Wintonsweek David Cameron – High Priest Of Vacuity Aggressive Action Plan Required, But Cameron Just Emoted His Analysis Is All Wrong; “A New Direction” Isn’t Called For “Dump Cameron and his wet friends and install a proper Conservative like David Davis, Liam Fox or William Hague” David Cameron truly is an empty vessel. His speech to the Tory Party conference said it all. The majority of the country is seething with anger because of the incompetent arrogance of neo-Labour. We all know that everything important has gone into reverse since 1997. Education has been trashed. Health care is on the slide, although I’m not sure you can slide from rock-bottom. Our once world-class pensions have been destroyed. Transport was the responsibility of John Prescott for years. Tax has become intrusive and debilitating. Neo-Labour has spawned an army of petty bureaucrats who can’t wait to pounce on us if we dare step out of line in the most trivial way – microchips in our rubbish bins no less. Break the speed limit by a barely measurable amount and they will take away 25% of your driving license. I for one wanted to hear some real passion, perhaps bordering on hatred, for the Labour party “movement” and its “values” – otherwise known as envy and levelling down. But no; Cameron gave us a smug and smarmy speech with plenty of warm, motherhood and apple pie sentiments but no action. The Conservative Party should be rueing the day it ever fell for this snake-oil salesman, this Bill Clinton in disguise. You might say I have been a bit harsh with David Cameron. I’ve pointed out the thinness of his resume. I’ve noted the fact that he said one thing during the campaign for the Tory Party leadership, and promptly said stuff after the election that would have doomed him to failure if admitted before the vote. But in the spirit of fairness and generosity, I set myself a little test as Call Me Dave started to speak. Give him a chance Cameron started talking about the National Health Service, after his much trailed line about how Blair summed up his policies with three words, education, education, and education, while he, Cameron, could do it in 3 letters – N, H, and S. It didn’t bode well that Cameron was basing so much on a rotten institution which is a living demonstration that whoever said the road to ruin was paved with good intentions, knew a thing or two. The NHS is a byword for how not to deliver health care, but Cameron described it as one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. The NHS is a failed, left-over from a bygone age when the state doled out its favours to the poor as if it was the local squire. It is gigantic, incompetent and wastes our money on a fabulous scale. Any true Conservative would be extolling the virtues of insurance based schemes which serve the Germans and the French, or at least saying that let’s try and reach up to the world-class standards of health care which are reached in America, with some ideas about how this could be done. Cameron likes the minimum wage! It didn’t take long though for Cameron to blow himself out of the water, at least as far as my little test of his Conservatism went. Cameron started to talk about how modern Tories didn’t want to belittle the few real achievements that the Labour party had made, to do that would be to descend to yah-boo politics and I agree with that. But guess what achievements he plucked out of the air? The freeing of the Bank of England from direct government control, yes, that’s good although independence is along way off, and the minimum wage! Cameron went out of his way to say he supported the minimum wage, this symbol of Labour grandstanding which any one who’s walked past an economics bookstore even on the other side of the street knows can never work and is counter-productive, a classic case proving the theory of unintended consequences. If you set the minimum wage too high, you cause unemployment; if you set it too low, it just doesn’t make any difference. Classic Labour device Michael Portillo, when he was shadow chancellor, was the first Conservative to finally agree that the party would go along with the minimum wage, but only because it wasn’t worth the aggravation trying to fight it. Portillo was just trying to get off a political hook. But for Cameron to go out of his way to praise the minimum wage just shows that he’s not very smart and not really a Conservative. So it took about one third of the way through his peroration to prove conclusively that I’m right about Cameron. But there was some powerful evidence to come. Gullible on climate change Cameron, using the word “substance” time after time and giving us none, promised carbon taxes and pledged to make sure Britain meets its CO2 emission targets, surely a fatuous thing to want to do. If humans are warming up the planet (they are not - Car Innocent Of Climate Charge, But Faces Massive Hurdles (car innocent) only concerted international action will do the trick. And speaking of fatuous, how about this quote – “We must be on the side of the next generation,” said Cameron. That almost matched his “Let sunshine win the day”, which he came up with on Sunday. Credit where it’s due, Cameron was brave when he mentioned how faith schools must admit at least a quarter of pupils who aren’t of the faith and risked a fatwa from Muslims by underlining the need to make sure Islamic schools did this. Tory basic philosophy is fine So all this tripe about having to radically change the party, is just a cul-de-sac. The Tory Party doesn’t need to change its basic philosophy. Sure it has to shape up a bit, but that doesn’t mean ditching solid values like lower tax and smaller government. It doesn’t mean turning the annual conference into some kind of New Age happening. Now, the country despises neo-Labour. It sees through the spin. It wants an honest, Conservative government full of people who are experienced and intelligent and know what works. They want an end to the politics of political correctness, envy and levelling down. Unfortunately, with a momentary loss of its collective brainbox, Conservatives have lumbered themselves with a fool like Cameron. It’s so tragic; the Labour party will be dumped on the street, only to be replaced by its mirror image. So the first part of a new Conservative Government is likely to be a cul de sac too, unless the party gets a grip, dumps Cameron and his wet friends like Theresa May, Andrew Lansley and Francis Maude, and installs a proper Conservative leader like David Davis, Liam Fox or William Hague. Neil Winton – October 6, 2006 |
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