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.

“Labour propagandists keep trotting out the warning that if David Cameron wins, then the mask will be ripped off and we’ll be back to the same old Tories. The warning is the opposite of the truth. If David Cameron loses — that’s when we’d be back to the same old Tories.”
- Matthew Parris in today’s [...]

Dear Boris,
As the Unite/Labour/Charlie Whelan ’axis of evil’ continues to dominate the headlines, I was rather surprised to see you getting stuck into this incredibly delicate situation.  While David Cameron is certainly enjoying poking fun at Gordon Brown for being at the mercy of Unite, I thought it would be prudent for you to keep a [...]

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 [...]

“The truth is that [Gordon Brown] is to reforming public services what Nero was to fire safety; or Tiger Woods to marital fidelity.”
- David Cameron, speaking at the Welsh Conservatives’ annual conference

“Kremlinologists of the party have talked of various pygmies and teenagers in the closed circle around Mr Cameron having catfights with each other, or being reassigned duties within the nascent campaign, as panic starts to seep up the creeks and fill the shallows of what was once the dry land of self-assurance. A summit was, [...]

Dear David Cameron,
There is no doubt in my mind that you will be watching the polls over the next few days with even more interest than usual.  Your spring conference in Brighton, which was considerably smaller than the main party conference in October, attracted some reasonably positive coverage but yet again your hand is being [...]

“If in the face of the most disastrous government since we lost the American colonies the best the opposition can expect is a hung Parliament, it is time that Camp Cameron asked itself some serious questions. Of course there will be many people …who quite rightly point to the potential horrors of another bout of [...]

Dear David Cameron,
As a conservative voter approaching a General Election, I would like to think that my confidence in the Conservative Party would be fairly secure by now.  What we have seen over the past few weeks, though, is a painful combination of naivety, incompetence, stupidity and inappropriateness that has dragged the party down in the [...]

“David Cameron believes in meritocracy, but he hasn’t yet got the ruthless streak that will make him want to cause pain and be a great prime minister”
- Lord (Tim) Bell, who was Margaret Thatcher’s PR expert

Dear Nick Clegg,
In the modern political era, it is almost a given that policy announcements and speeches are leaked to the media way so that some interest can be drummed up in advance.  It was therefore quite refreshing for you to spring a surprise attack on David Cameron this week, although – as we have [...]

Dear David Cameron, Steve Hilton and George Osborne,
I’m not sure that yesterday truly marked the beginning of the election campaign, but it was nevertheless entertaining to watch the two main parties draw swords while Nick Clegg just sat on the sidelines and moaned.  No-one scored a stunning outright victory yesterday, partly because Alistair Darling sprung an unavoidable trap, and the [...]

”anything but a prime example of British style”
- how the GQ Award for the worst-dressed man of the year described their winner for 2009, Gordon Brown.  He is joined in the list of worst-dressed men by one of his ”best friends”, French president Nicolas Sarkozy, in third place, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in [...]

Dear David Cameron,
Everyone knows that Lord Ashcroft’s taxes have been a thorn in the side of the Conservative Party for years.  After a few recent snipes by Labour MPs, you have decided to take action by announcing yesterday that all MPs and peers would have to pay taxes in the UK under legislation that would be [...]

Dear Alistair Campbell,
I know that officially you are not involved with the Labour Party, but seeing as just about every single broadsheet is discussing your return I have little doubt that you are part of the government’s spin machine yet again.  As far as spin goes, the class warfare initiated at Prime Minister’s Questions last [...]

Dear David Cameron,
One of Gordon Brown’s failings that surely cannot have escaped your attention is his inability to lead with conviction and strength.  Climategate has provided a real test of both Brown’s leadership and yours, and as far as I can see you have both performed dismally when the public were crying out for someone [...]

Monday: Nick Clegg has called for the Queen’s Speech to be cancelled and replaced with emergency reforms to “clean up politics”.  He said there was not enough time for most bills in it to become law before an election – and it was merely being used as a Labour manifesto.  He went on accuse Labour of “hijacking” the [...]

First we had the Hunting Lobby.  Cameron committed himself to repealing the Hunting Act, only to cool his language in recent months.  What did the Hunting Lobby do?  Immediately threaten to withdraw considerable sums of funding and support in rural seats.  Cameron had no choice but to start warming his language up again to placate [...]

“If we let it go on much longer, it just won’t happen.”
- the verdict of an insider in the negotiations over the proposed TV debates between the main party leaders.  After only a few weeks of negotiations, David Cameron has rejected the idea of a series of debates between all three party leaders, according to [...]

Dear David Cameron,
When I recently wrote a letter to William Hague on the subject of foxhunting, it provoked one of the fiercest debates ever seen on this blog.  Although both sides of the debate were equally adamant, the one thing that brought them together was the belief that the Hunting Act introduced by Tony Blair [...]

Dear Clegg, Brown and Cameron,
There is something that I’ve been following throughout conference season this year and it’s not something that many people may have noticed: references to your families during party conference speeches.  Interestingly, all three of you took different approaches to this controversial topic.
Let us begin with David Cameron, who made his conference speech [...]

“Don’t you dare lecture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the modern Conservative Party, to fight for the poorest who you have let down”
- David Cameron, launching an attack on Labour in his keynote speech to the Conservative Party conference (believe me when I say that he meant it, judging by [...]

Dear David Cameron,
As you try to hook the media on your new ‘Work Programme’ instead of having them rattle on about the Lisbon Treaty, I thought now would be a good time to write to you about a recent article I saw in the Guardian on drug and alcohol testing for benefit claimants, as these [...]

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 David Cameron,
It is with some disappointment that I note you are still willing to grab a quick headline instead of tackling the underlying causes of societal problems.  I thought that after all your talk of personal responsibility over the past few years, you might be willing to take a different approach to your Labour [...]

“On Tuesday night David Cameron warned that Labour’s mismanagement of the public finances meant Britain might default on its debts. Yesterday he pledged that the Conservatives were now the party of the NHS because only they were prepared to deliver real increases in health spending in the next parliament. The opposition has been allowed to [...]