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Leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron is the Prime Minister
Ministers announced here
First Cabinet appointments in the Cameron-Clegg Cabinet here
See photos of Dave’s first days in Downing Street via flickr
Keep up to date with all the Cabinet and Ministerial appointments on the Number 10 website including the Cabinet appointments list
Boris Johnson is delighted at the news and felt that the public would: “want to hear what these guys are going to do to sort out the country .. it’s a robust and interesting new specimen.”
Read Boris’s take on Election Night here. Look out for Rachel Johnson’s up to the minute tweets @RachelSJohnson
London is the goose that lays the golden eggs
More latest news and this column in The Daily Telegraph here
The whole thing is unbelievable. As I write these words, Gordon Brown is still holed up in Downing Street. He is like some illegal settler in the Sinai desert, lashing himself to the radiator, or like David Brent haunting The Office in that excruciating episode when he refuses to acknowledge that he has been sacked. Isn’t there someone – the Queen’s Private Secretary, the nice policeman on the door of No 10 – whose job it is to tell him that the game is up?
Off in Brussels this zombie Labour government is in the process of obliging future generations of Britons to pay “whatever it takes” to bail out the euro, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. The Lib-Con negotiations are still going on, in a foretaste of the Belgian orgies of tedium and paralysis that proportional representation will inflict on the country. Everyone is trying politely to work out exactly how many Cabinet seats to give a party that came a resounding third and did worse than in 2005. Will Vince Cable be needing Dorneywood in addition to his Red Box and his seat at the Cabinet Table? And if Chris Huhne needs a ministerial car and a driver, will Mrs Huhne require someone to help with the shopping?
Will Gordon ever leave the bathroom?
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How should you vote? Vote Match is a very straightforward brief quiz in The Daily Telegraph and helps you decide who to vote by matching your views on the issues most important to you with each party’s policies. Have a go and click here
You can also predict the result of the Election with a free £5 and win £10. The Times are offering a free £5 bet with Betfair if you think you can pick a winner from the closest election in decades. Place your bet by midnight on 5th May 2010 here
Look out for the following key seats on election night:
Orpington – Boris’s brother, Jo Johnson, is expecting the results at around 5.a.m.
Richmond Park - Zac Goldsmith
Brighton Pavilion
Torbay
Romsey and Southampton North
Briston North West
Hastings and Rye
Feltham and Heston
Harrow West
Eltham
Waveney
Northampton North
Dudley North
North Warwickshire
Erewash
Lancaster and Fleetwood
Bolton North East
Wakefield
Tynemouth
“I think you guys are going to get a majority of 40,” one veteran Labour adviser told me, and I did not disagree
There are all sorts of reasons for voting Tory this week. It is a chance to strike a blow against over-regulation and over-taxation and political correctness, and a chance to enact beautiful new ideas like National Citizens Service for 16-year-olds.
After the disastrous stewardship of Gordon Brown, the man best placed to rescue the New Labour project from Cleggmania and reassure the middle classes is Lord Mandelson
I’ll tell you what was going through the mind of the average Labour MP when Gordon Brown managed to stage one of the most spectacular political pratfalls since Neil Kinnock invited the world’s media to picture him walking along a beach with his wife and contrived to be knocked over by a wave. It was worse than Walter Mondale crying on television. It was as suicidal as Cicero being rude about Octavian.
When Gordon Brown went to Rochdale, and ended up making a direct personal attack on the character and motives of Labour’s core vote, Labour MPs weren’t thinking how to rescue the situation. They were thinking it was the end.
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London illustrates what a bold, Conservative administration can do
I’m a one-nation Tory
He believes in the capacity of human ingenuity
Dave, he says, will be seen in a completely different light
Benedict Brogan interview with Boris
Boris Johnson was at work on Wednesday when Gordon Brown crashed into the northern rock that is Gillian Duffy. As a connoisseur of forced apologies – Michael Howard once sent him to Liverpool to grovel for criticising the city’s “mawkish sentimentality” – the Mayor of London is forgiving. “If we judged everybody by the stupid, unguarded things they blurt out to their nearest and dearest, then we wouldn’t ever get anywhere.”
Apart from the obvious lesson about never allowing anyone near you with a clip-on microphone, he is more interested in the subtext of the blunder than the mechanics. “The thing I thought was revealing, and went to the way he runs things, was the instant blaming of Sue Nye [Mr Brown’s long-serving sidekick whom he held responsible for introducing him to Mrs Duffy]. It’s always someone’s fault and the world is always organised by a hidden hand to conspire against him. It’s a slightly paranoid view of the universe. But it’s fundamentally insignificant. What matters is his stewardship of the country and the complete mess that he has made.”
Which is why Boris, as he is known from Bromley to Beijing, is more interested in the crisis engulfing Greece and the ramifications for Europe’s financial capital. We are in his office to mark his second anniversary as mayor, which falls tomorrow. It is no surprise that a classicist who is also a big fan of the City is keeping a worried eye on the drama unfolding in Athens. He fears we could be next if we end up with an indecisive result next week. “If we get things wrong next Thursday, this could be something that we have to face in this country. That’s why I worry about a hung parliament. If all we get is drift and indecision, then we will get the same response we have seen in Greece.”
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The plan was to boost Clegg, take the gilt off the Cameron gingerbread, and wreck Tory hopes of achieving a majority government
what you will never succeed in doing, either in Britain or in any other political environment, is creating three-party politics
But look at what is happening to Labour! Look at the great humming, purring spin machine that propelled the People’s Party to three election victories and humiliated a succession of Tory leaders. They are doing worse than under Kinnock. They are down to levels not seen since M Foot appeared in his donkey jacket; and with H Harman’s teeth locked in Mandy’s throat we are beginning to detect the gurgling sound of meltdown.
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The British began to make the big subconscious assumption that there would be a change of government in 2010
I am certain that the Tories will win
What crouton of substance did Nick Clegg offer last Thursday?
It must have been a couple of years ago that I was having dinner with the great Max Hastings, former editor of this paper, and he was being so gloomy about Conservative prospects that I scented a financial opportunity. Tell you what, I said, let’s have a bet. A thousand pounds says the Tories will win the next election. How about that?
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Boris to Dave: “You have got to run for this thing … or else I will!”
GENERAL ELECTION: Parliament Dissolves today and the General Election campaign begins officially today with the Dissolution of Parliament – and the publication of the first of the party manifestos.
It is almost exactly five years ago that the Tories experienced yet another election defeat and Michael Howard unexpectedly decided – after a valiant campaign – to step down as leader of the Conservative Party. I remember staggering back to my office at The Spectator and wondering what should happen next. After about ten seconds’ reflection, I picked up the phone.
“Dave,” I said to the future Prime Minister, “you have got to run for this thing.” With his customary politeness David Cameron thanked me and said that a couple of other people had mentioned the same idea. In fact he was so polite I wasn’t quite sure that he was going to strike with the mamba-like swiftness required. I decided to raise the stakes. “You have got to run for this thing, Dave,” I said, “or else I will!”
At which point, as he later told Tory audiences, David Cameron was seized with the full urgency of the situation and the need to save his party and his country. He has done a fantastic job in the last five years, and triumphantly vindicated that small group of us who first supported him in 2005.
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