Ed Vaizey

As anyone who has had a child knows, baby companies conspire to make your life even worse.  Not content with leaving you witha bawling baby, they also make you spend hours putting together fiendish contraptions like prams and car seats.

That’s why I am feeling so smug, as I have just managed to put on a Baby Bjorn without an instruction manual. 

I may look like an idiot when I am wearing it, but I am in fact a genius. 

I am writing this some time after the stable door has bolted, but whatever.  Sion Simon and Tom Watson have taken a bit of a pasting for their spoof of Webcameron.  I think both of them realise that next time they should prepare a script!  Having said that, however, I have known Sion for well over a decade, and through him, Tom Watson.  Both are thoroughly nice people, as far as I am concerned, who have gone out of their way to be kind to me since I became an MP.  Sion, who I know best of the two, is one of the most intelligent people in Parliament, and I have never understood why he has not been made a Minister.  I hope a Brown government will give both of them a couple of years in office before we take over.  I don’t think, by the way, David Cameron was too bothered by the whole thing - he has also known Sion for a long time, and I suspect he is more perplexed than upset.

Conservative Home has an interesting post HERE on the fact that campaign groups are filling the vacuum left by the Tories.  Tim mentions The Taxpayers Alliance, Migration Watch and a new anti-European think tank, Speak Out. 

To say these groups are filling a vacuum is unfair, and also slightly misses the point, I feel.  I think there has been a recognition on the right for a while that the Conservative Party cannot carry the Conservative message on its own.  This has long been recognised in America, where the rise of campaign groups has been well established and where they help maintain much wider support for important issues like tax reform and reduction.  When I worked for Michael Howard, we tried, unsuccessfully, to mimic the Wednesday morning “think tank fest” that happens in Washington DC every week.  I for one would hugely encourage more campaign groups to be established to campaign for Conservative issues.  After all, Labour has had the trade unions do it for them for years!

Hilarious cock up on ITV’s Sunday Show, now being squired by Andrew Rawnsley and Andrea Catherwood.  I was due to be on the programme with Labour ex-spin doctor Lance Price, discussing the Conservative conference.  Two minutes before going on air, the power was cut.  By the time the power came on again, Lance and I were told we had been dropped.  With a shorter show, and with a Peter Mandelson pre-record and Pamela Stephenson in the Green Room, they simply didn’t have time for us anymore.  At least Lance gets paid.  No doubt the Daily Pundit feels I have got my come-uppance for too much media tartry. 

I had tea with Cherie Blair yesterday in 10 Downing Street.  Me and four other MPs.  And fifteen children from our constituencies and their parents.

It was great fun.  Cherie was very charming, and brought my group up to date with all her children’s news, but that’s not for publication.  Mrs Blair’s secretary kept teasing me, telling me to apologise to her, as we had a run in over her signing the Hutton Report earlier this year (David Kelly was my constituent).  Truth is , I didn’t know she had signed it when I complained - I was after James Purnell and Chris Bryant!  I’m not a fan of attacks on Cherie - I think she does a great job in an almost impossible role.

My cosntituents loved it.  I was feeling very smug, as when I asked a member of another party which MP they were with, they said “Sarah someone”.  Ah ha, I thought, Sarah Teather’s got her work cut out for her at the next election.  I felt slightly less smug when one of my constituents turned to Cherie and gushed “Oh, I am such a fan of your husband’s I have always supported him!”, and promptly produced a photo of TB from her handbag.  Collapse of stout MP.

I know a few of the Downing Street “staffers” and bumped into them on our tour.  One drily remarked: “what are you doing here?  You’re three years too early”.  Just for the record, I wasn’t measuring the curtains on behalf of Mrs Cameron. 

I have an article in today’s Guardian, urging DC to stay the course - which I’m sure he will.

I’m going on Andrew Neil’s Daily Politics tomorrow.  I’m a great admirer of Andrew, I think he’s probably the best political broadcaster in Britain.  But he’s not that good.  There’s a rather silly story in the Standard this evening saying that David Cameron was too frightened to be interviewed by him.  Apparently, Andrew was prepared to travel to Bournemouth at a moment’s notice to interogate the dear leader.  Not so fast.  If what I am hearing is true, almost no one can get into the conference because of the screw up over passes.

Anyway, on tomorrow’s show I have to put together my fantasy cabinet.  I had to do it fast, so forgot Mrs T, which will get me into trouble, but did remember to make DC PM which is OK.  Andrew Neil is my shadow chancellor, because of his trenchant editorials in The Business; Charles James Fox is Deputy PM for entertainment value; Edmund Burke Foreign Secretary because of his perceptiveness over the French Revolution and the American War of Independence; Nick Clegg at environment for inclusiveness; Alan Milburn at health for understanding what needs to change in the NHS.

Of course, this is just a parlour game.  You can play it HERE.  In real life, I think our shadow cabinet is perfect.

…If only for just telling the Tory conference that she was fed up with being “taxed up the arse” by Gordon Brown.  Priceless.

Labour’s hypocrisy is simply breathtaking.  Even after ten years, it never fails to astonish me.

Today’s Sunday Times has two pieces that have got my goat.  Oliver Letwin has given an interview where he says that he has “no hang ups” about the use of the private sector in the NHS.  A “Labour strategist” (hold on, I thought they were moving away from spin?) is then quoted as saying “they are the same old Tories underneath who believe private sector good, public sector bad”.

This in the same week as an NHS strike because LAbour has just handed over NHS logisitcs to DHL for £2 billion!!

Then comes the increasingly silly John Reid saying the Tories are soft on terror.  So what is he doing?  Well, he’s going to review Britain’s counterterrorist capacity (we’ve been calling for a Department of Homeland Security for four years); bring in “tighter immigration controls” (we called for that in 2005 and they called us racist); and ID cards (Blair says they are to stop identity theft and Charles Clarke admitted they were not a counter-terrorist tool).

If they carry on like this, Rory Bremner will be out of business.