Cam Il Sung And His Disciplined Commentariat

This has has provoked a response from Gerald Warner:

Over on ToadyHole they are not liking it up ’em. Tim Montgomerie, the self-important prat who runs the ConservativeHome website, has excommunicated The Daily Telegraph and its bloggers for disloyalty to the Cameronian cause. Lord Tebbit, whom some people might have thought had made a marginally more important contribution to Toryism than Montgomerie, is denounced as “Someone who should know better”.

The bull of excommunication names the other guilty men: Simon Heffer, Douglas Murray, Michael Deacon and Yours Truly. “Anathema sint!” Beyond the Telegraph fold, Peter Hitchens and Amanda Platell are also given the bell, book and candle treatment. “There is constructive criticism,” intones Montgomerie, “and there is destructive criticism… At the moment there’s too much ill-discipline on our side of the fence.”

Sorry? On whose side of what fence? Not all of us are prepared to huddle in the Cameronian sheep-pen, waiting to see our ideals slaughtered by a bunch of opportunists and adventurers who have hijacked the Conservative Party. As Montgomerie sententiously observes: “It’s worth noting that if there’s ill-discipline amongst the commentariat (sic) there’s enormous discipline within the parliamentary party.”

The logical solution is surely a Whip system for media commentators, on the model of lobby-fodder parliamentarians. A disciplined commentariat is apparently now an aspiration of the Vichy Tories; is Letwin drafting the legislation? It would sit well with all the other repressive PC legislation Dave and his cronies have backed. Look on the bright side: at least we now know one Tory policy.

Montgomerie’s ToadyHole website is otherwise good for a laugh in these dark days. It is home to two strands of Cameron groupies: the cretinously complacent (“Great to see Karen selected for Eatanswill, against hot competition from five other brilliant A-List PR agency women, she will do a great job…”) and the paranoid defeatist (“These polls are rigged – did you know the director’s sister is married to a Labour councillor…?”). It is also rich in off-the-top-of-my-head instant psephologists (“My own bet would be 835 seats to us and three to Labour…”).

In that hot-house milieu it would be pointless to suggest these delusionary loyalists ask themselves why so many anti-socialist commentators are condemning Cameron and his clique, in company with many ex-Tory voters. One thing the ToadyHole decree did not make clear: are we to submit our blog posts from now on to CCHQ for approval or to Montgomerie in person? I think we should be told, if we are to co-operate in creating a disciplined commentariat.

And from Peter Hitchens:

Tory blogger Tim Montgomerie, of 'Conservative Home', has issued a denunciation of conservative commentators ranging from Lord Tebbit to little me for not being properly loyal to David Cameron's Conservatives. He says:

'There is constructive criticism and there is destructive criticism. There is a time for debate on the Right and a time to either be silent or gun for Labour.

'At the moment there's too much ill-discipline on our side of the fence.

'This close to a General Election is a time for people on the right to weigh their words carefully. Do they really want to help re-elect a government that has taken state spending to more than 50 per cent of GDP?

'The Cameron-led Conservative Party isn't perfect but this election isn't a choice between a perfect and an imperfect Toryism but between Brown's big state interventionism and David Cameron's alternative.'

I have answered this argument in many previous posts. The choice is in fact between an opportunity for real change and reform, and a limitless vista of social democracy under two near-identical parties. I like Tim, and suspect that he has to spend a lot of his strength keeping quiet about his own differences with the Cameron leadership, which has little time for his thoughtful but genuinely conservative position. Perhaps that's why he's so upset about the rest of us who don't do so. I can only say that I am not doing this idly, that I entirely understand what I am doing, and believe it to be a better route to a conservative goal.

I should also say that as a result I have been systematically smeared for my pains. A friend of mine recently fell into conversation with a Tory loyalist, a teacher who once taught one of my children, and this loyalist (an intelligent graduate of a good university in the days when they taught proper knowledge and understanding) repeated to my friend the ludicrous claim that I am a secret Trotskyist sleeper, working for Gordon Brown. I don't know who is spreading this lying piffle, though I have in the past discussed the Cameron aide and MP Ed Vaizey's weird statements on the subject.
See here.

But I am not inclined to respect, let alone feel any need to be disciplined to help, a political formation which reacts to criticism in this way. In fact I deplore the whole idea that journalists sympathetic to a political position or party should be under any 'discipline'. What would our comments be worth if they were delivered to obey such discipline? In fact I suspect that quite a few pro-Tory commentators are fiercely stifling doubts for precisely this reason, which is one cause of the intense dullness and sycophancy of so much political writing these days.

But what do the Cameroons think? Judging by their furious personalised response to any opposition or criticism, their patrolling of dissenting meetings and rigid centralisation of MP selection, I do wonder if they yearn to control journalists as they also control candidates. The Parliamentary Lobby, of course, does what it is told without being asked, having decided some time ago to bleat for Mr Cameron, not out of political loyalty or discipline but for career reasons, as explained in my book 'The Cameron Delusion'. It is only the non-lobby commentariat that still evades total control. But Mr Montgomerie's lament suggests that this is very much not appreciated.

So let me suggest a new name for the Tory leader, or Dear Tory Leader, who - mainly so as to suppress the last remaining traces of conservatism in it - has made his party more authoritarian and controlled than any previous leader.

I give you Comrade Cam il Sung.