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.

*yawn*
Yes, it’s still going.  Last night, Mandelson said that David Cameron’s failure to confront his billionaire deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft over his tax status exposes the “fundamental weakness” of the Conservative leader and undermines his claim to be a moderniser.  In an interview with the Guardian, he said that Ashcroft had Cameron “by the balls”, the affair [...]

Dear Steve Hilton and George Osborne,
I don’t whether it is you or the rest of the Conservative Party staff who I should be writing this letter to.  Even so, the news about Lord Ashcroft’s tax status provides a wonderful example of how detached you are from the real world.  Lord Ashcroft has finally admitted he does not pay [...]

“If you want to see what whitewashed ermine looks like, this is it.  This ruling has more holes in it than a colander.”
- Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, on the ruling that peers could designate any property as their main home if they visited it just once a month

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 [...]

“We in UKIP are anti the political class.”
- Lord Pearson of Rannoch, the new leader of UKIP, speaking in an interview over the weekend.  Yesterday, it was revealed that he claimed more than £100,000 in expenses on the basis that his £3.7 million house in London was his second home while also owning in a [...]

“This falls well short of what is required. It is a game of Monopoly – pass Go and collect £200.”
- Norman Baker, Lib Dem MP, reacting to the news that peers will receive a tax-free annual salary of nearly £30,000 on top of allowances worth £20,000 under reforms to be introduced following a series of [...]

Dear Jack Straw,
You will no doubt be glad that most of the media is focusing on the Glasgow East by-election this morning, because it gets you off the hook.  Over the past several months, away from the public eye, you have instigated some of the brutal attacks on civil liberties ever seen under this Labour [...]

Amazing.  Just amazing.  You would have thought that after showing blatant political bias a Speaker, spending more than £20,000 of taxpayers’ money on lawyers to challenge negative press stories about yourself, using taxpayers’ money for your wife’s taxis, claiming £17,166 towards the cost of his Glasgow constituency home even though he no longer paid a mortgage, using air [...]

Dear Lord Ashcroft,
It seems that you have been given another reprieve with regard to party funding laws.  The House of Lords have spared your blushes after Labour mounted yet another assault on your donations to the Conservative Party.  While the government’s behaviour is petty in the extreme, there is still good reason to be worried [...]

“Either he is an influential figure in Government or this is just window-dressing.”
- John Whittingham, Conservative MP and chairman of the Culture Select Committee, calling on the BBC to ‘fire’ Alan Sugar beacuse he does not believe that it is possible for Alan Sugar to be closely associated with the Government while continuing his role [...]

Dear readers,
My most popular post ever on this blog was last year’s expose of the MPs who had gone out of their way to screw the taxpayer over the previous Parliamentary year.  Seeing as the House of Lords have been in the news recently for all the wrong reasons, I decided that now is a good time [...]