There are 400 ‘business representatives’ at the Labour Party conference this week, to highlight an interesting choice of words found in a recent Financial Times report. I am kind of hoping that the phrase is an unnecessarily imprecise synonym for ‘exhibitors’.
But if the rules have been changed while I wasn’t looking and the Confederation of British Industry and the Institute of Directors do get official delegations nowadays, that would only mark the logical culmination of the trajectory Labour has been on since the days of the Prawn Cocktail Offensive of some 20 years ago. Continue reading
After Peter Cruddas, what? Now the brash, up-market barrow boy’s been topped, Tory central office has of course gone very quiet. But since the 23 dinners grace of Cameron/Osborne that we now know about raised several million pounds, it’s unlikely they will cease – just be ever so much more discreet. 
The Cameron technique becomes clearer by the day:
Prevarication. Obfuscation. Delay.
The Government has set great store on claiming that the Fox saga was a one-off. He had broken the Ministerial code, he had refused to heed warnings from his Permanent Secretary that his behaviour was outside the constitutional guidelines for such a sensitive position, and in effect he was running a privatised foreign and defence policy independent of the FCO and MOD. But, Cameron and others insisted, there were no wider implications because no other Ministers were behaving in this way.