Were there no left-wing journalists at the 2009 Tory Party conference? None? At all?
Obviously John Kampfner wasn't there, as he makes clear:
(It) is essential for the Lib Dems to mark their ground. They have to show how they are making a difference. The scorecard on one area in particular – civil liberties – is better than most people realise: the scrapping of ID cards and the ContactPoint children's Database; the outlawing of finger-printing of kids at school without permission and of child detention in immigration cases.
[...]
Is Francis Maude right when he asserts that this Government will complete Margaret Thatcher's unfinished business? Or will Clegg prevail when he talks, as he did in a speech yesterday, about the seriousness of this administration in improving social mobility, Blair and Brown's unfinished business? There may be the odd overlap but fundamentally these two approaches cannot in the end be reconciled.
Every jot and tittle of the policies now lauded by Kampfner: civil liberties, social mobility... was presented in Manchester as official Conservative Party policy (as was the scrapping of speed cameras, to vast cheers) in speech after speech by leading Tories including Osborne, Cameron, Duncan Smith, Clarke, Maude... And (shock! horror!) every single top Tory banana praised Blair/Brown for having good motives, if disastrous policies. You really should have been there, John.
Hard for you to accept this, I know, but the Coalition policies that you like so much, and for which the always-unfuckingscrupulous, ever-menbloodydacious Liberal Democrats are keen to claim all the credit (LibDem-Good-Cop-to-Tory-Bad-Cop my fat arse) are and always have been Conservative policies with which the LibDems happen to agree. Well, everyone does, really. And you're in denial, John.
Lefties like Kampfner, a lifelong ABC (Anybody But the Conservatives) campaigner, just can't see - and will never admit - that the Conservative Party's very essence is liberal in the classical sense, demanding the liberation of the citizen along with effective help for those in need. The Left believes that the credit for liberal (sic) government action can only belong to the Liberal Democrats (the party of Hughes and Cable - hahahahaha) to whom, for a while and to further their ABC project, they lent their support once they
gave up on the thuggish practices of the Labour government.
... because the LibDems looked to them like Labour-lite which of course the Hughes-Cable-Huhne wing is.
And then, hilariously, the Lefti-chatterati got a horrible shock when Nick clambered up into Dave's bunk. Heh - couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of patronising tossers.
The Lefties are trying desperately to shore up the LibDems because, well, they must, for now. Prematurely flouncing back to Labour over Clegg's appalling treachery would smack of error and confusion, flip-flopping or, at best, indecent haste - always undignified in a patrician-journo. (Where is Dame Michael, by the way?) No, it's not on. But it's OK because Leaderless Labour is having a fit of the vapours and anyway it's summer and no-one's paying much attention.
Kampfner and co are working on Plan B for when serious politics starts up again after the hols. The LibDems' days on the sunny side of Fleet Street are numbered. Cleggers has heard the last of I agree with Nick outside Mock the Week and HIGNFY.
And in the August of that year, it came to pass that on MacBooks all over the valleys of Arno, Lot and Severn, guff like this was in draft:
Began in hope... disappointing... opportunism... regrettable... Liberals versus Social Democrats... toff Clegg... killed his party... closet Tory... if only Hughes/Huhne/Cable... Labour now Britain's only hope... line drawn under Blair/Brown era... Miliband... return to True Labour Values... party of the middle class... Whelan? Never heard of him... who is this Bob Crow of whom you speak?... Help for Heroes... peace and love, man... sunlit uplands... zzz...
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