Parliament of Fowls

As I provided as an addendum to the last post, David Davis has done Desert Island Discs, conspicuously close to the one he did in this week's New Statesman, now published in edited form. It may be coincidental, given that both interviews were solicited - but what does that mean? Perhaps that some bored journalists are depressed at the lack of anarchy within the Conservative Party and decided that now was the time to inject some. However, given that Davis has, in this new interview at least, made some more fantastically candid comments, I don't think he comes out of this looking very good. I'll explain more during the reading, but my problems with Davis started when he claimed that Michael Howard wasn't sexy enough to be Prime Minister (just after the last election). Well, pardon me, but if I'm not turned on by "Something of the Night" Howard, I'm not sure I'm likely to be turned on by someone with a personality like a wet weekend in Hull and an ego the size of Haltemprice and Howden. Nor am I likely to be reassured by a leader who resigns at the drop of a hat when the government wins a debate that was opposed by your own party. Resign from the Shadow Cabinet because you don't get on with Vulpes Vulpes, if you like (I've got nothing against that myself), but if we are going to have a party leadership, it might as well be one which doesn't do or say daft things like that.

Given that twice in one week suggests to me he thinks the time is right to hold his own leadership election, then perhaps the tarot should be called in to decide on this one.

Situation. THE MAGICIAN.

Davis is wielding the powers he has to provoke and make more outspoken waves within the political community. He has a range of tools available in this card and picture to put out his message and opinions, and he is using them for his own ends quite deliberately, if rather spontaneously and in a manner in which it looks as if his approach is rather haphazard.

Why now? II CUPS.

Quite simply, Davis has found an audience. It takes two here to make an interview, and the media is using him just as much as he is using the media. They want his opinion, he wants their publicity because it is of mutual benefit. The motive here behind both the media invitations and Davis' acceptances is to make waves in the best way while the Tories are still vulnerable over their poll lead haemmorhage for the first time since Cameron dodged a bullet in the summer of 2007.

1. External appearances. VIII WANDS.

Davis wants to generate some personal momentum in order to make his voice heard on other issues. He is using outlets at his disposal to drive himself forward and to add to momentum for his own campaigns. This may not be entirely consistent with the aims of the Conservative leadership, but then the media motivation in asking him is such that he may not even be aware he is being used. Or, of course, he might well be.

2. Internal discussions. KNIGHT OF CUPS.

This card appeared for Davis in spreads throughout the spring and summer, thereby suggesting he was acting under the influence of his conscience, or ambitions, or both. Here again he is under similar orders from some subconscious need or idea that he has something to bring to the discussions within the Conservative Party as a whole, and that this can be best achieved by playing up tensions with Cameron rather than trying to damp down speculation about that particular reason for resigning in the summer. He is using opportunities extended to him; whether this is right from a party viewpoint or offered to him with no ulterior motives does not concern him very much at all.

3. Obstacles. ACE OF CUPS.

Perhaps he does not understand or comprehend that the timing of these opportunities coincide with the first serious difficulties the Tories have got into for a year or so. This seems to be him acting in a manner which facilitates difficulties rather than which offers help to Cameron or Osborne as recriminations begin to be voiced elsewhere in the "narrative". If it is to publicise current campaigns, these do not appear significant enough in either the NS interview or in the Desert Island Discs preview to reassure me, and probably the Tory leadership alongside me, that this is any reason to accept the interviews proffered. He is drinking from a poisoned chalice; one reading of this is that the scheming Labour-orientated media is directing Davis to make subtle jibes at Cameron and also to puff up his own ambitions. As he admits to sloppiness in the DID preview, this may also backfire - his lax attitude towards making these comments suggests he would not make a good enough leader anyway, and is voicing something that would damage his prospects later on if Cameron were to fall.

He also confessed that he did not do enough preparation for his poorly-received speech to the 2005 Tory Party conference, widely seen as the moment at which he blew his chance of becoming party leader.

"I simply made the mistake of not spending enough time on that speech. There's nobody else to blame but me - I made the mistake and I took the hit and I knew that within 24 hours," he said.

It just sounds like Davis' mouth has run away with him, yet again.

4. Overcoming. QUEEN OF SWORDS.

By being more careful Davis can avoid the pitfalls in this approach, but he will have to be less candid or self-deprecating and be aware where he is being made to look like he is challenging Cameron - or made to look foolish. Care here comes in the form of staying alert, remaining watchful that he does not relax into suggesting he would be sloppy in speechwriting later on, and to know when he might be used against the leadership by Labour supporting media outlets. He is more candid on DID than in the New Statesman, but he should use the Queen of Swords' mental carefulness to tread warily and stop himself sabotaging any future ambitions.

5. Direction. TEMPERANCE.

He keeps aware and relaxed. This card indicated he seems to know what he is doing. He is balanced and temperate, and not overly dismissive of the leadership, but he must be doing this now to maintain and/or build a profile in order to take advantage of difficulties in the leadership at a future moment in time. This is a card of patience - without the suppression element inherent in Strength - and the patience here is that of a cat stalking a mouse.

6. Solution. V CUPS.

Davis has snatched defeat here from the jaws of potential victory. As the interview betrays, he pays less-than-adequate attention to what he is saying, and has less-than-adequate concentration under the pressure of a closely fought leadership campaign. This is failure to grasp the point of why he failed in the first place - he was always too candid about his intentions. My favourite quote was on the day London won the Olympics. In the paper - unfortunately published on 7/7 - he sat there, confident he would win out in the end, and said "I won't be opening the Olympics - that'll be the Queen". This basic personality flaw trumps learned experience, evidently. By acting as a stalking-horse Heseltine figure (interestingly, his totem is Grey Horse) now, he does himself more damage in the long run should a leadership issue actually arise.

7. Outcome. THE HERMIT.

Davis risks isolation and solitude here by on one hand appearing to do the rounds now before there is even a discussion about the leadership, let alone a vacancy. He has also been spotted - with John Redwood - having drinks with Lord Ashcroft - the conspiracy theorist in me remembers Michael Howard was having drinks with Stewart Wheeler and John Madejski a week or so before IDS was deposed, while simultaneously pledging loyalty to the beleaguered Duncan-Smith. However, on the other hand, he betrays extreme personal weakness and excessive openness about his ambitions and tensions with Cameron while in the Shadow Cabinet. It reminds me of the scene in Men Behaving Badly, where Tony has bugged Deborah's flat and is listening to her new boyfriend Ray slag Tony off. Rather than wait for him to finish - and for Deborah to tell Ray to stop belittling Tony and that she no longer wants to go out with him - Tony barges upstairs, destroys Deborah's door and physically threatens Ray - thus pushing Deborah back into his arms. Davis risks the same thing happening here - metaphorically of course - by ineptitude in trying to outfox Cameron.

Sorry Dave, but the time to promote your ambitions is after the job is open, not before.

A few small announcements, small-but-sweet stories and clippings...

First of all, this story interests me on the BBC's website. Although I'm no fan of the government, given a choice between Labour and Conservative MPs as people in themselves, I'd have to say I respect Labour ones rather than Tories. Having worked for two Labour MPs before I went to university, Margaret Moran and Patrick Hall, they came across as nice people - down to earth, hard-working, a bit more like my own parents than their Tory counterparts. While the people I worked for in 2005 are nice, and when I met Michael Howard, John Redwood and Theresa May on the same campaign they came across as very likeable people, the photographs of PPCs and MPs alike on Conservative Home don't tend to exude the same personability (yes, John Redwood IS personable, he apparently mellowed when he met his new partner Nicky Page, wore paint-spattered cords to a canvassing day for the Swallowfield By-Election in early 2005, and kissed and cuddled Nicky persistently while out on other electioneering runs the same year), looking more like clones of David Davis serviced by the same wigmaker who makes Michael Fabricant's hair. Laura Moffatt's self-professed desire to return to the NHS if she loses her seat at the next election is a lovely idea; although I would as a Tory hope she has every opportunity to pursue her dream, to me we need more people like that prepared to stand for the Conservative Party now we are supposedly no longer the "nasty party".

And foxes might fly. Who knows, if Redwood (himself another vulpes vulpes totem) is personable, then some of the Tories I regularly see on Conservative Home might be too. But if we are to match the success of Labour over the past twelve years, I reckon more people like Laura Moffatt need to be persuaded to stand in relatively winnable seats to improve the feel of the party. So far, according to Janet Daley, the modernisation project has failed. What better way to kickstart it? Maybe even Ms Moffatt (insert joke about spiders and tuffetts here) could be prevailed upon to cross the floor? She may even end up as leader the way things are going.

On to other news, courtesy of the Reading Evening Post (given a nice endorsement by Michael Howard himself, no less). Back in October I phoned our local paper regarding my research into electoral statistics and possible ways of finding whether the kind of fraud registered here by the Council of Europe could be seen through the raw statistics. It turns out that the number of seats with no results ending in 5 or 0 has declined rapidly since 1987. Coincidentally, that was when Labour started getting popular. Given the potential for the postal votes to be mishandled (such as the accusation there that not all of them tend to end up in the final count), one would expect it to account partly for the discrepancies in 2005, by far the worst year with just 23% of seats not having round number results. However, the evident manipulation goes right back before postal votes began accounting for more of the total votes, which means there is also dodgy accounting going on with hand-cast ballots. How they do this is beyond me, but at least this shows there is a problem we need to address before another general election can be fought.

The article was finally published on Wednesday (the photographs were taken the week George Osborne got into trouble over Yachtgate) and I will scan and upload a copy as soon as I get one (I have to send them a cheque for 98p to get hold of a back issue, and I go away on the 24th until the 8th December, so it may not be until I get back) - the story was not put up on the website.

The research table is in Excel form but I need help in uploading or publicising it. If anyone out there can help me, please get in touch via louise.stanley@live.co.uk.

That's all for now - I will upload the next reading later on or tomorrow.

STOP PRESS - Look who's talking too...David Davis putting his foot in it again. Come in number 4, your time is up?

Pun definitely intended.

George Osborne comes under renewed scrutiny - with a lot more people now calling for his resignation, mostly from the blogs on the Torygraph but also in the print edition and with Conservative Home opening the debate on it in Torydiary (complete with eye-bleeding picture of Vulpes Vulpes and Corvus Corone - Georgie and I share a totem up close and rather too personal; Vulpes Vulpes needs to lose a bit of weight as well as a Shadow Chancellor, but never mind that...).

Last time we looked, George was safe and grounded, if somewhat damaged by the Yachtgate issue. He was under attack prior to this, and his popularity ratings plummetted thereafter, but since then he has been rather conspicuous by his silence/absence/sidelining (delete as appropriate), which may have handicapped the Tories' economic policy (although if anything they were handicapped before Yachtgate anyway and it was just icing on the cake).

So what will happen now?  I don't call the shots; personally I would tell him to concentrate on his Treasury role and not touch party management, but there again I'm not sure I would have brought him so soon up to the Shadow Chancellorship and given him a few more years of being Shadow Chief Secretary and then hopefully Chief Secretary while someone with more gravitas was given the economic role. However given the only other options for Shadow Chancellor don't have that weight either - Oliver Letwin was almost as bad a Shadow Chancellor and it always looked as if Howard had just given him the job to shut him up in 2003 and really wanted to bring Redwood in full-time - I'm not sure what I'd do right now.

Neither Ken Clarke or John Redwood, I believe, would want to come back - but looking at them as possibilities may be a topic for later on if something doesn't come up before then.

On with the show.

S. Situation. TEMPERANCE.

Osborne is being kept in limbo while his fate is ultimately decided. The difficulties with him are no longer a case of direct scandal but consideration of Osborne's future is taking place away from the heat of the Yachtgate issue. Nevertheless there is still balance within the system, as if this is a debate independent of the leadership and has been generated by the need for discussion about something and the absence of anything else to talk about.

1. External appearances. IX SWORDS.

The external quality of the debate is torrid and two Telegraph blogs and a print article have questioned Osborne already. (This is given credence because of the location of the debate in the "house journal" of the Conservative party, signifying the debate is important to the party machine rather than just idle speculation from parties hostile to Osborne.) This means that there is fire with the smoke clearly visible - refusals to move Osborne may placate the anxious party which needs political consistency, but since there is any question at all, is it not less dangerous to deal with this by showing the leadership is listening? Indecision is visible here, as well as in party circles such as the Tory Home blog entry above; this is generally damaging in the long term if left to continue.

2. Internal discussions. V SWORDS.

There is a concrete debate and outcome already visible in the inner party sanctums (sancta?) and hierarchy which may come out over the next while. Action should be taken soon on this, announcements regarding Osborne made, foreshadowed by the smoke coming off the internal fire given off by the bloggers and columnists in the Torygraph. This may be linked to problems in the polls elsewhere which have knocked the party harder than it appears.

3. Roots of the Situation. THE EMPRESS.

The card here suggests that a dispassionate time preceded this debate and a period of calm meant that the charged atmosphere of Yachtgate was allowed to clear before a decision was taken over Osborne's long-term future. The Party approaches this calmly and dispassionately and makes it plain that this new debate holds no malice or is not a knee-jerk reaction to Yachtgate itself.

4. Consequences of the Situation. STRENGTH.

Destructive impulses are curbed and Osborne may survive the current scrutiny. As usual, implied in Strength is the suppression of difficulties rather than their neutralisation. With the internal/external axis looking so dangerous this could delay and intensify the dynamic rather than dispel it if the party refuses to stop discussing the matter.

5. Advice. X WANDS.

The heaviness of this burdensome question is not going to go away - it is dangerous to ignore the issue and the nature of pent-up frustration may intensify pressure on both Cameron and Osborne, who are intimately connected and part of the same "team" since its conception. This may lead to added pressure to keep Osborne but Cameron should recognise the need to be professional and balance the needs of the Tory agenda with the retention of friendships made earlier on.

6. Warning. THE CHARIOT.

The situation can and probably will end up out of control. Once speculation begins - as it did even before Yachtgate - it tends to take on a life of its own. The difficulties in internal and external debates may end up out of hand and if it does it may take more than Osborne with it - given previous Tory experience. It could be fatal if something is not done to stop the momentum building.

7. Action from Cameron. KNIGHT OF PENTACLES.

Cameron relies mainly on doing things at the last moment possbile, and may not be fully cognisant of the debate getting louder. However, the reliance on others implied by the Knight is not the best position for a leader to be in and DC may be indecisive or too bound by other loyalties to act properly. Cameron needs to maintain his position and exert his authority, but he is constrained here by external events rather than being master of them.

8. Action from Osborne. THE HANGED MAN.

Osborne continues to be sidelined but is not sacked and does not resign - for now. Staying in this position is staying in the status quo for better or worse, and whether this is an endorsement from Cameron or mere indecision on his part is not obvious here but may become so later on.

9. Direction. III PENTACLES.

The debate becomes substantial and more coherent, and builds to a point where it becomes something more significant than just idle party chatter. The learning process implied here gives lessons in how to handle this kind of situation in preparation for government, and/or a lesson for those watching in how to run their own people management or "personnel departments".

10. Solution. DEATH.

The situation needs to be - and probably is - resolved with productive and decisive results. This may suggest the fundamental damage done is a result of inactivity above after the movement becomes obvious in the the Three of Pentacles. Death represents a finality as well as a transformation. Destructive chatter such as the blogs, articles and commentary elsewhere needs to be resolved before it goes ballistic, and if people involved do not stop it or make necessary adjustments, then it may stop itself with more difficult results than desired.

11. Outcome. PAGE OF CUPS.

There is a humility and innocence in this card, as if someoe outside the fray, more junior than the leadership, ensures that the necessary tonic is delivered to Dave and George. Although the decisiveness of Death is unequivocally acting on the situation to arbitrate, it will be coming from elsewhere to solve the problem, rather than from within the current hierarchy. A solution acceptable to all is delivered.

00.29 - This just in from the Independent. Let's get ready to ruuuuummmmmble!