Colour me unsurprised. This latest opinion poll (yes, yes, I know how fickle these things are) says more voters are becoming disenchanted with Conservative Party leader David Cameron. One stifles any desire to gloat, but as the former deputy prime minister, Willie Whitelaw once said after the Tories crushed Labour in the 1983 general election, “I’m jolly well going to gloat”. Cameron has had his honeymoon: a remarkably pliant press, a fair hearing from the usually left/liberal BBC, a relative absence of mirth about his stunts such as riding a bike to work followed by a chauffeur, but clearly the gloss has gone. We ideologues have been hard on him for some time and it does not surprise me that the cynicism felt by the likes of us is spreading wider. But what should the Tories do now?
I think it is too late to get rid of Cameron, even if that were possible. The Tories have chosen this man for the superficial reason that he looked quite nice, sounded reasonably pleasant. His ideas have all the plodding, unremarkable banality of the BBC/Guardianesque classes, but then such people have a huge influence on this country, although for how long one cannot tell. Cameron is in the job and he has to stick at it. If the Tories get rid of him, they might as well implode.
What Cameron and his supporters need to do is to oppose. That means, while not reverting to some sort of rottweiller mode, learning to attack this government. It means reminding the electorate that Brown, when Chancellor, helped to destroy a large and vibrant private pensions sector; it means pointing out that Brown starved our armed services of the funds it needed to carry out its various missions abroad while hosing money on the unreformed NHS and adding nearly 1m people to the public payroll since 1997. It means opposing a government led by a man who has massively inflated the size of the UK tax code. All this and more can be done, but to be done well, means that a Tory Party worthy of the name has to argue for the opposite: a small, lean, efficient state, low taxes, free trade and encouragement of enterprise. It does not require one to be a rocket scientist to figure this out, nor does it take a genius to put forward these essentially liberal ideas in a way that can capture the imagination. For example, just about one of the few good things about Cameron is his opposition to ID cards. Why does not he link the freedom to go about one’s business unmolested by officials to the freedoms to trade, to create wealth, etc?
Cameron has lost his gloss, but he needs to remind us of just how devious and bad Brown is. You never know, this mini-crisis for Cameron may be the making of him. Let’s face it: does any man with an ounce of respect want to be liked the BBC?
He is getting absolutely pasted for sodding off to Rwanda while his constituency is under water. Has he not learned the lesson of Thatcher and her downfall?
Jon I don’t think its too late to be honest.
The obvious conclusion to be drawn from the Cameron Party losses in Ealing and Sedgefield is that the Tories haven’t changed enough. The leadership of that party are always saying that the party is seen as too white, male, middle class and English and in previous elections has been to specific on policy which has put people off.
As a symbol of the change the Tory party has to embrace, surely they must now, according to Cameroonie doctrine, ditch their white, middle class leader. After all, he has a shameful history of advocating actual policies when advising Michael Howard.
Instead they should select a candidate with no visible political principles, non white, certainly not a typical Tory. I speak of course of Mr Tony Lit, the excellent candidate in Ealing who was such a perfect candidate for the New Tories but whose campaign was so badly hampered by the fact that there were some old ladies in the local Conservative Association who still refuse to bow down before the altar of Green and profess allegiance to the doctrine of PC.
That is it. Tony Lit for leader and then the Cameron revolution will be complete.
The Tories are looking for a Tony Blair,now I know where there is a spare one going cheap..nudge,nudge,wink wink,say no more!
Guaranteed to be a better Tony Blair than Dave Cameron.
Give the guy a chance to give Gordo one in the other eye and stand as the Tory he wants to be.
Dave is a twat.
It is soooo important that Dave Cameron’s party lose the next election as Labour Mark II, or we will be stuck with a de facto one party system which share the same ideology (radical centrist regulatory statism). It would be a disaster if Dave figures out that the other guy’s clothes fit the other guy better than him and starts looking for the male PR equivalent of Thatcher’s handbag.
Cameron’s ‘Conservative’ party are the enemy of liberty, the enemy of free trade and even of Conservatism, make no mistake about it. If you are actually a conservative and you want there to be a conservative movement once again in Britain (or at least England), for Christ’s sake do not vote Tory and just reconcile yourself to another term of Labour in office (face it, there will be a Blairite in 10 Downing Street regardless if Cameron wins)… vote UKIP. In the long run it is the only way.
JP: ¨What Cameron and his supporters need to do is to oppose.¨
I am afraid the only thing they can do is appease.
Cameron has no alternative to offer, so when he does oppose this or that policy, it is not to say, ¨This is wrong, we oppose it on principle¨ it is to say, we would do it a different way.
They have wasted ten years turning policy cartwheels to see if this policy or that policy will catch the public imagination. In desperation they will grasp at anything, like Howard with his immigration speeches, or Hague (or was it IDS) with his ¨24 hours to save the pound¨. When they should have been laying the foundations of a coherent consistent policy. They have wasted a decade, Perry is right, the sooner we get rid of the Tory party, the better.
Perry,
So what happens if the Tories lose? We end up with NuLab vs. the LDs? With the Tories clinging on?
I don’t see any possible positive outcome to the next election except a hung parliament in an unconventional though literal sense of the word “hung”.
And that isn’t going to happen.
Nick M,
You are looking at the parliament, not the party. If the Tories lose, then either a lot of people go looking for a real conservative party, or the Tories are recaptured by conservatives.
Be careful of a common ploy of totalitarians. Paul pointed it out in another thread. When you set the two alternatives both to the totalitarian side of the present state of affairs, the lesser of two evils is a slower and more painful death.
All votes that are for a lesser rate of defeat are still for defeat and are utterly wasted or worse, regardless of whether or not they ‘win’. Votes for candidates espousing the rollback of government, even if lost, are put to good use. It does no good to rally supporters around you if you are standing on the wrong side of the present state of affairs.
Nick M has said all that needs to be said on this matter.
Ooops That’ll teach me to go down to Dinner and post a comment without refreshing the page. I’m agreeing with Nick’s description of Cameron as a twat.
UKIP is a viable alternative. The Tories either need to die off or be reborn as a truly conservative party. Voting for Cameron only prolongs that decisive moment.
Perry, Midwestern and Alien are right; voting for Yet Another Liberal Party™ is just going to enshrine Tony Blair’s form of statism as the only viable ideology for government in the UK. Just ask yourselves: why do we have a Welfare State right now? Is it because the Atlee goverment created it in 1945? No, it is because the Churchill government did not abolish it in 1951. In the long term it is more important that all the mess of the Blair/Brown governments remains associated with Labour only than how long that mess lasts.
Dave needs to get the reverse effect of Michael Jackson, and turn ‘black’.
It is his only hope.
“I understand your pain.Innit.”
When tory MPs start writing to the chairman of the 1922 committee, barring the shouting the game is up for the leader.
For Conservatives to stand a chance at the next general election they must confront the fact that they made a huge mistake by electing this silly person leader, and act swiftly,treet the Cameron experiment as a lesson learned.
Stange as it may sound this could a blessing in disguise.
Mid,
I was actually thinking very much in the short term. And no I really don’t want iDave to win.
I think the political goalposts have been moved left (and narrowed). All three main UK parties share exactly the same ideology*. I don’t see that shifting in the nearish future. Neither do I see a “real” conservative party emerging. Especially not the way that UKIP has been pilloried in the media. Suggestion to UKIP – change the £ sign logo – you’re already seen as single-issue nutcases.
Personally, my suggestion is to give the buggers a short-sharp lesson in voter apathy or “spoil” your ballot. Either that or it’s time to do a Wolfie Smith (non-UK readers might not get that).
*They do differ in their increasingly weird “initiatives”. All of which (in differing ways, I’ll give ’em that) will cause me consternation at my own expense.
No, Richard.
Dave is not a “silly person”. His is a patronizing, sanctimonious, vacous waste of biochemistry who has about as much conviction as a weather vane in a tornado, the integrity of wet Kleenex and the authenticity of the Feejee mermaid.
“When tory MPs start writing to the chairman of the 1922 committee, barring the shouting the game is up for the leader.”
Getting sent to Darfur is another clue,Tory constituency base under water and Dave gets sent to the land of “foreign interest stories”. Normally his press people would have had him hefting sandbags ,wading through sludge and pointing angrily at Gordon Brown, the Lord Protector, flying over in his helicopter.
“Cameron hits a big air pocket”
What did he do, bump his head?
Perry, Mid, Resident etc are right. We need to reject the “One Party, Two Cisterns” option before us. The Tories are not even making a robust argument exposing the UK’s “Maginot Lines” in the treaty. Asking for a referrendum, bungling it and then going along to the EU Abattoir like good sheeple is what I predict is their intent.
It is not the trip to Rwanda – it is the fact that everyone knows it is a stunt.
David Cameron does not really care about the people in Rwanda – and everyone knows he does not care.
It is like the windmill of his roof (rather than supporting nuclear power – which is what he would really do if he cared about reducing Co2 emissions), or riding a bike – whilst his car goes along behind him.
I just watched Mr Cameron duing “Prime Minister’s Question Time” in the House of Commons. And David Cameron asked some good questions about the E.U. constitution (which is what the latest treaty is) and Mr Brown’s breaking of faith by going back on his pledge to let the people vote on it.
But “Dave” Cameron’s questions fell flat – because everyone knew he did not care about the matter of principle, he was just attacking the E.U. as a way of trying to head off trouble at tonight’s meeting of the Conservative party members of Parliament.
Mr Cameron has no principles – and everyone knows it.
Ah Rwanda! That’s where the lard faced loon went,couldn’t be arsed looking it up.Isn’t “World Poverty” something a prime minister does in his second term when he has outgrown his country?
The main point is Call Me Dave wasn’t on his ship when it hit the reef.
Vote Kang!.
Cameron was chosen as the Tory equivalent of Blair – which has to be about the worst possible reason for choosing a leader. But now Blair’s gone, Dave looks less and less likely to do any sort of job.
Is there anyone in the Tory party who could form a viable opposition and lead? If there isn’t, Brown is in for a luxuriously easy ride.