Crazy Tory Leader

Stuart Reid writes:

In their pre-election statement, Choosing the Common Good, the bishops give David Cameron a boost by implicitly supporting his policies on marriage and the family.

Whether this nod of approval will improve Mr Cameron’s chances of winning the election remains to be seen, but it does nothing to persuade me to vote Tory, or to feel that it would be other than a matter for Confession if I were to do so. (Venial or mortal? Tricky. Perhaps I should ask Fr Tim Finigan.)

Besides, the bishops also express sentiments in the document that will be read as pro-Labour, and it is only to be expected that they should back just about any policy that might protect marriage. In his speech in Brighton on Sunday Mr Cameron seemed to be doing the right thing when he again committed his party to recognising marriage in the tax system.

In terms of simple justice, that is a good thing, of course, but a bung of £20 a week won’t keep couples together, and the problem with Mr Cameron is that he is an agreeable cove but it is difficult to know what he means by marriage, or for that matter by the family. Sometimes it seems that any combination of bodies and babies will do. In a key passage in his Brighton speech Mr Cameron revealed more about himself and his attitudes than he perhaps intended. It is worth quoting the passage in full:

“I was on a radio phone-in in Kent the other day, and a young man rang up and said that he had got his girlfriend pregnant, and he wanted to move in with her, and together to bring up that child and give it the best start in life, but he had found out that if he moved in with his girlfriend, she would lose her benefits, and be much worse off, so he couldn’t do it. What sort of crazy country sends a signal like that to people who want to do the best for their families? That’s the change we’ve got to bring in this party, that’s the value that we aspire to.”

The real question is: what sort of crazy Tory leader can send out a signal like that to the people who want the best for families? Read the paragraph again. In the first place Mr Cameron, champion of marriage, is morally neutral about marriage. In the second place, however, he suggests that young men cannot be expected to look after their girlfriends and babies unless the state subsidises them.

In Mr Cameron’s view, that man on the phone-in simply “couldn’t” give his child what he regarded as the best start in life, because, if he joined his girlfriend in that enterprise, she would lose benefits (and, presumably, they would both be worse off).

There is no suggestion from Mr Cameron that the man might think it right to give his baby the best start in life by marrying the woman, even if that meant she had to give up her single mum allowance, or whatever, and he, in consequence, had to work harder. Are we really as venal as Mr Cameron apparently believes?

It is not just the Tories, however. Mr Cameron is a child of his times. Like all our politicians, he believes, with Roy Jenkins, that the permissive society is just another term for the civilised society, and that civilisation means gay adoption and gay “marriage”, non-judgmental sex education, and embryonic stem-cell research. In other words, it means moral relativism. That is not going to change whoever wins the election.

Damian Thompson in this week's Spectator is the latest to suggest that the new Tory intake will contain lots of Evangelical Protestants who will vote to lower the abortion time limit. Cameron himself has voted to do so in the past. Nice try. Conning Catholics into voting for Evangelical Protestants on the life issue, a trick of which we saw the first British example on the part of the SNP at Glasgow East, has delivered absolutely no change to the abortion law in America. It just keeps both Catholics and Evangelicals voting against their own economic interests and for the harvesting in pointless wars of Irish Catholics, of Scots-Irish Southerners and Westerners, and of blacks, who at least have there, as they would have here, the sense not to vote for the party that subjects their male half to triple genocide in the womb, on the streets and on the battlefield. The Catholics and the white Evangelicals are not falling for it any more, either.

No Bill to lower the limit would ever actually make it onto the Statute Book while the three present parties remained in place, and in any case George Osborne has voted against any such lowering, as he has also voted to abolish fatherhood. Absurd in the heir to a baronetcy? Yes. But Osborne is thick. If you must vote either Tory or Labour, which can only be due to your own failure to organise a better candidate where you live, then ask yourself this: who would make a better Chancellor of the Exchequer? Someone who is pro-abortion, anti-fatherhood and Alistair Darling? Or someone who is pro-abortion, anti-fatherhood and George Osborne? Well, there you are, then.