When David Cameron spoke to activists on the Embankment yesterday morning, one was at once splashed in the face by the cold water of the obsession with image: almost everyone in sight was young, several of them (including a man Mr Cameron ostentatiously embraced with that warm insincerity that is his trademark) from ethnic minorities, a correct proportion of them women. His approach has always been about ticking the boxes of militant superficiality. His main argument is that he is not the Labour Party. Well, not in name, at any rate.
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Samizdata quote of the dayApril 7th, 2010 |
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Anybody know if Simon Heffer reads this blog and others like it?
It certainly sounds like he does.
I have my ballot paper already:
http://ibanda.blogs.com/panchromatica/2010/03/something-for-the-elections.html(Link)
Well, unless Cameron is a complete idiot, his box-ticking responds to the demands of the voters. In other words, this is something we are doing to ourselves.
And is this any surprise? For at least a decade we have been living in a society where the response is always “Don’t blame me, Guv, I ticked the right boxes.”
No, he is indeed a complete idiot leading a party of, if not complete idiots, then at least rapacious control freaks not materially different to the Labour or LibDem versions.
It’s not democracy if you don’t control the choices.
British politics is a bit like being asked to choose between Cherry Coke and Classic Coke, with the outcome being called the “will of the people”/
I want Ginger Beer dammit!
And democracy is so overrated anyway.
Our host wrote, of Lil’ Dave:“No, he is indeed a complete idiot leading a party of, if not complete idiots, then at least rapacious control freaks not materially different to the Labour or LibDem versions.”
When you are right, Perry, you are right!
Outsider question — if I understand the UK Party system correctly, the lads in the Conservative MPs club could all go out for a booze-up tonight (they are British, after all), and decide in a fit of hilarity to dump Lil’ Dave. So why don’t they? Surely self-preservation must make all of those with even a tenuous grasp of reality recognize that Mr. Cameron is a failed one-term Prime Minister, if that? And that his easily-predictable failure will probably also mark the end of their own careers?
Alice, who would replace Dave? Changing leaders in the middle of a campaign would lose votes! And they are ahead in all the polls I’ve seen!
“who would replace Dave?”
If the Conservatives have no alternative to Cameron, then they really are in trouble. There must be a grocer’s daughter somewhere in the Conservative ranks?
It was a British Prime Minister (Labour), Harold Wilson, who famously said – A week in politics is a long time. Considering how unpopular Brown was only a few months ago, for Labour to be within scandal distance of the Conservatives 4 weeks ahead of an election is quite a comment on Lil’Dave’s narrow appeal. Especially in a rather undemocratic system that gives a Party with a minority of the votes an unassailable majority in the Commons.
But that’s an outside view.
RAB,
I don’t know, but probably not. More Mail and Telegraph.
Though economically more liberal than most Conservatives – so he will sound sympathetic from time to time – Heffer is more of an old-fashioned social authoritarian on the other stuff, to the point of being fogeyish. He’d be aghast at general libertarian views on consensual sexual relations, drugs and the death penalty, preferring the state to control you… but his way.
I watched the Cameron news conference today (before the Anointed One turned up, more than half an hour late, to sign his arms treaty with the Russian Federation).
Just as at yesterday’s Prime Minister Question Time (indeed just as for every day for the last week) Mr David Cameron said he wanted to prevent to stop “Labour’s tax on jobs” (the increase in the pay roll tax – “National Insurance”). He would “cut wasteful government spending” instead – GOOD, I AGREE.
Accept that the theme of Mr Cameron’s event this morning was his idea for a “National Citzenship Service”.
In short he was pledgeing to cut government spending AT AN EVENT TO LAUCH AN NEW GOVERNMENT SCHEME.
And a nasty Jacobin style state control of “communities” scheme at that (a scheme that Barack Obama or Saul Alinsky or the other Marxist “Community Activists” would have been proud of).
“But Paul the National Citizenship scheme is going to be financed by money people have forgotten about in bank accounts”.
When someone presents an “argument” such as that they spit in the faces of the voters.
The Cameron people must think that anyone who did not go to Eton and Oxford is subhuman – that we will believe ANYTHING.
“No, he is indeed a complete idiot leading a party of, if not complete idiots, then at least rapacious control freaks not materially different to the Labour or LibDem versions.”
That looks like an extended non-sequitur to me, or maybe you just missed the point I was making.
First, even if you think the Tories are “rapacious control freaks”, how does that translate into being complete idiots? I see no logical connection at all. I think that is is just very sloppy thinking, using the word “idiot” to mean “whatever I disapprove of”.
What I am saying is that Cameron is anything but an idiot. He has read today’s public, and he knows that to get votes, he has to talk and act the way he does. We have a political system that does not so much have “third rails” as is “mostly third rails”. The parties play an extended game of Gotcha! with one another, and if you don’t come out with exactly the right kind of PC drool, or touch the wrong third rail, you get whacked. An idiot falls for that and a non-idiot avoids getting whacked by saying things in the PC approved way. And he hugs the right people, and praises the NHS, and so on.
That’s anything but idiotic. It’s all kinds of other bad things; in particular it has nothing to with the reasons we ought to consider when deciding to vote or not to vote for someone, and it certainly takes time up that ought to be devoted to discussing real issues, but this is the kind of behaviour we reward.
That’s why I say we did this to ourselves. We have trained the politicians to behave in this way. We love sensation and irrelevant scandal. We love to see someone getting whacked. We like watching politicos playing Gotcha! We like them smearing one another. And we don’t reward content or common sense.
What we reward in the behaviour of politicians is what we will get more of, and what we don’t reward is what we will get less of.
Not that I really give a damn that you dislike my phraseology but he is facing one of the most unpopular PM’s in a very long time and the fact Cameron’s party is not massively, overwhelmingly, crushingly ahead in the polls indicates a depth of pervasive and almost wilful stupidity and introverted thinking of extraordinary magnitude. This alone is a very strong indication that Cameron is really not very bright.
Your lack of comprehension is your problem. Perhaps you have never actually met many politicians, but when you see huge disconnects between reality and political proclamations it is hard not to conclude that a great many people are simply incapable of understanding the nature of the complex systems they think they are controlling.
Oh really? He is widely credited with being one of the most obviously insincere phonies to grace the Front Bench in many a year. He is so dependably duplicitous that he is not even a convincing liar.
I’m with Perry. Although Blair was clearly a carny barker, stupid people warmed to his reptilian, cold-blooded charm.
But I’ve never heard anyone say they like ‘Dave’. I’ve never heard anyone warm, or even luke-warm, to him.
He’s a voter repellent. I wish they’d market it because then I might be able to spray these street dogs off my gate.
Tony Blair, as false as he is, was a genuine phenomenon because he tapped into the fact that stupid people are irremediably stupid.
Dave’s not that smart.
Paul Marks – you RE-elected NuLab on that side of the Pond, did you not ? That, just by itself, is sufficient to support the hypothesis that you
…
Perry – I long ago came to the realisation that an honest politician is simply one who *stays* bought … when you describe Cameron as “He is so dependably duplicitous that he is not even a convincing liar.”, that is a strong recommendation bacause at least with such a politician, you KNOW where you stand …
Alasdair – you may have a point about how dumb a lot of people are here (although Americans voted for Comrade Barack….).
However, if Cameron wins it will not be because people believe him – it will be because people are so sick of Brown and the Lib Dems (Vince Cable – it is “revolting” for businessmen to complain about increases in the pay roll tax).
Are you actually retarded?
eleutheria:
Since when has there been a libertarian line on the death penality?
As for consentual sexual relations – I rather doubt that Mr Heffer wises to make buggery (if that is what you are talking about) against the law. He just wants to get rid of the state support for it – the “anti discrimination” regulations and the tax funded “education” projects.
Surely regulations and tax and spend is not very libertarian.
As for drugs – it was the Telegraph newspapers (back in the days when arch conservative fogey Charles Moore was editor) that came out against the Progressive left idea of prohibition of drugs.
Such organizations as the Personal Rights Assocaition were always dominated by “fogey” types.
Did you not know?
And a foge to you, Paul Marks! There could be innocent kidlings reading this aloud, for Galt’s sake!
It’s liberal fanatics likes eleutheria with their endless heresy hunts that have rendered libertarianism impotent in both Britain and the U.S.