It was noticeable at the Tory Conference that David Cameron and other Shadow Cabinet members peppered their criticisms of Labour policies with the attribution to their Labour opponents of 'the best of intentions' even as they asserted that Labour's policies are mistaken and have proved damaging to the common weal.
Tory leaders said several times that 'not everything Labour has done was wrong' and 'much that Labour has done has been good'.
Cameron's jabbing rage in his closing speech was aimed, not at individual Labour persons as moral agents, but at the corporate body of the Labour Party for its settled policy (dictated by the leadership) ...
... of accusing 'the Conservatives' of heartlessness, wickedness, and selfish, insouciant disregard for the poor.
These unpleasant things are necessarily matters of personal morality; to accuse a group of moral turpitude is to accuse its members of it, to attribute personal moral evil to them.
This is not the cut and thrust of civilised political debate. This is atavistic, take-no-prisoners class warfare of the sort used by V I Lenin's cadres to bring down the Russian ruling class in the early years of the last century.
The conditioned reflex to reach for the hate-speech of full-on class warfare is in the most ancient traditions of the hard left from the time before they changed tack and opted for the Gramscian softly-spoken, 'long march' approach.
Under Labour's present leadership, openly-expressed hatred qua hatred of the 'epithet-deleted conservatives' has become, you might say, an integral element of Labour Party campaigning and a necessary qualification, along with the abandonment of one's dignity, for advancement within their 'great movement'. It used not to be the case: Attlee, Gaitskell, Blair... and there are exceptions: Darling, Field... Oh, but... Field is hated by his colleagues. Darling was to be fired. Oh, well.
The presumption that Conservatives are actually wicked explains the aversion to socialising with these Devil's Disciples which is a given among Labour's wholly virtuous aristocrats and high priests up in their Hampstead temples of virtue and in their missionary stations out in Medialand.
"Of course one talks to a few Tories in the studio but one wouldn't invite them home for dinner..." (looking for the original reference)
The genuine incredulity in the voices of broadcast journalists at the spontaneous standing ovation from grass root Conservatives for Cameron's promise of help for the poor as a priority tells its own story. They really believe that the average Conservative is a bad person. Even so they are thunderstruck at current developments and can only conclude, cynically, that this is some sort of strictly temporary conversion for electoral purposes only.
By contrast, to accuse a political group of damaging economic or philosophical errors made with good intentions is very far indeed from attributing personal moral evil to the group's members, even if the consequences of their policies are proven in practice to have been tragically damaging to the vulnerable and needy.
The Tory shadow government is making no accusations of personal moral evil about the Labour Party, merely criticisms of its - and its leaders' - egregious philosophical and economic errors.
The Labour Party is now so philosophically and politically (I omit words like 'economically' and 'financially') bankrupt that it cannot summon the energy for civilised economic and political debate. It has decided that it does not even wish to, reverting instead to the less demanding option of atavistic hate-speech against individuals and groups of individuals. I wonder how much longer it will be before its more stupid supporters decide to start actually flinging stones.
Unless, of course, I have missed something. It may be that there have been many similarly courteous public critiques of Conservative Party policy by Labour ministers in the long years and many campaigns since 1997. If so, do let me know where I can find them.
I would be particularly interested in finding any generous tributes by Mr Brown to Mr Cameron's 'good intentions'.
On a more cynical note, I wonder which stance - sweet or sour - will attract more swing votes in marginal constituencies?
Putting your case more briefly: those that resort to the argument 'ad hominem' have run out of anything else (such as even poor variants on the theme of rationality).
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Reminds me of the contest between the wind and the sun to make a traveller lose his raincoat..
ReplyDelete(I'll not repeat it as it's too well known).
I think it's called "love bombing". and working.