“So promoting wealth creation – at home and abroad – means changing the climate of opinion so that politicians and bureaucrats who argue for measures that damage business and economic competitiveness are less likely to succeed. In short, we need to campaign for capitalism. To promote profit. To fight for free trade. To remind, indeed to educate our citizens about the facts of economic life. The message is simple – you cannot win the battle against red tape unless you win the intellectual and cultural battle for open markets.”
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Is he saying that freedom can only, as a matter of political practicality, be justified by its economic utility?
I hope not. And I hope it is not true.
guy herbert: I certainly can’t see that in there. He’s not mentioning freedom per se at all, just capitalism.
In fact, he sounds like a Samizdata editor. Sounds in fact, like he could be more principled than that Davis bloke, despite the fact he’s usually portrayed as a soft option.
He was doing so well until here:
To remind, indeed to educate our citizens about the facts of economic life
As soon as the government starts wanting to ‘educate’ the citizens so that they ‘want the right thing’ or ‘learn what’s best for them’, I get extremely suspicious.
What’s he proposing? Spening our taxes on some leaflets showing what a great thing free trade is? No thanks. Maybe forcing schools to spend more hours on the wonders of laissez-faire?
He doesn’t need to educate anyone. He needs to implement his free trade policies and let people make their own minds up over whether they like the results.
I recall earlier discussions of David Cameron centred on him being ‘unprincipled’ and ‘not believing in anything – including bad things’.
To my mind, the sounder judgement is to regard what David Cameron says in strict relation to his standing in the leadership race. Yesterday The Times featured an article about Davis ‘surging ahead’ in the polls among Tory members – due, seemingly to Cameron’s perceived lack of substance in comparison with Davis. So perhaps what we are seeing now, really is what Cameron believes in – in an attempt to recapture the lead (having no worries about what other Tory MPs will think – the parliamentary vote already in the bag).
That said however, Philip Stott at EnviroSpin Watch points us to something that smells distinctly like a promise for something quite at odds with ‘campaigning for capitalism’…
“Unfortunately David Cameron is wedded to a rather ‘socialistic’ and unilateral climate-change policy which is sheer madness for the Conservative Party.”
… which conclusion is derived from his reading of this article in the Guardian.
I would have sought to defend Cameron using the tactical ‘making friends without making promises’ argument above, but the killer passage (though it does not contain an actual quote from Cameron and may well be journalistic license) is…
“Mr Cameron said his carbon audit office would act as watchdog for a new statutory framework with specific year-by-year requirements for carbon cuts.”
Hmmm… more regulation by statute? This sort of thing allows me the suspicion that what we are seeing now from David Cameron’s ‘campaigning for capitalism’ remarks, really is Blair mark II – in the sense of the consummate politican that Blair is (was?).
The truth is, I really don’t know what to make of this chap.
The problem is that we would not have been surprised had those words come from Blair or Brown.
But Blair and Brown are in favour of free markets in the private sector whilst simultaneously expanding the role of the state (the public sector) in other protected areas, financed by taxing the private sector. This is economic doublethink and must damage the ability of the private sector to perform and compete. The woeful industrial performance of this country since 1997 (the worst of any major economy) illustrates the fact that it is being asked to compete whilst financing the ever greater protected areas in the economy.
Cameron has said nothing to lead me to believe that he understands this. He wants to keep schools and hospitals under public sector control and even purports to tell us which method of English teaching he would impose. He says that he would ‘share’ the fruits of economic growth between the private and public sectors, ignoring the fact that his argument implies (correctly) that growth will be faster if the free trade (i.e. private sector) expands relatively faster.
He needs to tell us which areas that are currently under public sector control, or are artificially protected, he would open to free trade. By his argument, the greater the percentage of the economy that is subject to free trade, the more wealth will be created. Is he prepared to say this. or is his message essentially a variation on the incoherent and self contradictory “third way” New Labour message?
One gets the impression that Mr Cameron is well aware that to win elections in the current political climate he has to reassure public sector workers and those who value the services provided by the state.
Whether we find that distasteful is really irrelevant because I have to admit he is probably correct in that assumption.
Where this becomes interesting is in his desire to educate people about the merits of the free market. After all, in purely political terms that is a risky strategy. Samizdata writers are always trying to educate people about such things but then they are not trying to get elected.
It is far easier to go along with the prevailing opinion than to try to change it. I can understand Blair and Brown saying such things because they want to sound like Tories. What is more puzzling is why Mr Cameron should want to make such statements unless he actually believes what he is saying.
Sounds more like a preamble to a condemnation of eurosceptics than a genuine belief in free trade – or even in capitalism.
When a politician talks of a ‘battle against red tape’, it usually ends up with more rather than less…
GREED IS GOOD!
It seems I am echoeing other commentators, but Cameron seems to me to be proof that the Tories are still not “modern” to use their terms.
This bit of blurb is fine as far as it goes, one can only agree, but he does sound like Golden Brown, and will probably end up acting like him.
He appears still to be wedded to gbig goverment, and overly large goverment involvement in everything.
He is a ecofascist at heart, with all his spouting of “green” “sustainability” , trying to cover his anti capitalist heart with “green Growth”
He his A TB clone and spouts generalities and platitudes.
What he appears to be missing is
TB is actually more of a small goverment man tha he his
The science behind the global warming scam is unravelling, and people are beginning to want policies as opposed to the trust me men
I do. The quote Alex shows does not make one single hard policy promise. The quote mike shows above(Link) does indeed make a policy promise and it is hideous.
No, we are being played peps. Talk is cheap and Cameron is just an avatar of Blair. A Tory victory will change very little.
In your quote, what Cameron says is of course right.
The problem for me is that he was saying it to the Centre for Policy Studies where it was bound to go down well. If he is really going to make the case for capitalism he will have to make it with people who are antagonistic to free markets. Moreover, he will have to start making the case soon if he is going to sell the argument at the next election.
So far Cameron has stuck to telling people what he thinks they want to hear but making no firm commitments. “Flatter” tax, “freer” trade and “less” regulation are all relative terms. Cameron wants the Tories to sell capitalism to the masses but remains critical of any attempt to lay out a clear agenda. Instead he wants to do what Blair has done and make no commitments on policy. Does he think he can sell these ideas in the run up to the next election without laying the groundwork over the next four years? Or is he just telling a group of Conservatives what they want to hear?
Reading the whole speech I think it is the latter. What is more I doubt he truly understands the arguments he is making. He starts off saying:
we must “demonstrate that we are in this for everybody, not just the rich”
By the rich, does he mean the most productive people in society who are generating wealth for all of us? Does he believe in the modern Conservative principle of social mobility, where a person’s wealth is dictated by merit and not by birthright? Does he share Labour’s belief that we are born to our class and unable to better ourselves without the government stepping in? Or is he an old Tory who believes in the class system?
He then goes on to talk about deprivation in “Britain’s second city” of Birmingham. Being from Britain’s real second city (the larger Manchester) I think that is a typically southerner-centric view of the UK, but I’ll let that pass.
Back to his views on social mobility:
We used to say that a rising economic tide lifts all boats. Well, that obviously isn’t true”
He does seem to believe that people are trapped within their own class. There is nothing wrong with inequality of income when people are able determine their own position in society. A rising tide does lift all boats when you lift the anchors of tax credit and welfare and let all boats float freely.
DC criticises Brown’s tax credits but not for the fact they reduce social mobility, but because they are too bureaucratic. He is right to say they do not help the people they are supposed too but agrees with the basic principle that it is the state’s role to address inequality of income.
He criticises the case of a single mother who was helped out by the Salvation Army:
“A Salvation Army food parcel, in this, the fourth richest country in the world, run by a Labour government, with a Labour chancellor who has made income redistribution to help the poor his defining policy priority”
He believes that it must be the responsibility of government to provide such aid. I believe that every country, regardless of wealth, should have an active voluntary sector helping people like that single mother. The nationalisation of charity by previous socialist governments is something any Conservative prime minister should seek to reverse, not extend.
On the Third World, Cameron is once again right to say that the current situation is immoral. He is also right to say free trade is the answer. What he goes on to say betrays the fact he shares Blair’s conviction that problems are solved, not by individuals reacting to a free market, but from the application brainpower by a central authority. This is not so much socialism as managerialism.
“Blair has rightly put sub-Saharan poverty high on the political agenda. But I fear that he has adopted an unbalanced approach which draws too heavily on the traditional aid model, and too lightly on the importance of property rights and the rule of law”
Not too much to diasagree with at a casual glance. However why is poverty only a problem south of the Sahara. Is poverty less serious when it afflicts South America or Asia ? Like Blair he concentrates on a group of nations who have done the least to help themselves.
His concern about the “traditional aid model” and enthusiasm for property rights would go down well with the CPS. However closer inspection reveals his plan is somewhat more authoritarian than a real Conservative might like.
He is not just promoting property rights but insisting we enforce them on foreign nations by withholding aid. Dictating one-size-fits-all solutions to poor countries is not the way to go. Like Cameron, the IMF has had all the right ideas but by making aid conditional on them has made the situation worse for many countries (Russia, Argentina etc..).
He is also not confronting the political problem of actually cutting aid to poverty stricken nations if they do not comply.
He wants a “Property Rights Fund, which would encourage the development and formalisation of property rights in poor countries”.
This sounds very Blairite in its good intentions and saying the right thing. It is hard to see how it would be practically applied to help people in the Third World.
What would help poor countries is reducing aid (which props up corrupt regimes) and opening our markets unconditionally. Cameron’s speech contains fine words and fine ideals but it is hard to conclude that he really stands for personal or economic freedom. He is more like Blair, talking about the virtues of markets while doing nothing to support them or actively undermining them.
Throughout the speech he introduces ideas and in the next sentence brings up a contradictory idea with no apparent sense that he is doing it. The speech was designed to appeal to CPS members but without offending anyone in the process. There is nothing in what he says here or elsewhere to convince me that he is ideologically committed to capitalism or that his views truly relect mine or those reflected in the editorial line at Samizdata.
“In short, we need to campaign for capitalism. To promote profit. To fight for free trade. To remind, indeed to educate our citizens about the facts of economic life.”
This staccato way of speaking is pure Blair, not to mention the almost infinite parse-ability of the platitudes into whatever would suit Cameron once he got his feet under the table at No. Ten. Davis’s proposed tax slashing is precise, costed, do-able and a new dawn.
DC, however, is a pampered brat, a tawdry imitation of a failing product. His crybaby tactics about his kid and his druggy relation eerily recall TB’s neurotic lachrymosity. On which subject… I’m FLABBERGASTED that this libbo site so far has said nothing about a considerable, if defensive, blow for Britain’s civil liberties struck by our House of Commons yesterday afternoon.
Get on the ball, fellows. Use the momentum to kill ID cards, about which there is far more public scepticism than about locking up terrorist suspects without trial for three months. Blair’s discomfiture could be the start of a freedom snowball. Let’s roll!
Cameron’s quote seems good to me. It means that he’s willing to campaign and change public opinion for the better.
Oh sure, the QUOTE is good, but do you actually believe him? Standing in front of a bunch of pro-capitalists and telling them “I’m one of you” does not mean he is actually a capitalist, it means he is a politician. He is just as happy to see his remarks promising more state regulation appear in the Guardian.
As a rule you can tell a politician is lying by virtue of the fact his lips are moving.
“As a rule you can tell a politician is lying by virtue of the fact his lips are moving.”
And there’s the rub. The only thing I am certain about is that Cameron is a politician in the mold of Blair – though I doubt he could ever be as successful as our outgoing PM.
Libertygirl – It’s not Cameron’s business, or the business of any politician, to “change public opinion for the better” because all that means is “change public opinion to suit myself”.
I agree with HJHJ (HJHJ, I promise I am going to break this strange new habit of agreeing with you) and Mike. And Mark, too.
Yes, Cameron is an avatar of Blair. As Matt O’H says, that staccato way of speaking is pure Blair.
I think David Cameron is a horrifying prospect from almost every point of view. And far from, as Matthew Parris opined, hungering for a bit of posh, I have a feeling the electorate just won’t won’t a Blair Mark II. Viewing the string of failures which is now forcing Blair out, I cannot imagine anyone wanting a rerun by a clone.
Cameron’s attempt to defend himself from accusations that he’s never done a real job is to say that for seven years he ‘worked in industry’. LOL. What he means is that he was a greeter and Whitehall door-opener for Michael Green’s Carlton Communications, the worst commercial television company in British history. It’s the type of job a career pol takes to put on his CV– like William Waldegrave’s spell at GEC, only even less related to anything industrial.
Cameron has so far shown no talent for anything but preparing other pols’ speeches and position papers. He is a toffish backroom boy, like the rich kids who intern for peanuts in Washington: he has never fought an unwinnable seat, served on a local council, resigned on a matter of principle. Even by the rarefied standards of the political duckpond he has led a charmed life.
I cannot see this plump-faced, sharp-suited nullity landing many blows on a vicious streetfighter such as Gordon Brown, who has done the second toughest job in the Cabinet (after the Home Office) for longer than anyone since Lloyd George.
Picking DC to lead them would be a way for the Tories to lose gracefully again, maybe shaving the majority a bit more. With DD it’s death or glory. Mrs T didn’t storm home in ’79 by hugging the middle of the road.
The liberal meejah to a man (sorry, person) prefer DC. That is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know.
Yes, the liberal media like Cameron. Run for the hills!
It baffles me that he is even being taken seriously. He has no credentials. He’s never run anything in his life. This is the danger of Westminster. They get charmed by someone and talk themselves into thinking they’ve found a winner, when the public doesn’t give a toss about any of the supposed merits of a candidate who can talk to other politicians and to the media, but not to them.
David Davis has the ability to communicate with the voter. That is what matters. There is something about David Cameron that I just don’t trust. I think he is a sleazeball. A conman. He has absolutely nothing to bring to the table.
Yes I agree Verity.
Something very creepy about Cameron.
He looked good after his conference speech compared to Davies. But one good speech doesn’t make a leader.
It’s taken the rest of the country 8 years to figure out this about Blair.
The Question Time face off between Cameron and Davies had Davies miles ahead on substantial points and Cameron looking shifty.
He is a Blair clone, all style and no substance.
In this his timing is horribly wrong. We are sick of style.
Where’s the beef!
The Bagheot political gossip column in The Economist stated that some ‘ultra-Blairites’ are whispering that the Dear Leader’s legacy (uh?) would be safer with Cameron than Brown!
Apologies for stealinh this, but extracted from a piece on Envirospinwatch re the Etonian roots of Ecofascism
But, above all, watch out for two closet Etonian ‘Greens’, the first now bidding to lead the Conservative Party: The Right Honourable David William Donald Cameron, Eton and Brasenose College, Oxford, and The Right Honourable Oliver Letwin, Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. You should also monitor The Honourable Edward (Ed) Henry Butler Vaizey, St. Paul’s and Merton College, Oxford. He and Cameron are part of the so-called ‘Notting Hill’ set.
One of my concerns about Cameron is that he’s inclined to tell everyone what they want to hear, even when these things can’t be reconciled, on the basis that most of the electorate won’t understand the inherent contradictions. It also gives those of us who understand this a dilemma – what does he actually stand for? Will he end up fudging everything like Blair?
Is it any wonder no-one trusts politicians?
Cameron was asked directly on Question Time by a member of the audience what experience he had of industry. He said “I have seven years experience of marketing Carlton Communications”. Not marketing AT Carlton Communications. What he meant was that he was a PR man for the company – i.e. he had nohing to do with the vital management process that is marketing.
The more I hear of David Davis the more I like him. He is usually candid even if the answer may not win him universal support. When asked whether he preferred blondes or brunettes, he said “blondes” which cannot be anything other than an honest answer. Had he said “both are equally attractive and personality is……” then you might have suspected that he was giving the PC answer. When asked about sports he was quite clear that he had no interest in spectator sports and that as he liked climbing and hill walking, Edmund Hillary would have to be his favourite sportsman. Rather different from the Blair approach of claiming to be an ardent football supporter (despite the fact that there is no evidence he ever attended a match).
Matt O’Halloran writes:
“The Bagheot political gossip column in The Economist stated that some ‘ultra-Blairites’ are whispering that the Dear Leader’s legacy (uh?) would be safer with Cameron than Brown!”
I find that quite convincing.
G Cooper – Me too. Cameron’s a breathless opportunist.
I think a lot of people will feel kindly towards David Davis for saying “Blondes!” It was honest. I think that is just wonderful. No one with other hair colours could possibly be offended, except those grim, overweight Labour women once demeaned as “Blair’s babes”, and now nowhere. (Would you trust someone so willing to abase herself to please the pasha that she would agree to be known not as an MP, but a “babe”?) After all, if we choose to be, we’re all blondes now. Including black gals. So where’s the gripe?
Good for Davis!
I see on the BBC that William Hague is officially backing Cameron. Hopefully, that alone will turn a lot of voters off.
Hague has just said Cameron is the best one to “modernise” the party. “Modernise” is Tony B Liar’s favourite word, but what has it got to do with the Conservatives, who wish to be governed by conserve values?
William Hague obviously thinks that “modernise” means “make like NuLab”. Such an intelligent approach, just when the whole country is heaving with revulsion at Bliar and NuLab.