cameron

Spinball Cameron

Tabman — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 22:39:16 +0000

Bullingdon Davey

Tabman — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 12:45:16 +0000

David Cameron's membership of the exclusive Oxford University Bullingdon Club has been examined recently in the Mail, the Telegraph and the Independent. The Bullingdon Club, parodied by Evelyn Waugh as the Bollinger Club, is an invitation-only ex-Public School dining society, whose members indulge in the sport of visiting an establishment under an assumed name, smashing the place up, and over-paying for the damage with large denomination notes.

"So what," you might say, "much like Dave's teenage spliff antics, what does a bit of youthful high-jinks matter?" Now he's a respectable man and father."

Well, it does matter. Firstly because the alleged activities of the Bullingdon Club ask questions about whether Cameron's youthful indiscretions might have carried on into later life, and secondly because of the attitudes of a certain section of society to the way they can misbehave (and get away with it).

Cicero speculated recently whether Cameron's drug dalliances ended with his school days. To raise further questions, a report in Oxford University's student newspaper on the Bullingdon, written before Cameron stood for the leadership stated:

Cameron was member of the club at a time when it was de rigeur to engage in the ‘man of the people’ pursuits of washing down “a cocktail of drugs with an honest, working class box of chips and a five pound bottle of wine”.

Drugs issues aside, it is the attitudes that go with membership of such clubs that we really ought to examine. Past misdemeanours, as well as the wrecking of the White Hart Pub alluded to above, are alleged to have included smashing all the windows in Christ Church's Tom Quad, and wrecking the instruments of a string quartet, including a Stradivarius, invited to play at a Club garden party. As the Oxford paper puts it:

My source is quick to impress on me that they tend to leave one-off antique pieces untouched, preferring to infl ict more replaceable damage. I wonder how replaceable a Stradivarius is. Or 550 windows for that matter. A large part of the members’ motivation is the feudal idea that its quite alright to inflict damage on peasants’ property, provided one is able to pay for it.

In essence, such behaviour is about the swagger of exercising power, of causing distress and inconvenience to those less fortunate, and knowing that your wealth and influence leave you above the law in such matters and unlikely to have to face the consequences of your actions.

In an article linking the White Hart incident with the insensitivities and misbehaviour of the younger members of the Royal Family, Libby Purves, who describes herself as a Monarchist, writes a highly-charged attack on the section of society that views itself in this way:

They [are] rich, protected, unlikely to get prison records because their families [can] smooth the feathers of those whose property and peace they destroy. There is a sliver of British society — a very small sliver — that still lives in a different world to the vast, well-behaved middle-class majority, and disdains it. Their young run easily out of control: like the underclass yob, who at least has the excuse of poverty, these rich boys cannot see outside their own rut. It is social autism. In past centuries they might be checked by rigid conventions and parental severity. Now, they aren’t. Their parents bought in to part of modern middle-class childrearing — its indulgence and friendly unjudgmental attitudes — but unfortunately omitted to put in the time, the talk and the closeness which make such modern parenting work. The result is a tribe of well-spoken savages.

Perhaps Cameron is over all that now. But his insistance in surrounding himself with a coterie of hand-picked and like-minded public-school types, in an echo of the days of his Bullingdon Club exclusivity, doesn't bode well. And news that he considers trying to find the time to bath his children once a week is sufficient to make him a good dad makes interesting reading in the light of Libby Purves' comment.

We are currently experiencing mis-rule by a Labour Party that is privileged and sees itself as untouchable and above the law. Do we really want its continuance with Cameron's Conservatives?

What's their game-plan?

Tabman — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 08:26:31 +0000

Yesterday ConservativeHome reported the latest attack on "Project Cameron" [sic] by the leader of the Cornerstone Group, Edward Leigh. It comments:

Writing for the House Magazine, Mr Leigh lists the ways in which Mr Cameron has offended traditional Tory sensibilities:

"This is the year that Conservative spokesmen have:

- Adopted Aneurin Bevan as a role model (he who vowed to destroy us and described us as 'vermin';
- Praised left-wing Polly Toynbee's view of society;
- Snubbed the CBI;
- Pleaded understanding for marauding hoodies;
- Announced that we, not Labour, were the real defenders of an unreformed NHS, the last Soviet-style, centrally-controlled health service in any large country;
- Rejected tax cuts, despite the biggest tax hike in peacetime history;
- Criticised grammar schools;
- Turned down the volume on Euroscepticism to the inaudible."

While praising Mr Cameron's personal qualities the Chairman of the powerful Public Accounts Committee warns that the party is in danger of "taking our core vote for granted and in the process effectively disenfranchising millions of decent people who feel that none of the mainstream parties speak for them." He continues:

"Our Euroscepticism is deliberately confused with crude nationalism, when in fact we want to help the Third World by breaking down trade barriers. And why did the leader's speech at the party conference not mention immigration at all, when in the last few years we have undergone the greatest-ever wave of increasing immigration into our country?"

Part of the reason Edward Leigh is listened to is because of his leadership of the forty-strong Cornerstone group of Tory MPs.

My colleague Peter wrote recently that such dissent smack of a man considering a move to UKIP. I'm not so sure - as one of the comments to that article pointed out, Leigh still has potentially a number of years left in the house and a responsible job; why would he chuck it in at this stage?

Yesterday, Julian H commented on these pages thus, and it got me thinking:

I'm unsure as to what the Right actually want. Surely they don't want a weakened Tory party being defeated by Gordo in 2009. So do they genuinely think they can oust Dave before then and replace him with one of their own AND win in 2009? If so they are deluded. If not - what is the plan? Get to a hung parliament and then force him out for not doing better? Or do they just want to be seen as being disapproving?

Cameron has had limited success in that he has raised the Tories out of their 30-33% box to 35-38% box, so adding around 5 percentage points. Yet, to form a stable government he needs the low forties. With Labour in such disarray it is understandable that the likes of Leigh are frustrated - Cameron's "touchy-feely" pseudo-liberalism has not delivered. Meanwhile, all the core values that he and many like him feel the Conservatives stand for have been rubbished.

So, to return to Julian's point, perhaps they do want Gordon to win in 2009. Cameron and his approach will have been proved wrong, and the right can reclaim the party. Perhaps they calculate that by the following election, four terms of Labour will have the electorate crying out for a dose of good old-fashioned Thatcherism.

The Chameleon

Tabman — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 15:59:35 +0000

I have just discovered this gem by the inestimable Flanders & Swann. Enjoy!

(Hat Tip to Nick Robinson)

Are the sharks beginning to circle "wet" Cameron?

Tabman — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 14:29:53 +0000

Is David Cameron in trouble? Well, some might argue that with a poll position of 38% as reported in yesterday's You Gov, we'd be lucky to have his troubles. The difficulty for the Conservative leader is that his polling position, which has been largely stable now for many months, is not enough for him to win an absolute majority.

The contrast with the Lib Dems is that we are relaxed about such a position. But in the winner-takes-all Tory mentality, it isn't good enough. Especially when you consider the Horlicks that New Labour is making for itself in almost any direction you care to mention. Why, when there are so many apparent open goals, is the Tory leader firing blanks?

In yesterday's Telegraph, the lead article was titled Cameron must now move quickly. It is a call, made sotto voce compared to many of that paper's recent diatribes, but a call none the less, for Cameron to put some right-wing flesh on the bones of his touchy-feely proposals. As it says:

But the task is not yet complete, and we need Mr Cameron to move quickly to the next stage of his political development. Even if the Government's torpor continues indefinitely, the public will still demand reasons to vote for the Tories as well as against Labour. Mr Cameron should start to reveal more of his private political passions to a public crying out for trustworthy, energetic, and above all different, political leadership.

The comments below the piece are much more forthright, this from Vandiemen being typical:

I sense a note of desperation in this piece. Having firmly sided with Cameron even the DT has tuned into the rumblings of discontent. Is it not better to have the courage to say that you've got it wrong?
And to all those who believe that Dave is playing a canny game & keeping his powder dry, please explain what incentive he will have to take on board any of the concerns of the Tory core voters once he's in power. What you see is I suspect what you get.

Elsewhere, in the Guardian today, Max Hastings argues that Britain is now a Social Democratic country. As a result of this, Cameron is looking to copy Blair's Big Tent approach and also take on board the lessons of the 2005 election:

The Cameron camp's strategy is much influenced by polling during and after the last election. This showed that Michael Howard's articulation of specific policy points, some identified by Cameron himself in his earlier incarnation as Howard's adviser, made no impact whatever. Few voters could identify any expressed Tory position. Their ballot-box decisions were influenced entirely by perceptions of the party leaders.

Cameron and his people believe this is how the next election will be. Policy commitments offer hostages to Labour and the media for no electoral advantage. Yesterday he belatedly declared that he would support the government's gay adoption measure if no compromise could be contrived, because the alternative was to throw away the fruits of his sustained charm offensive towards gays and liberals. He would plainly have preferred, however, to stay on the fence where he sat last week.

Someone ought to tell Cameron that if you sit on the fence, you get shot at from both sides and splinters in your ar5e!

But the problem for Cameron is that his own party aren't like the Labour party which, in any case, took some ten years to effect its full transformation. They are far more ruthless, as Hastings acknowledges:

His refusal to attack the government on a wide range of issues - Iraq, the NHS, most recently gay adoption - rouse restlessness, indeed hostility. His perceived wetness - not in the Thatcherite use of the word to denote a leftist Tory, but in the schoolboy sense of lacking fire in the belly - is widely canvassed.

The danger is there for Cameron. Perhaps it is best to let another activist "Tory Boy" from todays thread on Political Betting have the last word:

What some “on the right of the party” would I’m sure come straight back at you with is that as they have spent their entire lives fighting against (as they see it)liberal leaning administrations that doesn’t say, think or act in accordance with their own views, beliefs and wishes, then why on earth should they vote for one now masquerading under n a pale blue banner.

I don’t see it that starkly and continue to hope against hope that some accomodation can be reached between the two points of view before things reach that critical breaking point.

With the management seemingly still determined to force a ‘Clause 4′ moment with the ‘right’ the chances don’t however look good.

The arrogance of some devotees to the NuCam project in expecting blind adherence from the entire membership to a foreign and unwelcome agenda remains breathtaking.

Until all concerned get it into their heads that we do have minds of our own and are not going to meekly be driven to where we don’t want to go, internally at least, things will remain tense.

If Conservative ratings in the polls begin to slide and the entire project is seen to have been for nothing, God help us all.

Hug a Hejab?

Tabman — Sun, 28 Jan 2007 10:09:07 +0000

In today's Observer, David Cameron makes another pitch to capture the votes of the "liberal left" under the title No-one will be left behind in a Tory Britain. The Guardian and Observer are rapidly coming to occupy the same space for Cameron's Blue-Labour as the Daily Mail and Sun did/do for Tony Blair's New Labour - gaining approval is the party's badge of change in its bid to capture centrist votes.

Cameron outlines what he sees as the problem:

I want the Conservative party to stand for a broad and generous vision of British identity. In a speech in Birmingham tomorrow, I will argue that questions of social cohesion are also questions of social justice and social inclusion. Cohesion is as much about rich and poor, included and left behind as it is about English and Scot or Muslim and Christian. Inspiring as well as demanding loyalty from every citizen will require a new crusade for fairness. A society that consistently denies some of its people the chance to escape poverty, to get on in life, to fulfil their dreams and to feel that their contribution is part of a national effort: such a society will struggle to inspire loyalty, however many citizenship classes it provides.

Leaving aside the issue that I suspect much of the Conservative Party has a much narrower vision of British identity than the one Cameron seems to espouse, there is little that anyone could disagree with there. So what is Cameron proposing to do about this situation?

Fairness will be our most powerful weapon against fragmentation. In America, new immigrants feel part of something from the moment they arrive because they feel they have the opportunity to succeed. It is that belief in equal opportunity that we need in Britain today and it is why the denial of quality education to so many is such a vital part of the cohesion argument.

Again, lets leave aside the issue that the "American Dream" that Cameron alludes to is an illusion for many for exactly the same reasons as he identifies - the lack of a level playing field in terms of opportunity, Cameron does at least here put his finger on one of the biggest levers we have to ensure equality of opportunity - quality of education.

So, one might expect that he would then go on to set out how exactly he will improve education to ensure that equality of opportunity is adressed. But no, not a bit of it. Cameron's exhortations for change amount to just these:

Building cohesion is a social responsibility. Government must enforce the rules of the road - speaking English, teaching history, upholding and celebrating the symbols of nationhood - and we will be absolutely clear about what needs to be done. If the government brings forward these measures, they will have our full support.

But this is about much more than government and politics. We must each do all we can to make this a fairer and more just society - helping others, creating opportunity and ensuring that no one is excluded from it.

Which loosely translates as:

(i) a dogwhistle to Edward Leigh (Faith, Family, Flag, anyone?), and
(ii) actually its nothign to do with us, but its up to all of you.

No policies, then. Nothing to show how he plans to set about improving the quality of education in this country. Nothing about how to adjust the tax an benefits system to lift the poorest out of poverty. Just, once again, a few warm words about a problem.

I highlighted yesterday a thoughtful piece about how the Tory and Labour parties are stuffed with careerists furthering their own ambition. Cameron is trying to talk the language of liberalism. His own party are distrustful of it, and in terms of practical liberal policies, there is nothing there. Clear evidence, then, that it is mere puff to garner votes and thereby advance the career of D Cameron Esq.

There is only one way to ensure Liberal policies are implemented in Britain - and that is to elect Liberal Democrats.

English Devolution

Tabman — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:28:30 +0000

On the face of it, articles today in the Guardian on Cameron's "vision of social responsibility" and Scottish Devolution and Independence might not have too much in common. But scratch the surface, and the same questions arise - and in each case the same answer is suggested.

Jonathan Friedland is a little embarassed at the attention "Dave" is lavishing on the "Guardianista troika" of Polly, Simon Jenkins and himself. But Cameron has a big idea to sell in order to get himself the keys to No 10, and he needs to sell this "big idea" to a wider audience:

He explains it as the simple belief that society's problems are up to all of us to solve. In other words, social questions currently left exclusively to the state would, in Cameron's Britain, be resolved not by central government alone, but by other key players as well, from charities to big business [my italics].

Unfortunately this statement highlights the problems with his idea, already picked up on by Tim Congdon and that I will expand on below.

Cameron is onto something, however, and Liberals should take note:

The left too has a heritage it may have forgotten, a libertarian, anti-statist tradition dating back to the 19th century and earlier, with its friendly societies, mutual associations and trade unions... If Cameron could stir that earlier, sleeping sentiment on the left, and combine it with the traditional Tory, Women's Institute brand of voluntarism, he could forge himself quite a coalition.

There is a problem with this because, as Friedland notes:

Much of that spirit was smothered by the Fabians' technocratic worship of the state and by the Labour experience of 1945, which combined to make many progressives believe the only vehicle capable of carrying their ideal was central government.

And that is a big challenge for Liberals - the ingrained notion that (i) the state must provide everything (and by that, we mean the centralised bureaucratic Westminster-based state) and (ii) that if things don't work at the local level, Westminster must intervene to sort things out.

Friedland uses this latter point as the basis of his challenge to Cameron's idea - that,as he puts it, "our civil society is too weak to carry the load he wants it to, and that would spell disaster for the very people he claims to care about."

I disagree with Friedland here. Cameron's "big idea" won't work, but not for the reasons he states. The problem with Cameron's idea is that it is, in the end, a paternalistic approach to problem solving. As Tim Congdon put it in his Telegraph article last week:

I never imagined that the modern Conservative Party would again embrace old-fashioned Tory paternalism, with a frank advocacy of expanding the state's responsibilities. The election of David Cameron to the leadership therefore came as a shock to me.

Ultimately Cameron is advocating that Central Government dispense largesse to charities and other NGOs for them to deliver services. The priorities will still be controlled centrally, and the taxes raised and collected centrally. The link between those responsible for delivering those services and those paying for them will be long, distant, and mediated via Whitehall and Westminster. In other words, this talk of "social responsibility" is a smokescreen - because Westminster will still be calling the shots and all the attendent problems will remain.

So, what is the answer? For me, Simon Jenkins touches on it in his article on Scottish Independence:

Partial devolution to Scotland and Wales remains a feather in Tony Blair's cap. It recognises the ambition of two component parts of the kingdom for an autonomy that reflects their sense of identity. No visitor to Edinburgh or Cardiff can be in any doubt that they are nowadays more different "places" from England. Their experience led Blair, or at least John Prescott, to answer the West Lothian question by offering similar powers to English regions. But those regions enjoy no collective identity or loyalty, being artificial Whitehall constructs. The idea failed.

Prescott's best answer to the West Lothian question would have been to have conferred partial autonomy on England's counties and cities. They would be viable: the county of Hampshire is the same size as the autonomous state of New Hampshire, and three times the size of sovereign Luxembourg. Westminster MPs would not then be deciding how to run English schools or roads or clinics or police any more than they used to, or any more than they do Scottish ones. Westminster MPs would have as little control over one part of Britain as over any other. They would be ruling a federation, as does the German parliament or the US Congress.

Jenkin's answer gets round the problems with Cameron's proposal. Strong local polities, with a pre-existing sense of identity (or "demos") exist in the form of Counties (traditional borders please!) and Cities. Given the power to raise their own local taxation, they would be able to run local schools, hospitals, transport and the like, either on the state-owned model or by tendering to private concerns, as their local electors saw fit. And, more importantly, the link between locally funded services, and local responsibility, would be clear and democratically accountable. It should also increase the volume and quality of participation in local government both from the passive (elctoral) and active(councillor) sense too, when people realise who controls the purse strings.

I hope our policy makers take note.

Cameron's right-turn

Peter Welch — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 07:42:24 +0000

He'd had a rough couple of days: his interview with Andrew Marr made him look second-rate; Kalms had qualms and Wheeler decided UKIP looked a better bet; and Cameron himself was caught out sounding a lot keener on taking England out of the European Union that Britan out of the EU.

Suddenly Cameron was talking about his great love for Thatcherism:

“We believe in freedom under the law, personal responsibility, sound money, strong defence and national sovereignty.

“Those who ask whether I am a Conservative need to know that the foundation stones of the alternative government that we’re building are the ideas that encouraged me as a young man to join the Conservative Party and work for Margaret Thatcher.”

The Sun, of course, loves this. Nothing comes for free. But they acknowledge that the U-turn has been forced upon him:

He has spent an entire year rebranding the party as a modern-day force interested in the environment and public services.

In trying to bring his party screaming into the 21st Century, he has left many feeling they no longer belong. And so UKIP have already enticed two Tory peers and one of Iron Lady Mrs Thatcher’s most respected economists to their ranks. Conservative funder Stuart Wheeler might even follow suit.

So now we know what we long suspected: Cameron is going the way of Hague. He starts off modernising - and then rushes to embrace the core vote.

And if that seems downbeat, have a look at what the traditional conversative behind UK Daily Pundit has to say - because he has really got it in for Cameron.

How Luntz made Cameron: Nick Cohen finally notices

Tabman — Sun, 10 Dec 2006 10:12:54 +0000

In today's Observer, Columnist Nick Cohen, under the headline How a celebrity pollster created Cameron, "reveals" that Cameron's election to the leadership of his party was influenced by the less-than-reputable methods of a "showbizz" pollster:

Through no fault of his own, show-business made Cameron leader of the opposition. David Davis had the strongest base among activists and MPs. The opinion polls declared Kenneth Clarke the frontrunner among the wider public. Neither man was a clear election winner, however. Cameron came from nowhere because Newsnight commissioned a focus group run by American pollster Frank Luntz that appeared to prove that the young politician could become extraordinarily popular and the Conservatives believed him. The desperation of the Tories in 2005 produced an election without precedent. The findings of a focus group drove a hitherto obscure politician to the leadership of a major political party. Not a focus group hired by party managers anxious to uphold the best interests of their cause, but by a broadcaster as interested in entertainment as reputable market research.

This is something well known in the Lib Dem blogosphere. Concerns were first raied by Millenium Dome, after the original Newsnight programme. Then, in April this year, Liberal Review questioned whether Cameron owed his leadership to Luntz. This culminated in a correspondence between Luntz and Liberal Review, summarised here.

Now, we know that Nick Cohen reads, and occasionaly comments on, Mike Smithson's Political Betting; and also that the Liberal Review expose was discussed there at length at the time.

A journalist writing a story and failing to acknowledge his sources? We'll let you decide. But Cohen has at least drawn the right conclusion, so we'll give him the last word:

Maybe it shouldn't be such a surprise that Mori reported in The Observer last week that Cameron's personal ratings had collapsed after his honeymoon period because voters didn't know what he believed in. The charge that he's an empty vessel isn't fair in my view, but if you are created by the entertainment industry, you must expect the public to treat what you say as mere showbiz.

Mel Gives One to Dave (a smack in the chops, that is)

Tabman — Thu, 07 Dec 2006 21:19:03 +0000

The Daily Mail columnist gives a damning critique of "Blue Labour" Cameron over on ConHome.