Liberal Burblings

Archive for August, 2007

The Independent reports that Cameron has re-ignited claims that he is lurching to the right after his comments on immigration last night.

Seumas Milne in the Guardian writes an excellent commentary on this lurching to the right business, entitled: “Now we see what the return of Tory Britain would be like”:

Now, after two months of the Brown bounce, a series of public rows over policy and two humiliating byelection performances, the real Conservative party is reasserting itself – and giving us a flavour of what the return of Tory Britain would feel like. Start with the prospect of rightwing libertarian Boris Johnson, a man who thinks it’s amusing to refer to Africans as “piccaninnies”, regrets the end of colonialism and denounced the Lawrence inquiry into the racist killing of a black teenager as “Orwellian” – as Tory mayor of Britain’s multiracial capital.

…on the crucial economic, social and class issues, Cameron’s Tories stand where they always have done: if anything, they are moving on to even more extreme neoliberal territory.

Cameron’s interview on Newsnight last night can be seen here.

The Newsnight interview with David Cameron last night showed the BBC at its best. Four senior journalists interrogated Cameron, with interesting results.

It was an unusual format. I suspect the deal was – “OK – make sure Paxo is two thousand miles away but we’ll let four of your finest have a go instead”.

The result was productive – some light produced rather than the heat radiated by a “Paxo stuffing”.

David Cameron was showing his gift of the gab at its most elegant. However, each of the four journalists hit home with individual points which, although Cameron gave a smooth line of defence in each case, actually exposed serious weaknesses in his position.

On Iraq, Mark Durban clearly drove home the point that Cameron had a neo-Con stance on Iraq, but now two years later, has become a liberal dove on the matter. Although Cameron waffled his way out of this one, his hypocrisy was clearly exposed.

Stephanie Flanders beautifully exposed the uselessness of the £20 a week proposal for married couples. Cameron virtually admitted (or at least implied) that the proposal would have no impact but said that it was, more or less, a needed gesture. So, in summary, Cameron is proposing to spend millions of scarce taxpayers’ resources on what he as much as admits is a “gesture”. Ridiculous.

On Immigration, Cameron seemed to mix up asylum and immigration. He was saying that asylum admissions have been too high. The natural action which flows from that statement is a limit on asylum admissions, which the Tories proposed at the last election, and was quite rightly condemned as a breach of civilised behaviour. To give Cameron his due (never thought I’d write that!) he did make a genuine attempt to carefully calibrate his language on immigration.

But it was Michael Crick who, for me, scored the winning goal against the Camster. He raised the issue of the Shadow cabinets’ 115 jobs outside parliament. He exposed the ridiculousness of a part-time shadow cabinet which is trying to present themselves as potential ministers in a few months time. In particular he focused on William Hague’s many outside jobs which bring him hundreds of thousands of pounds every year. How can we take the Tories seriously as a potential government when they are off earning vast amounts outside their shadow cabinet and parliamentary jobs?

Our friendly neighbourhood Fluffy Elephant obviously had a spiral topped notepad under his trunk during this programme as written a brilliant and comprehensive debunking of “Mr Balloon”.

Reviewing the front pages at South Mimms service station, I was struck by the Telegraph’s (‘David Cameron goes on crime offensive’) and Daily Mail’s (‘Crime: Tories finally get tough’) favourable headlines for David Cameron.

We have also recently seen Tim Montgomerie praising Cameron’s shift to crime and other traditional Tory policy refrains.

This evening Cameron says that Immigration is ‘too high’ on Newsnight.

Putting aside the point that Cameron’s crime initiative is built on fairly shaky foundations, as
Wit and Wisdom points out, there is some reflection to had on the Cameron “narrative” as it has evolved.

Ahem.

When he started as leader it was all trying to woo LibDems with his ‘Cameron loves LibDems website’ (or somesuch). Then we had lots of touchy feely liberal acrticles by the Camster in the Observer. Then we had the “hug a hoodie” and “let sunshine win the day” speeches. There was praise for gay partnerships at the Tory conference and various other statements geared to break the traditional mould of the Tories, to break the paradigm and make everyone think the Tories had changed.

Except, it didn’t work.

Oh dear.

Thunderous complaints from the Tory ranks, climaxing with the Grammar school debacle showed quite clearly that, although Cameron might pretend to be touchy feely, his party was still the hang ‘em and flog ‘em party we all know and hate/love.

So what does he do?

One would expect him to carry on and try to show us the Tories have indeed changed.

No.

What he did was sack David Willetts, the author of the Grammar schools debacle, from his education spokesmanship.

Big white flag.

Clause Four moment thrown away and lost.

He chickened out.

Then we get tough statements on crime and immigration. We get him saying the Human Rights Act should be scrapped and that the Learco Chindamo case proves that point, which it didn’t.

So, for months Cameron was suggesting, through his statements and people like William Hague were confirming verbally, that Cameron would not “do a Hague” – that is start by being meek and mild but then cave in and go all Toryish on immigration, crime etc.

But he has. Cameron has done a Hague.

The most ludicrous example of William Hague “doing a Hague” was when he effectively supported Tony Martin, the Norfolk farmer who was convicted following the shooting of a burglar at his home, in April 2000.

Hague started using the case to talk what are called “Rowlocks” in nautical terms:

People who are woken in the dead of the night by a noise need to know that the law is on their side

Bleat, bleat. You could argue that there was some genuine clarity needed in the law on this subject. But it was band-waggon politics at its worst and was emblematic of Hague abandoning all attempts at moderation.

Appropriately, on the eighth anniversary of the shooting of a burglar in Tony Martin’s house, Cameron launched his “Doing a Hague moment” when he went ballistic about Learco Chindamo:

The fact that the murderer of Philip Lawrence cannot be deported flies in the face of common sense. It is a glaring example of what is going wrong in our country. What about the rights of Mrs Lawrence? The problem for this Government is that the Human Rights Act is their legislation and they appear to be blind to its failings.

Except that, the Human Rights Act was only a secondary element in the decision about Chindamo. The main legal reference point was an EU directive – nothing to do with the Human Rights Act.

So, whilst Hague had his seminal “Hague moment” with Tony Martin, Cameron had his emblematic “Hague moment” with Learco Chindamo seven years later.

It appears that Cameron is now aiming to repair the internal damage in his party, rather than expand the Tory voting base. To be fair, he is embracing green issues with a parallel initiative alongside all the immigration and crime tough talk.

However, while he may have won back some Brownie points with Tim Montgomerie, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail, it is obvious that Cameron has significantly retreated from his attempts to win over the “middle ground”, which must surely put a huge question mark over his ability to make any breakthrough at the polls. Even at the height of his “sunshine win the day” popularity, the Tories were failing to get significantly ahead of Labour.

Now that Cameron has substantially abandoned his middle ground grab attempt, one can only speculate that the Tories are highly unlikely to leap sufficiently ahead of Labour.

That is simply because Cameron has now decided to preach to the converted – i.e people who, more or less, would have voted Tory anyway.

A leader in the Independent welcomes the Gummer-Goldsmith air tax proposals from the Conservatives but says that the LibDem green proposals are better.

Thanks to Conservative Home.