Our new overlords part two.
As I wrote on Monday, increasingly the Conservatives look to be returning to their status as the natural party of government, as they have so often been arrogantly described. This perception is only likely to be exacerbated (and yes, I do mean exacerbated) by Cameron's speech today.There was no doubt that this was pitched almost squarely, not at the country, but at the Conservative core vote, or those who used to be the Conservative core vote. It has to be remembered that the Conservatives won the popular vote in England in 2005: one last heave, especially against an increasingly unpopular Labour government, would probably win them the next election in any event, even if leaving them without an absolute majority. With crises of any nature often inspiring a small rallying round the current leader, the Conservatives seem to have decided after the events of this week not to push any further into Labour territory, the jibe about "novices" being by no means thrown back at all at Brown by Cameron's performance.
Instead, Cameron seemed to want throw insults at almost everyone and everything other than Brown: read through it, and it all seems so sickeningly familiar; the unemployed, teachers, the NHS workers, although not directly addressed but implicated by the letter which has already been called into question, health and safety, human rights, all were tongue lashed at some point or another. Libertarians too, were maligned at one point, for thinking that "we all have the right to do whatever we want, regardless of the effect on others", which is the exact opposite of what most libertarians stand for. The only thing that didn't come in for a leathering was strangely the European Union. Cameron by way of levelling this out praised the armed forces in Afghanistan (he didn't mention Iraq) who are "are defending our freedom and our way of life as surely and as bravely as any soldiers in our nation's history", the Gurkhas, the family, responsibility, sound money, low taxes, enterprise, Helen Newlove, leadership, character and judgement. The only things he didn't mention, as wags have already identified, is motherhood and apple pie.
This wasn't an awful speech, far from it. It was instead as close to a vision of how Britain would look under Cameron as we have had so far, which is all the more depressing for how you can already imagine it. I've argued consistently that the new Conservatives are in essence the ultra-Blairites, who will do everything that they always dreamed they could of done, but that either the opposition of Gordon Brown or the parliamentary Labour party stopped them from doing. Remember Tony Blair and how he wished with reform that he'd gone further, that he'd further rubbed his own party's nose in it for the sake of it, told them there was no alternative and then wondered why by the end not just his own party but the entire country was sick of him and his pseudo-Thatcherism and you had David Cameron today, except with a party that absolutely lapped it up, because they believed every word of it.
Yes, there certainly have been changes in the Conservative party; there have had to be, such has been the impact of New Labour on Britain. There has been almost certainly a general shift towards the centre ground, which has meant that Cameron has had to embrace the environment, although that was hardly mentioned here, and that he toned down his section on the specious "broken society" by inserting a passage about Wandsworth prison and those that are there because they can't read or write or because they're addicted to drugs, although it's worth noting that Cameron's supposed guru Helen Newlove, who only believes society is broken because she was unfortunate enough to be married to someone who was brutally and meaninglessly killed, which might have broken her world but did not everyone else's, thinks excuses should stop being made for such people, but his world view is summed up a soundbite he's used before: he wants to transform society in the same way that Thatcher transformed the economy. Rather than blaming New Labour for all the woes of the economy, which he did to a larger extent than George Osborne did on Monday, he might want to wonder who exactly it was who started the bonfire of regulation that has led directly to the ructions of the past year, of the person who originally decimated the communities which he now wants to fix, who led us to depend on the City instead of our industry for our economic growth, for while New Labour encouraged all of these things, it's his idol that began them, and had the Conservatives been in power, would have encouraged and rallied them on just as much if not to an even greater extent.
Brown's speech last week was infinitely better than this: not because there was any more substance in it, but because it was believeable, it was honest, and because it flowed. He doesn't, like Cameron, think that it's about character rather than policies, and thank goodness for that. The difference was just one thing: confidence. Cameron overwhelmingly has it, as does his party, while Labour is left looking utterly bereft. It's their fault that they are in this mess, not just for leaving Blair in power for too long, but because they also believed there was no alternative, that the good times would keep rolling, and that the City rather than anything or anyone else had all the answers. We are now left with the real Conservative party to pick up the pieces, or rather, further dash them, and they simply have no one to blame but themselves.
Labels: broken society, Conservative party conference, Conservatives, David Cameron, death of Labour, our new overlords, politics
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