The feckless hope that Cameron will govern as a conservative

Cameron%20pudding%20face.jpg
Prime Minister Pudding-Face

In his column in The Express, Leo McKinstry complains that David Cameron is not really a conservative. Surely McKinstry is not just discovering this? From the moment Cameron became Tory leader six years ago it was clear that he represented the undoing of whatever was left of British conservatism. When the Cameronized “conservatives” won the parliamentary election in 2010, I said it was the worst possible outcome, because it meant that Cameron’s undoing of conservatism had been awarded with victory instead of being rejected. And everything he has done (and not done) as Prime Minister has only confirmed that.

If I could communicate with Leo McKinstry, this is what I would tell him:

As Britain now is, there is no hope for Britain. The only hope for Britain lies in the coming into existence of a new British politics which does not now exist—a new politics which rejects, from the ground up, Britain’s ruling leftist belief system. All complaints about British politics, all calls to reform, all promises to reform, avail nothing, because they are still coming from within the existing British belief system with its suicidal premises and attitudes.

Here is the McKinstry column:

DAVID CAMERON IS MERELY TINKERING WHILE WE YEARN FOR TORY RULE
Monday August 29,2011
The Tory-led Government continues to lurch from one crisis to another.

On every front ministers appear impotent, from the flaming inner-cities to the paralysed economy, from rising immigration to falling employment.

The failure by David Cameron’s coalition to provide the nation with robust leadership should present an easy target to the Opposition.

Yet the Labour Party, trapped by its politically correct dogma and woefully run by the gauche Ed Miliband, keeps missing the target. If anything its aim is becoming even more dismal.

According to a document leaked at the weekend, Labour strategists plan an autumn off- ensive against the Government in which Cameron will be por- trayed as “a recognisably right- wing leader” and a “traditional Tory.”

Using this new line of attack, Labour hopes to win over the British public by claiming that Cameron’s Conservatives have “moved rapidly rightwards” and abandoned “the centre ground.”

David Cameron is so conflicted about his affluent background he should have become a socialist.

This approach could hardly be more laughably ill-conceived. Only someone with a keen sense of irony could describe the Prime Minister as “right-wing.”

The fact that Labour could come up with such nonsense just exposes how badly the party has lost all grip on reality.

Labour’s campaigners now appear to inhabit a Marxist fantasy land where, in their self-delusion, they think the British people share their attachment to all the orthodoxies of left-wing ideology.

But after 13 years of Labour rule much of the country is crying out for a more vigorous, Conservative style of government, especially on immigration, europe and crime.

Far from being outraged at any departure from Labour’s socialist creed, most voters would welcome the restoration of tough border controls, a less servile relationship with Brussels and longer jail sentences.

One opinion poll last week showed that a significant majority even wants to see the death penalty brought back, something that is taboo amongst the political elite.

The tragedy of our times is that Cameron has failed to exploit the public mood for change. It is absurd to pretend, as Labour chiefs argue, that he has vacated the “centre ground,” which in reality is just the terrain of fashionable left-wing thinking, with all its support for the EU, multi-culturalism, a vast public sector, high taxation and softness on crime.

This is precisely the outlook Cameron has adopted throughout his time as Prime Minister. There is nothing remotely Conservative about his Cabinet. his policies are almost indistinguishable from those adopted by Labour.

To call him “right-wing” amounts to an abuse of the English language.

This is a leader who has presided over a massive increase in net migration to Britain, further accelerating the transformation of our country into a multi-ethnic land mass.

According to figures released last week, 575,000 new arrivals came here in 2010, the first year of Cameron’s Government, while net migration was up 20 per cent compared to 2009.

A truly Conservative Prime Minister would have acted immediately to reverse this trend through a temporary freeze on all immigration or drastic restrictions in the award of student visas. But, typically, Cameron has just indulged in tinkering and empty words.

It’s the same pattern throughout Government. he has done nothing to challenge Brussels but has bombed Libya to bring hardline Islamists to power in Tripoli. He has slashed the armed forces but squandered billions on foreign aid.

He seems incapable of doing anything about the wretched Human Rights Act yet has encouraged his ministers to indulge in Labour-style social engineering such as the implementation of the Equality Act, which allows employers to discriminate in favour of women and ethnic minorities. His Government is driving through large increases in public expenditure.

No radical steps have been taken on public sector pensions or the costs of welfare or the size of the quangos. Instead of supporting those in work, the coalition has hammered them with extra charges, such as the 2.5 per cent rise in VAT, the widening of income tax bands and inflation-busting increases in rail fares.

And what sort of Conservative Government promotes a massive hike in energy bills to pay for a green agenda?

Some might argue that Cameron’s abject failure to act like a Tory leader reflects the fact that he is nothing more than an opportunist who just wants power for its own sake.

It was Robin Harris, one of Mrs Thatcher’s closest advisers, who said that he “doesn’t believe in anything.”

But the truth is perhaps even more disturbing. If Cameron has a political philosophy it is one bred of guilt about his privileged background. This has led him to embrace a form of hand-wringing paternalism dressed up in verbiage about the Big Society.

It is telling that the political thinkers who have most influenced Cameron are progressives such as Phillip Blond, British radical and academic, or Cass Sunstein, U.S. adviser to President Obama.

“In what sense is the money in our pockets and bank accounts fully ours?” Sunstein once wrote, displaying his support for heavy taxation, a mentality that Cameron has taken up with alacrity.

If Cameron is so conflicted about his affluent background he should have become a socialist or a social worker.

But to masquerade as a Conservative is an insult to the political process—and a betrayal of the British people.

- end of initial entry -


Philip M. writes:

You wrote:

And that was after Cameron’s “conservatives” party pledged to reduce immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands

I don’t wish to be pedantic, but is not quite correct to say that Cameron said he would reduce immigration to the tens of thousands. This is what we were supposed to think that he meant, and the fact that you have taken (understandably) this to be the meaning just shows how effective a piece of obfuscation and dissembling it was.

These were comments that Cameron made during the live election debates. What Cameron actually said was that net immigration—the difference between those leaving and those entering—was the key issue. He then went on to say that “net” immigration must be reduced to tens of thousands a year. This would mean that if one million Brits left the country, and one million and twenty thousand Somalis entered the country, Cameron would have fulfilled his pledge. The way that Cameron said this in the debate was very misleading, as by the time he got to the “tens of thousands” figure, it seemed like he was only talking about reducing immigration. This is what people were supposed to think.

Of course, even taking this into account you are still correct that he has not met his election pledge, because the figure cited is for the “gross” number of immigrants. But really, the pledge was nonsense. How could our unwieldy and inefficient goverment, which cannot even keep an accurate count of the number of people in the country or stop illegal immigration, ever have such a subtle grasp on the exact figures of those leaving the country that they would be able to co-ordinate this figure with those coming into othe country with speed and precision, especially seeing as many of those coming into the country are EU nationals and asylum seekers that they have no control over anyway? If Cameron noted that only half a million Brits left Britain last year, would he fix immigration for the coming year at half a million (which he can’t do anyway for the reasons given)—and if so, what if the number of emigrants in that year suddenly trebled, meaning that there was an even bigger gap between the two figures that would have to be dealt with the next year?

It was an entirely worthless promise. It was a policy dreamed up purely for the purpose of deceiving people, and nothng more.

LA replies:

A commenter on the McKinstry article also wrote about this:

NET IMMIGRATION IS A BLARISM
29.08.11, 12:30pm

The government states its policy on immigration is to bring NET immigration down to the tens of thousands.The fact is that the net immigration figure has to rely on the number of people leaving the UK.This is really a Blarism intended to mislead and create a fog on the true number of arrivals.
The last thing the British public want is more of the same,after 13 years of Labours spin and bogus figures on the true numbers. If the figure of 574000 arrivals in 2010 is taken as an example it would mean that 550000 of the UK population would have to decide to emigrate to give a net figire of 24000.That means we would possibly lose over half a million indigenous people to be replaced by over half a million economic migrants of mixed cultures,all needing housing,healthcare and all the other benefits available without having paid a penny into the system.Those who have already decided to leave these shores include large numbers who have had enough of this huge influx of migrants and see no hope for the future of this country.
Unless Cameron makes significant inroads on immigration control,and uses more transparency on the true numbers he is going to suffer a massive exodus of conservative voters at the next election
The country is full and we should be retaining our indegenous population,not forcing them to leave with even more migrants pouring in to this small country,we are already two and a half times more overcrowded than France!!

• Posted by: jonesy2


Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 29, 2011 01:12 PM | Send
    

Email entry

Email this entry to:


Your email address:


Message (optional):