Gordon Brown & New Labour weren’t the only ones to have a bad week last week – a particular strain of Conservatism also entered its death throes and not before time.
In the current euphoria it’s easy to forget team Cameron haven’t always had it easy from certain elements in the Tory party. Cameron’s brand of modern compassionate conservatism* is, for some, capitulation to leftish assumptions that some old guard Tories have never accepted. The need for serious investment in public services, the validity of same-sex relationships and the importance of relative poverty are all welcome realisations that the old guard rejected - they continued to fetishise tax cuts beyond all reason, dismiss any recognition of homophobia or racism as PC nonsense and rejected outright the idea that inequalities in wealth distribution were any concern of politicians. In particular the call for tax cuts gained some serious momentum and was still getting attention until very recently - Iain Dale and Donal Blaney both having a pop at Francis Maude’s cautious Telegraph interview rejecting the clamour for tax cuts, Heffer casting doubt on Cameron’s leadership and again banging on about tax cuts and ConservativeHome on the same theme. To their credit Cameron, Osbourne et al held their nerve.
The point here isn’t the substance or otherwise of those arguments - it’s the line those dissenters took that Cameron’s refusal to engage with old-style Tory shibboleths would forestall electoral success, that Cameron would continue to have a paltry lead at best and would never break Labour’s political dominance unless he followed their line. After last week that argument is in tatters.
Some will contest that making this point is disloyal or somehow dangerous when the Tories are as well positioned as they are now. It’s not. The point here is that those who foresaw disaster clearly have a faulty political compass – their judgement about what the electorate want or don’t want has been found wanting. Last week’s results don’t mean people on that side of the argument can forever be dismissed but it does mean they’re considerably diminished and not before time.
* these words are easily & frequently mocked but some of us invest tremendous hope in them.
In the current euphoria it’s easy to forget team Cameron haven’t always had it easy from certain elements in the Tory party. Cameron’s brand of modern compassionate conservatism* is, for some, capitulation to leftish assumptions that some old guard Tories have never accepted. The need for serious investment in public services, the validity of same-sex relationships and the importance of relative poverty are all welcome realisations that the old guard rejected - they continued to fetishise tax cuts beyond all reason, dismiss any recognition of homophobia or racism as PC nonsense and rejected outright the idea that inequalities in wealth distribution were any concern of politicians. In particular the call for tax cuts gained some serious momentum and was still getting attention until very recently - Iain Dale and Donal Blaney both having a pop at Francis Maude’s cautious Telegraph interview rejecting the clamour for tax cuts, Heffer casting doubt on Cameron’s leadership and again banging on about tax cuts and ConservativeHome on the same theme. To their credit Cameron, Osbourne et al held their nerve.
The point here isn’t the substance or otherwise of those arguments - it’s the line those dissenters took that Cameron’s refusal to engage with old-style Tory shibboleths would forestall electoral success, that Cameron would continue to have a paltry lead at best and would never break Labour’s political dominance unless he followed their line. After last week that argument is in tatters.
Some will contest that making this point is disloyal or somehow dangerous when the Tories are as well positioned as they are now. It’s not. The point here is that those who foresaw disaster clearly have a faulty political compass – their judgement about what the electorate want or don’t want has been found wanting. Last week’s results don’t mean people on that side of the argument can forever be dismissed but it does mean they’re considerably diminished and not before time.
* these words are easily & frequently mocked but some of us invest tremendous hope in them.
2 Comments:
It’s unclear to me what you mean to encompass by the word “shibboleths” and feel you should specify these, at least more precisely. Or not use such coloured language.
I’m of the opinion that the Tories under the previous three leaders, properly addressed two vital issues which are now all but swept under the carpet by the Cameroons, These are immigration and the EU. Both of these are blamed in part for the Tories failing to beat Blair, but the policies were right (imho) and it is only now that a larger electorate is apparently seeing this also. The Tories ditched the issues at the wrong time, whereas they should have the courage of their convictions in consistently arguing each of the cases. Perhaps Brown is not the only bottler!
The inevitable tax-cuts question is just that, inevitable, because every sane tax-payer would like to retain a greater proportion of his/her income/wealth. But it is a matter of cause and effect: competent and judicious use of our money for public expenditure should release funds and allow lower taxation. The 11 years of labour government has been disastrous to our common wealth and it should be the target of the Tories to bring a tight discipline in our public services. A danger is that they might achieve this but re-direct the savings made into other forms of public expenditure rather than in ameliorating the tax burden. That is something different from wanting to “fetishise” [sic] the notion of tax-cuts.
It's also fair to say that the tories' fortunes turned (pretty much on a sixpence) after the inheritance tax proposals.
I'm in favour of a government that prepared to think hard about appropriate tax cuts - i think most people who are at all tory are - but I'm also with you on heffer - the man's vile.
but you do his stubborn idiocy a disservice if you think he'll ever let facts get in the way of anything. he'll cling to osbourne's tax cut as the immovable truth of his simplistic position.
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