banks all around the world and we have to be able to compete on a level [...]

“We love Gordon and Alistair over here — we rather hope they get another term.”
- James de la Cloche, director of Edge, a property consultancy in Jersey.  It is reported today that the number of directors of British companies who have registered in the Channel Island tax havens of Jersey and Guernsey, along with the [...]

“The banking industry did not cause a housing bubble, it wasn’t the one setting monetary policy and it wasn’t in charge of the regulator.”
- Angela Knight, the chief executive of the British Bankers’ Association, as the banking industry today warned the Treasury that plans for a “supertax” on bankers’ bonuses would damage the City’s reputation [...]

“I’ve always been clear that I’m not against people being rewarded for hard work.”
- Alistair Darling, explaining that the upcoming Financial Services Bill will include new powers for the FSA to rip up contracts for bankers who are paid “unjustifiable” multi-million-pound bonuses (full story HERE)

Dear Alistair Darling,
After Gordon Brown was humiliated on the international stage over his unexpected proposal for a so-called Tobin tax on the financial sector, it falls to you to try and convince us that everyone still loves his idea.  Unfortunately, as with every announcement on cracking down on tax havens, rogue bankers, greed, excessive bonuses [...]

“doing God’s work”
- how Lloyd Blankfein, chairman and chief executive of Goldman Sachs, described bankers in his interview with The Sunday Times.  Mr Blankfein, the son of a Brooklyn postal worker, believes that banks serve a “social purpose” and argues that the return of big profits and bonuses should be welcomed as proof the economy is [...]

Dear George Osborne,
Having watched your performance at the Conservative Party conference, it was clear to me that you are keen to put electoral strategy and voter sentiment ahead of common sense.  While this is not a bad idea in the run-up to an election, one does wonder if you’ll ever be able to turn it [...]

“The trouble is, if you compare sterling and the dollar, it is like two drunks propping up the bar”
- Mark O’Sullivan, of Currencies Direct, on the plummeting value of the pound and the dollar

Dear David Cameron,
No doubt you will have read last week about the damning MG Rover report and the job losses at Diageo, the drinks manufacturer.  I wonder what you made of these two incidents because, despite being in very different industries, their respective situations pose a huge challenge to any government.  The question that I [...]

Dear Lord Mandelson,
Yesterday, I felt a mixture of disbelief and raging fury at your reaction to the MG Rover report.  In response to the news that the Phoenix Four had supposedly pocketed an “unreasonable” £42 million in pay and perks, you said ministers had been faultless.  You added: “We’ve not seen an ounce of humility [...]

Dear Lord Turner,
As the Financial Services Authority (FSA) is in its final days now that the Conservatives have committed themselves to scrapping your organisation, you have evidently decided to make a nuisance of yourself with idiotic suggestions that pander to the Government.  Your plans for a multi billion-pound tax on banks to tackle the City’s [...]

Dear Vince Cable,
Clearly there was something in the water this weekend, as everyone seemed to be enjoying a spot of ’bonus bashing’.  On Saturday, George Osborne said that a Conservative government would seek to stop the payment of large bonuses across the banking system and told the Guardian that handing out big awards backed by state guarantees was [...]

“The outcome of our contest was amazing. Ddalgi stood third with her investment return standing at 13.7%.”
-  Chung Yeon-Dae, general manager at Paxnet – an online stock market information provider – speaking after Ddalgi finished third in a six-week stock investment contest.  Human competitors picked any stocks they wanted whereas Ddalgi, a five-year-old female parrot, used its beak to make random [...]

“I joined the Government in January so I could say I was a politician during the financial crisis. But then when the scandal over MPs’ expenses blew up, I went back to saying I was a banker.”
- Lord Davies, Britain’s Trade Minister

Dear Timothy Geithner,
With pressure gradually increasing on Barack Obama’s handling of the financial crisis, your testimony to the US House Committee yesterday was another chance for his administration to set out your stall.  You outlined a number of strategies to strengthen the US government’s oversight of your domestic financial system, some of which sounds fairly sensible and some of which [...]

“Blaming the hedge funds for the banking crisis is like blaming the passengers in a bus crash”
- Paul Marshall, co-founder of the Marshall Wace hedge fund (one of the funds that held short-selling positions in HBOS last summer), arguing with the Treasury Select Committee about whether insufficient regulation caused the banking crisis