At a stroke, Boris Johnson has undermined the capital the Conservatives have made out of the 10p income tax fiasco. It isn’t that the cheap oil deal with Venezuela was defensible - it wasn’t. It was this sort of tokenism that disqualified Livingstone from office in the eyes of most Londoners. But no-one begrudged low income earners from getting half-priced travel. In Crewe, the Tories ground Labour into the dust attacking them for doubling the 10p rate and blithely ignoring the impact it would have on low income earners. Now the Tories have imposed swingeing cuts on a very similar group in society.

What’s worse is the timing: on a bank holiday weekend just hours after winning the Crewe by-election during which time they had very carefully kept quiet about the plans. It is clear they don’t plan to offer people on income support any alternative, otherwise why the stark announcement rather than a more cuddly “consultation” about how to continue paying for the scheme? It is clear they knew it would be politically damaging. And it is abundantly clear that was not merely approved by CCHQ and Cameron but crafted by them in the first place. Make no mistake - this was Cameron’s decision.

Expect this issue to become a Focus leaflet staple, within London at least. I can think of no better symbol of how paper thin the “new” Conservativism really is. Scratch beneath the surface and the nasty side is just itching to come out. At least now we know, but is has the public already made up its mind?

Having a pop at Gordon Brown for failing to show his face in Crewe and Nantwich is all fair and good, but why does David Cameron have to go and spoil everything by talking unmitigated bullshit like this?

Mr Cameron taunted him by saying his predecessor as PM, Tony Blair, “led from the front” at by-elections.

During the Blair years it was a standing joke, as it is now, that the Prime Minister never attended by-elections. Indeed, in the last general election, using a picture of Tony Blair (almost always with George Bush) on your literature was one of the easiest ways to pick up votes (assuming you aren’t the Labour Party of course). Blair was ballot box poison, at least after 2003.

David Cameron, having as he does a bit of a schoolboy crush on Tony Blair, may like to think different, but that’s the way it goes.

I’ve already said broadly what I have to say about the Tory’s dog whistle politics regarding the embryology bill (although apparently last night’s Dispatches put a particularly sinister spin on things). My favourite example of this now has to be the fact that, in order to stave off accusations that his amendment is homophobic, Iain Duncan Smith has changed the wording of his amendment so that in addition to IVF children needing a “father” they would need a “mother” as well.

I don’t know how far he thinks the technology for test tube babies has advanced, but last time I looked we didn’t need an actual law to ensure that pretty much happened by itself.

The most amazing thing about the Crewe and Nantwich by-election is the sheer amount of column inches it has generated in the national press. As a by-election veteran (I confess, I haven’t gone to this one), I’m used to fighting the great fight in eminently winnable seats (which of course, we went on to win) and yet have the media completely oblivious to the fact right up until the day before polling day when they finally get around to sending a monkey up to see what is going on.

Not that I’m complaining, mind. The more they ignore a by-election in the run up, the bigger the splash on the front pages when we win. The fact that the Tories are being presented as a near-certainty will dampen the impact if they win and make them look silly if they lose. The fact that Labour’s dirty by-election tricks are finally getting a good airing is also gratifying, although it is a shame it is being presented as a one-off when they play this game every single fucking time.

What is bizarre is the way journalists keep calling it a “safe Labour seat.” Dunwoody only had a 7,000 majority and when you’ve been an MP as long as she has, most of that will be down to a personal vote. I don’t know the area’s political history but the Tories have completely eclipsed Labour in local government.

If the Tories had had as good a prospect as this to fight during their doldrums in 1998, it would still have been amazing if they had gone on to lose.

Make no mistake: this by-election is for the Tories to lose. If they can’t win this, they will be back to where they were last summer. I’m not making any predictions either way here, but let’s not kid ourselves about them having a massive job ahead of them, eh?

Stephen Tall has pointed me to this piece by John Rentoul on the Independent Blog:

David Cameron voted against the majority of Conservative MPs who took part in the division yesterday on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. He was one of 37 Tories voting in favour; 49 voted against. The rest found something better to do.

This sounds awfully familiar. Indeed, the Embryology Bill is a fascinating case study of Cameron Non-Leadership in action.

First of all, there is the “they aren’t defying me if I make it a free vote” tactic. He did this earlier in the year when he allowed his MPs to back the Bill Cash amendment on the Lisbon Treaty. Of course, the argument against that is that the Embryology Bill comes under that catch-all of a “conscience issue”. He can probably get away with this as, aside from the apparent admission that political philosophy is completely useless when it comes to fundamental issues of principle such as the rights and wrongs of abortion, it is a view shared by politicians from across the political spectrum (while insisting that J.S. Mill & co DO have something instructive to say on, for example, the practicalities of recycling). It is hard to see how the Lisbon Treaty came under this category though. Or House of Lords Reform.

What is interesting with this Bill however, is that while Cameron supported the Bill overall, he has adopted a quite a reactionary view when it comes to the detail. Backing Mad Nad’s (I’d call her Dorries Karlof but that one’s taken) 20 Weeks amendment is particularly peculiar given the fact that her case has been pretty comprehensively quashed by the scientific evidence. 20 week fever appears to have gripped the Conservative Party. Alan Duncan was raving about it on Any Questions despite seeming unclear about what the current limit actually is (which rather suggests he hasn’t done the slightest bit of research into the subject). It has been dressed up as the safe, reasonable, responsible thing for right-minded Conservatives to do when in fact it is a blatant wedge strategy (apparently funded by the religious right, it emerges).

But the more tricksy one is this proposed amendment to the Bill regarding IVF to single women and lesbian couples. Andrew Lansley is proposing to reword the Bill’s requirement for “supportive parenting” thus: “the need for supportive parenting and a father or a male role model.”

On the surface this seems innocuous enough. Certainly a “male role model” is up there on my list of “desirable” things for a child to grow up with. Lansley was insistent that this wasn’t about excluding lesbian couples. It is certainly something worth exploring in committee. Would sticking a poster of David Beckham up on the side of the crib suffice, for instance?

And yet. And yet. While I think there is something in the argument that the current problems we face with youth gangs and violence on the streets is rooted in the lack of supportive parenting, what I’m not clear about is that it is somehow rooted in lesbians getting IVF treatment. Getting IVF is a much more stringent process than having a fumble in the back of a car, and no-one is proposing to change that. A tiny minority of women get IVF treatment. Of them, a minority of them are lesbians. Of them, a tiny minority of them are likely to end up in a gang. Just what are the Conservatives preventing here? Maybe one thug per decade being grown in a test tube?

Once again, this appears to be a “reasonable” amendment being supported by the Tory front bench which you only need to take a sideways glance at the attack dogs yapping at their sides to see the real agenda. Can you say “dog whistle”?

It all seems so tactical. I don’t know if Cameron is the liberal he claims to be or not and to an extent that is irrelevant. What I’m concerned about is how a Cameron government would behave in the face of a reactionary Conservative backbench of the kind we are likely to continue to see for decades to come. His approach since becoming leader has been to avoid confrontation where possible, and capitulate where not. In this respect he is very different from Tony Blair circa 1995. Blair loved to face down his detractors in the party; that’s why the “demon eyes” approach was so unconvincing. With Cameron, we really do seem to be getting a Tory wolf in woolly liberal’s clothing.

Neil Kinnock famously (and anecdotally; he hotly denies it) described Charter 88 as a bunch of “whingers and wankers.” It’s good to see that the shoe is now on the other foot, as demonstrated by this whine by Daniel Kawczinyski.

What is amusing about this article is that it is wrong in almost every single important respect. To start with, he deplores closed lists. But he then goes on to exhort first past the post which is, erm, a closed list system. If he wants accountability, then why not advocate a system which encourages it, i.e. STV?

Secondly, he claims that voters in London were confused. Well maybe, but the vast majority of them managed to vote okay. Indeed, compare the number of rejected votes for the Mayoral election (1.67%) and the London-wide list (1.69%) with the first past the post constituency election (1.95%). It would appear that the system that caused voters the greatest confusion was the one Kawczynski is advocating!

He refers to Scotland’s elections debacle last year, yet fails to mention that the lessons of that incident have already been learnt - hence the low ballot spoilage. He claims that “the overwhelming will of the people of London was to get rid of Ken Livingstone and elect a Conservative mayor”. If that is the case, why didn’t they vote that way? Boris Johnson got 43% of the vote in first preferences - a plurality to be sure but well short of a majority. He fails to explain how the preferential system got in the way; all it did was illustrate that of the voters who preferred a candidate other than Livingstone or Johnson, more of them (not not that many more of them) preferred the former over the latter. And he claims that is in some way undemocratic. Inconvenient for an ideologue like him maybe, but undemocratic?

He then drops this clanger:

“The fact that Brian Paddick, Sian Berry and Ken Livingstone did well on second preferences only goes to show the bias which is built into the system in favour of left wing parties, parties which, in the case of the Lib Dems and the Greens were not well supported by people’s first choice.”

Uh? How does this show the system is biased? Paddick and Berry could have carved up the second preference votes between them and it still wouldn’t have got either of them elected as Mayor. The system doesn’t care if you count the number of second preference votes for candidates who failed to come first or second or not. The system only considered those cast for Livingstone and Johnson.

In fact, this demonstrates almost the exact opposite: generally the public are left-inclined but the system made no allowance for that.

Not all of Kawczynskis are completely invalid, but his prescription certainly is. To claim that first past the post is a tool for engagement, when in fact it guarantees that come election time the parties will ignore that vast majority of voters is simply ridiculous. He knows this. He knows how it leads to a fixation on swing voters.

It is ironic that he bemoans that PR systems don’t allow for by-elections while FPTP not only does but allows for greater accountability. Bob Neill didn’t stand down and make way for a by-election for his Assembly seat in 2006, and yet in Bromley and Bexley the Tories had an increased majority. I’m sure that numerous Tories might like to think that was solely down to James Cleverley’s hard work, but we all know it had more to do with the Mayoral election. Where is this magical accountability that Kawczynski has been telling us about?

We certainly could make things more democratic. If we had open lists or, better yet, STV which would allow voters to rank candidates in order of preference rather than purely on party lines, then accountability would increase. In doing so we could also cut down the numbers of ballot papers to two. We could hold the Assembly elections on a different day, possibly on the same day as the London council elections so that they aren’t completely overshadowed by the Mayoral election.

Yet somehow I suspect that accountability is the last thing that Kawczynski wants. He just wants the system that he feels suits his brand of rightwingery, knowing that under any system of fair votes the majority would make his life much more difficult.

At least not all rightwing ideologues believe that the only recourse is to steal elections rather than compete in them. Douglas Carswell, no wet he, has been advocating multi-member constituencies for a while now. It seems that the days of the Kawczynski Tory sense of entitlement may be numbered.

Julian Harris reports a rather bizarre Mandelson-style acceptance speech from the foul-mouthed, chain-obsessive excuse for Barnet and Camden’s GLA member. The most under-reported aspect of this election is the fact that as the Tories have more than a third of Assembly seats, the new Mayor will be accountable to the Tory Assembly Group not the Assembly itself.

Coleman and co ran on a manifesto they did not agree a single word with. However nice and cuddly Bozza himself might be, they will spend their time trying to drag him in the opposite direction. On the positive side, it is hard to see Coleman being able to restrain himself over the next few years. He’s done a pretty good job at convincing most people who watch London politics that he is a dangerous idiot. With Johnson’s win he may find his antics now get rather more attention on the national stage.

Come on London! Don’t let this happen!

Yesterday, I kept getting twitter messages about “Boris and Torche on tour.” Naturally, I assumed this meant that in order to avoid the homophobic brush, Mr Johnson had been going round Soho with members of the Tory Campaign for Homosexual Equality (which appears to have folded given that I can’t find any evidence of their existence other than an archive). However, it turns out to be a couple of punk bands. Who knew?

Quentin Davies - defected
Andrew Pelling - whip withdrawn over allegations of wife-beating
Derek Conway - whip withdrawn over expenses scandal
Bob Spink - whip withdrawn before he could resign. Now a member of UKIP.

My prediction at the start of the year that Cameron would have a bad year has remained unfulfilled, but this has mainly because Labour are having such a God awful year that Cameron’s problems have faded into the background. But losing 4 MPs - 2% of the total Parliamentary Party - in less than a year suggests a shambles whichever way you look at it.

How long before we see Cameron having to sack number 5? One MP who has survived scandal up until now has been James Gray. But for how long? The Mail reports:

Only last month, MPs of all parties were being urged not to hand out jobs to family members because of the scandal over Conway receiving taxpayers’ cash for his sons when they weren’t actually doing any work.

Now Gray, an ex-shadow defence spokesman, appears to have ridden roughshod over Cameron’s demand by putting Mrs Mayo on the payroll.

It is the latest twist in a sorry tale - and another act of bravado by the 53-year-old MP for North Wiltshire.

Last night he confirmed that mother-of-three Mrs Mayo, 45, was on his staff. “It is true, but I am not prepared to go into detail about my private life,” he told me.

In the wake of his split from Sarah, 53, it was disclosed he continued to pay her £2,400 a month from his staff allowance even though she had stopped work as his secretary two years before in order to undergo cancer treatment.

He secured permission to pay her until the terms of their separation were agreed last April. It is not known how much he is now paying Mrs Mayo.

See also: Wiltshire Gazette and Herald, Derek Conway: Shades of Gray?