A Financial Times survey of Tory candidates this week pointed to the scale of climate change denial in the party. Most resist a cap on bankers' bonuses and want less financial regulation: many come from the financial sector, others from PR and marketing, and they want the 50p top tax scrapped. Conservativehome.com finds them rabidly Eurosceptic. All that is radical, a fundamentalist return to Conservative roots. No change there, then.
Doesn't that reassure you doubters?
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Well, no actually.
Because in the final analysis they will do what Cameron tells them, for fear of damaging their prospects of attaining higher office.
Yesterday on TV I saw Iain Dale talking about the Stuart MacLennan Twitter row. Dale happily regaled that he had written something on his blog during the 2005 election campaign and got a phone call from CCHQ telling him to remove it as it contradicted party policy. Dale complied.
Doesn't that tell you all you need to know about party politics?
I remember reading an article by Peter Hitchens a few years ago saying that the likes of Tony Benn, Arthur Scargill, etc. were in fact useful idiots for Blair. By condemning him for not nationalising industry, massively raising direct taxation, & other things he was never going to do they reassured floating voters that he wasn't that bad after all, while behind the scenes he worked to DESTROY EVERYTHING WE HAVE STOOD FOR DOWN THE CENTURIES, AND THAT.
Are not the UKIP contingent performing a similar role now? Can you imagine Camoron smiling whenever Simon Heffer etc slag him off, safe in the knowledge that for everyone Heffer sways there are two who think "I was worried about him being too right-wing but if this lot hate him he can't be that bad"?
I will have a look for that Hitchens actually.
Well, who are Toynbee's audience?
It's more likely that she's speaking to disaffected Labour voters than wavering Tories. The former group might be persuaded by claims that the Tories will eat children and other scare stories. The latter group wouldn't read or be persuaded by Toynbee anyway. Are you?
Whoever wins the election will be part of a new breed of politician that has little connection with real people. They will have earned their places through think tanks, quangos, EU quasi-political structures and PR agencies. Cameron is of a type with Milliband and Balls. They share more in common with each other than with you or I. They are elitist and despise the ordinary man and his opinions. They think in terms of politicians providing a lead to citizens rather than politicians expressing the will of the people. Thus they universally ignored calls for a Lisbon referendum.
If you vote for Cameron, you endorse the new oligarchy. If he fails to win convincingly, there is a possibility of change. The "Blairisation Project" will have been seen to fail.
AM- It will be interesting to see how pliant the Tory backbenchers will be after the election.
TDK- Unfortunately all 3 parties are led by people who could be seen as "heirs to Blair", so any result at all will be interpreted as a vindication of Blairism.
Unfortunately all 3 parties are led by people who could be seen as "heirs to Blair", so any result at all will be interpreted as a vindication of Blairism.
That doesn't follow. Let's look at each in turn.
The Liberal Party aren't going to win. Their most credible figure is the decidedly unBlair like Ming, so I doubt you can claim a Liberal advance as an endorsement of Blairism.
Brown is trying to be Blair but he can't pull it off. In a sense his failure to win the election will be an endorsement of Blairism. He is the least Blair like of all three leaders and his performance will be contrasted with the fact that the real Blair could win elections even during the throws of a very unpopular war. In contrast, if Labour do better than expected it cannot vindicate Blairism - it will show there is life after Blair. Milliband et al require Brown to fail in order to advance.
In contrast the Conservative Party has assumed that trying to win the middle ground and, worse, being uncontentious is the key to success. They are trying to replicate "triangulation" at a time when the political landscape has entirely changed: Blair inherited a healthy economy. As a result they have abandoned all principle and any attempt to defend Conservative thinking in order to be elected. In turn that causes them to have few clear policies except Labour lite.
Those who advocate voting Conservative do so on the basis that the Conservatives have a secret agenda to become more radical after election. No one wants what the Tories actually have on offer.
When the last Labour government was in disarray during the winter of discontent, the Tories were much more forthright about living within your means. Why on earth is nobody in the Conservative Party talking about the massive increase in National Debt, the looming public sector pension crisis, the stupidity of home generation subsidies, etc etc.
If you want a party that will roll back the state, particularly the intrusion-ist state that Labour accelerated then the Conservatives don't actually offer any promise.
The best you can offer is a Poly quote that is the result of trawling for the slightest evidence that the Conservative Party might actually be conservative. She ought to have reams of stuff.
Labour always fuck up the economy. They are conceptually unable to grasp that wealth has to be created to be redistributed. Consequently it was only a matter of time before the economy tanked.
If this CP fails to defeat a Labour government that has hit the buffers then it undermines the Cameron strategy. Only with Cameronism discredited will the Conservative Party regain some principle.
"throws of a very unpopular war"
that should be "throes".
"throws of a very unpopular war"
that should be "throes".
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