If there is a real story here, then it is that Cameron can win without having to please the Tory base in the least, and indeed while defining himself against it for the amusement of the BBC/Fleet Street dinner party circuit.
So, all you tax-cutters and benefit-cutters, and people who inexplicably define themselves as Tories despite being Eurosceptics, family values believers, or tough on crime (were you asleep, or just out of the country, when the Tories were in office?), you can forget it. Cameron has proved that he can be as vicious as he likes to you and still win.
You have no hope either way in 2010. The economic rightists among you, and those of you still insisting against all the evidence that there is somehow something "Thatcherite" about patriotism or social conservatism, should all abstain, so that the consequent collapse of the Tories even after all the hype can lead to the emergence of one or more parties speaking for you instead.
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If you seriously believe that Cameron’s restoration of the Conservative Party’s electoral hopes has been a betrayal of traditional Conservatives you are more deluded then I thought.
ReplyDeleteUnlike Angela Watkinson, Cameron signed the Select Committee report that recommended downgrading cannabis.
ReplyDeleteUnlike much of his party, Cameron voted in favour of the Sexual Orientation Regulations.
Unlike most of his party, Cameron voted in favour of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.
Cameron whipped his party to support the Government Bill that banned the creation of any more grammar schools.
And so forth.
Now, after the mere capture of a marginal seat in Cheshire two years before a General Election, this approach is being held up as a triumph, so that there can, and will, be no departure from it either before or (if the Tories win) after the next General Election.
Cameron (like the vast majority of his party) voted for a reduction in time limits for abortion, and against the provision for removal of the need for a father; the Conservatives have promised to up the IHT limit to £1m, and introduce tax reductions for married couples; they oppose early release for prisoners; they oppose the Lisbon treaty; they are in favour of cutting immigration from non-EU countries from present levels.
ReplyDeleteSo, it's a bit disingenuous to claim that Crewe is some sort of vindication of ignoring Conservative issues.
"Cameron (like the vast majority of his party) voted for a reduction in time limits for abortion"
ReplyDeleteNadine Dorries has suggested that the time limit for abortion would come down if the Tories won the next General Election.
The American Republican Party has been keeping itself in existence like that for forty years: promising to ban or at least restrict abortion, but never doing the slightest thing about it, because those on whose votes it has come to depend would then declare "Mission Accomplished" and go home to the Democratic Party, whence they came and where their economic interest actually lies.
But the Tories could never pull off that trick here. Just as by far the most socialised sector would still never vote Labour in a million years, so the Catholics and the black-majority churches would never vote Tory in a million years. That's just the way it is.
"against the provision for removal of the need for a father"
George Osborne wants to be Tory Leader after David Cameron. He probably will be. This week, he voted with the eighty-two per cent of Labour MPs who believe that children have no right to a father and that birth certificates should feature the absurdity of two women listed as the child's parents. Need I say more?
It was, of course, Margaret Thatcher who destroyed the economic base of paternal authority, initially in working-class families and communities, but very rapidly throughout society once that dam had been breached. She also introduced the practice of mothers effectively married to the State, which was unheard of before the 1980s.
"the Conservatives have promised to up the IHT limit to £1m"
But they went around C&N pretending that they would restore the 10p rate, which they have no plans to do. IHT is in any case paid almost exclusively by people who already vote Tory, most of them living in safe Tory seats.
"tax reductions for married couples"
Believe in that when you see it. It was the Tories who abolished the old ones.
"they oppose the Lisbon treaty"
They do no such thing. They just calculated (correctly) that people would assume they did if they kept going on about a referendum, which they knew that they were never going to get. They never said that they would campaign for a No vote, and their record is such that they would undoubtedly have signed up to Lisbon without protest if they had been in office, before mercilessly whipping it through Parliament.
"they oppose early release for prisoners"
They invented it, and merrily implemented in when in office.
"they are in favour of cutting immigration from non-EU countries from present levels"
No, they just let people assume that they are. Well, they did. Now, by mentioning it at all, you are blowing on your dog whistle, and are therefore "nasty". George Osborne says so.
"So, it's a bit disingenuous to claim that Crewe is some sort of vindication of ignoring Conservative issues"
That's how they are already selling it.
Listening to Cameron on his by-election victory he talks about people voting Conservative for the first time and refers to a new coalition for change.
ReplyDeleteHe means of course defecting New Labour voters and the changes within his own party to accommodate them.
The process from Tony Blair to David Cameron would be a seamless operation but for the task of disposing of Gordon.