, 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.
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.
