No, not because of the vanishingly-few attractions of UKIP. I want us out but I am a realist and it's not the first item on today's agenda. Not because the seductive (oh, yes) libertarians have finally reeled me in. They are not conservatives. I am. I shall not vote for either of the above.
It is because
(i) I think David Cameron is too cowardly to lead the Conservative Party as a Conservative. Sanguine and lucky in quotidian domestic politics, he becomes an ungracious bully under intense legitimate criticism which, curiously, he seems to resent. High office becomes him less and less as its novelty wears off. This is not Conservative.
(ii) He does not think like and does not know how to wear the armour of a national leader. He is ill at ease and reluctant and scuttles sideways when facing both domestic and foreign threats to the nation and its way of life. He pays lip service with suspiciously frequent, parroted allusions to 'our country' while doing nothing actually to defend 'our country'. This is not Conservative. Actions, not words, are what count.
(iii) He is the heir to the Grocer rather than to Margaret Thatcher. He is only the 'heir-to-Blair' in sharing Blair's patrician sense of entitlement to the top job which, he seems to forget, he holds only because thousands of the people he clearly despises - 'right wing bastards', Tory party grass roots like me, worked like... workers... to beat the electoral odds and get him into Downing Street.Because of the above, and above all:
(iv) Insofar as Mr Cameron is the party leader, he is leading the party to oblivion. The Tory party will implode under his lazy, unreflecting leadership and will be reduced to the present condition of the Labour Party when the moment comes when he has had enough glory and retires to spend quality time with his sinecures, a moment which probably won't be all that long in coming.
(v) Under Cameron's premiership, the country is treading water when it ought to be moving forward, and rapidly. He promised leadership and progress. He promised to undo the damage and the Fabian constructions of the Brownite years. He has done and is doing neither. We are going nowhere. To that extent, he is right about one thing: we are all in it, together, and for that I hold him responsible.Many, many grass root Conservative Party members including myself and a great many other despised GOTVers of my acquaintance are close to a sort of despairing political homelessness. Many of us accuse David Cameron of utter failure to keep his Conservative promises.
Economic situation my arse, by the way. I am not, on the whole, talking about economics.
Likewise, coalition government my arse. The Liberal Democrat tail is wagging the Conservative dog. David Cameron has given his (former) friend Nick power out of all proportion to the exigencies of the hour. And as the quoted comment below suggests, this seems not to be exactly a thorn in David Cameron's side. It's what he seems to want. No, Clegg and the LibDems are not David Cameron's problems. I am his problem, and people like me. Which is a good reason for me to put some distance between us.
Of course it is a happy thought that the Labour Party is both in opposition and in disarray but that will not last and it is not enough. It is not enough to to have 'Anyone But Labour' running the country even though of course that is, ceteris paribus, devoutly to be wished. It is not what I have worked and argued for since David Cameron was in kindergarten.
As a Conservative, I want a Conservative government lead by a Conservative prime minister. I have neither. David Cameron will provide neither.
David Cameron began with failure: failure to defeat the worst and most hated Prime Minister and government of modern times running as a Conservative. The reasons for the electoral shortfall are complex and many, but chief among them, in my carefully-considered opinion, is his own pettifogging cowardice. He did not campaign as a Conservative because he was ashamed to. He and his friend Mrs 'Nasty Party' May should start their own party instead of hogging the front bench masquerading as honest-to-god Conservatives.
'No!' people will say. 'Stay on board,' they will say. On board what, exactly?
'Fight from the inside,' they'll say. Me and whose army? With what weapons? I'm hoarse. I'm tired. I'm ignored. Look - don't you get it? I don't matter. I am the enemy within.
I hold no official position and speak for no-one but myself but my thoughts were crystallised on reading the following comment by scarybiscuits on Dan Hodges' Telegraph blog which I quote in full:
At its worst New Labour was about money grabbing self-advancement. At its best it was an honest attempt at rethinking the Labour Party's most fundamental beliefs and an intellectual critique of the Conservatives.
To a member of New Labour like Dan, I can imagine that he sees much to admire in Cameron. However, the similarities are only skin deep. What we have underneath is an unreconstructed Tory from the old school. Whereas Blair admired much about Thatcher and emulated her but also sought to avoid her mistakes, Cameron has simply dug up failed policies from the past, the posh-but-wet Toryism of Macmillan and Douglas-Home.
There is no sense in Cameron's thinking that he really understands Blair beyond the spin techniques any more than he is building on Thatcher's legacy (which he and the so-called Tory Reform Group despises). Whereas both Blair and Thatcher led their parties in new directions, Cameron's ambition is to be in the middle of the herd. His ambition is simply self-serving: he believes he and his acolytes should be in power but that is about it. He has copied the worst of New Labour but ignored the best.
Such beliefs as Cameron has let slip reveal him to be totally out-of-step with the party he leads. His success at becomming leader was based on copying Blair's pitch that we must adapt our beliefs to win power. However, being trusted to do that relies on the party believing that you are sharing their pain. What is becomming increasingly clear is that Cameron is not leading his party on an intellectual journey but is simply imposing his old-fashioned, patrician views on the rest of us.
An example of this is windmills. Most Conservatives would accept that if the people of this country really wanted them then we should go along with this rather than being a voice in the wilderness railing against the modern world. However, it now appears that Cameron's commitment to windmills is not so much pragmatic as emotional. When they were popular this was not so much of a problem. Now the science is unravelling and what little popular appetite there was for green taxes is becomming outright hostility.
We are left with the worst of all worlds, defending an unpopular policy that most of us never agreed with in the first place. The same problem applies to women in the board room, our relationship with the EU and bailing out the IMF. The Conservative party has a set of coherent and popular beliefs and we are 95% united on most of these. The problem is that the Cameroons are in the other 5%.
They think they are copying New Labour but whereas Blair had an insight into popular opinion and could lead it, Cameron's political antennae do not seem to extend beyond Notting Hill. As with Osborne's too-clerver-by-half soundbite of 'sharing the proceeds of growth' the Cameroons' search for the centre of public opinion means that by the time they find it the world has moved on.
When the Credit Crunch hit in 2008, the Cameroons' only response was to ban champagne from Conference. Having fully backed Brown's economic policies they were in no position to say 'we told you so' because they hadn't. After further consideration the best they could come up with was backing away from the popular tax cuts that had saved them in 2007 and supporting Darling's money printing solution for ever more debt.
Despite the outward affectations, Cameron is no Blair. Unlike Blair he represents no new step forward for this country, just a continuation of the status quo. For Conservatives, we see Theresa May continuing the 60s-style militant feminism of Labour. We see Brown's assault on university excellence continued by Willetts. We see Clarke's old-fashioned Establishment softness on criminals. We hear only excuses for why immigration can't be better controlled. We see defeat for our principles and beliefs whether Cameron wins or not. We are angered when Cameroons keep briefing that they don't even want to win the next election outright because they would be forced to govern as Conservatives. I doubt we will be indulgent towards Cameron for as long as Labour was towards Blair.Hear, hear.
You have over-analysed the lack of electoral appeal of the Conservative Party. They are being deprived a Commons majority by UKIP. Just look at opinion polls. The 'Christmas Veto' was popular, the backtracking and the failure to deport Abu Qatada very recently has set them back. The Conservatives need to get us out of this Euromess.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I agree with you he is tackling health, welfare, education, immigration and government spending. What he is not doing is going deep enough or far enough in those areas. He is not addressing the diminishing of national sovereignty, the size of government or criminal justice and human rights issues. Not all of it is his fault as being in coalition, vested interests, a fickle and a largely tribal electorate and a euro-zone crisis are all impeding him. Cameron does come across as you describe him but one must wonder whether this is not so much about the man as the circumstances and that he may be walking a tight rope better than he is being given credit for.
ReplyDeleteI have to say I'm in agreement with Prodicus on this one. Cameron really isn't tackling anything and I'm struggling to buy the LibDem argument at the moment? The Lib Dems were in no position to be throwing their weight around in Government. Their voters have virtually deserted them and I think they're a spent force propped up only by the illusion that that they're in Govt. Just like the mess that was the final year of the last Labour Govt, the public could see this a mile off.
ReplyDeleteMy point being if we could see so could Cameron. Had he been serious about all his pre election utterances he could have called Clegg and his Lib Dems out on this and laid down the law. He had the ultimate sanction, driving an axe into the coalition and calling an election. The disarray within Labour and a decimated Lib Dem part would have given Cameron a much stronger base to go to the country with.
But lo, he didn't (he even lacked the nads to do that). His problem now is that he's shown that all the political ammunition he's been using have been nothing more but blanks. He has only reserved his real venom for those who hold views he courted to get him his seat at the big table. He backs down on everything that he promised in the face of the weakest opposition when he could have made an argument that would appeal directly to it's constituents. take the pension reforms, which is compared so often to banker greed. He's missed the obvious trick of pointing out that their pension pots are held by the very same bankers the unions want to lynch and are invested in the corporates that they too are calling for a lynching of. How many pensions he should ask are invested in the performance of say the NHS, - none of course because it makes no money. For an apparently clever witty and urbane man, he's missing what in football terms are sitters.
But we saw that back at election time didn't we.
This isn't the lib dems - it's him and he's either a fool or it's deliberate.
Missing obvious tricks like those you outline are exactly why your final conundrum is preoccupying me. A first from Oxford seems to rule out the first explanation, doesn't it? So what are people like me supposed to conclude?
DeleteI've responded on my blog. http://brackenworld.blogspot.com/2012/02/coalition-its-dwindling-band-of-friends.html I think you should keep the faith a little while longer.
ReplyDelete