Tag Archives: David Cameron

Cameron’s Conference Speech: One Nation Misdirection

Posted on by
Reply

My reaction to Cameron’s speech to the Conservative Party Conference, 2015, for Independent Voices.

Independent Voices

In case the link expires, text below.

David Cameron, in his first conference as leader of a majority Tory government, just gave a speech which could have been delivered by Tony Blair.

He launched “an all-out assault on poverty”. He bemoaned the impossibility of “true opportunity” without meaningful equality. He berated our woeful record on social mobility. The incapacity of our justice system to rehabilitate. And of course the inability of a whole generation to get on the property ladder.

The BBC’s Political Editor, Laura Kuenssberg, took to the airwaves excitedly to report that Cameron had driven the Tory tanks right across Labour’s lawn.

Twitter went all a-giddy with #HeirToBlair hashtags and reminders that Cameron’s exit song, Don’t Stop Thinking About The Future, was Clinton’s in ’92.

But there is no chance of Cameron delivering on his rhetoric. The imminent removal of tax credits (not remotely compensated for by a ‘living wage’ down the line) is an assault not on poverty, but on the working poor.

Judging from her chilling, old-school speech to Conference yesterday, Theresa May’s new Immigration Bill will not be a pretty sight. The chances of Blairite centrism there, if you’ll forgive the paraphrasing, are “at best, close to zero”.

Ian Duncan Smith “welcomes” food banks, which is just as well because his government has presided over a dramatic rise in their use. Nothing Blairite there, either. And as for the heartlessness of Atos and incapacity benefit, it would have been funny if it hadn’t so often been tragic. Atos staff had to be equipped with panic buttons, so dreadful was their work. Is the new Atos, American outfit Maximus, suddenly going to go all cuddly under a Tory majority government? Don’t hold your breath.

And the idea that this administration, with its out-of-the-ark ideas like Right To Buy 2.0, will succeed where every recent government has failed, and actually make headway on housebuilding, is, frankly, laughable.

No. These are politicians who may talk centre, or even centre-left, but who deliver right, or even far-right.

So what’s going on? When Cameron talks his One Nation talk, is he deluding himself, or is he dissembling?

His delivery is such that the former explanation is credible. To hear him is to believe him. He seems really to think he’s a One Nation “modern” Tory. The guy who, for example, pushed through gay marriage. It is tempting to think of Cameron as a decent chap struggling to wrangle – and front – an unruly and hard-hearted right. Heroically dragging them into the centre for their own and our country’s good. One Twitter commentator felt that Cameron’s speech was as much a sell to his own right wing as it was to centrist voters. On this reading, Cameron is not so much lying about moving his party into the “common” ground, as hoping.

Could be. But step away from the charming, plausible delivery – mute the speech and just think about the big picture, just see the man talking – and the well-meaning interpretation seems the less likely of the two.

Cameron is a smart man, a First-in-PPE man. He is a consummate politician. And just because his government no longer enjoys the fig-leaf of the LibDems, it doesn’t mean that he and Osborne have not learnt the political lessons forced on them by coalition.

What they did in the last Parliament was genius. Squeezing the pips out of the working poor? Confuse debate with a promise to raise the tax threshold to £10k “benefiting everyone” (but not, in fact, the poorest 10%). Whacking up tuition fees? Confuse debate with an improved deal for the very poorest students. In this Parliament, it continues. Hammering the tax credits of the working poor? Confuse debate with a living wage which in no way plugs the gap.

In this sense, the One Nation rhetoric serves a purpose once achieved by sops (apparent or real) to the Tories’ coalition partners. It diverts attention away from harsh truths. It dilutes headlines and ruins sound-bites. It drowns regressive policy in progressive noise. It is a magician’s hand, waving here, waving here – so that we don’t look there.

It doesn’t just impair clear-sightedness about the actual policies. The Blairite rhetoric hurts Labour by pushing it further to the left as it seeks to differentiate itself. We know that it has been a favourite ploy of Cameron and Osborne for a while now to try and force Labour to choose between endorsing Conservative policy, and opposing it and shifting further and further left; the Tories win in either event. (The recent failure of Labour under Harriet Harman to oppose welfare reforms being a classic example.) These modern Tories are nothing if not master tacticians.

Better still, the rhetoric of compassion gives the Tory heartland something to feel good about. If their fiscal and social instincts are hard-nosed, they are nevertheless people who want to feel their underlying motivations are just. Their medicine may be bitter, but it is because (sometimes at least) they genuinely think that a smaller state, and the individualism that goes alongside it, will produce a happier, wealthier society. A Prime Minister who can help them to feel good about their faith, who can help them to rebrand mean-spiritedness as greater-good generosity… that’s a Prime Minister who deserves a two-minute standing ovation.

As the curtain closes on #CPC15, delegates can go home safe in the knowledge that the policies which their leader’s rhetoric entails are never going to transpire. There is nothing but steel in the men and women standing behind Cameron. There will be no woolly-minded Blairism from May or Duncan Smith or Gove or Nicky Morgan – and certainly not from Osborne.

The true legislative agenda – and the in-government track record – is protected behind smoke and mirrors. Labour is pushed into a corner. And Conference’s conscience is absolved by the soft, centrist, hug-a-gay-British-muslim words of their front man.

The Prime Minister would have us believe the future is a great British take-off. Others may fear his rhetorical stroll in the centre ground is nothing but One Nation Misdirection.

Either way, the party faithful will sleep well in their beds tonight.

Normal Humans

Posted on by
Reply

Politicians don’t talk straight.  It drives us mad.

But when they do talk straight – usually in error – we punish them for it.

What’s all that about?  It’s hugely interesting, not least because it reminds us that we, the public, are part of the dynamic that produces the political environment we so love to hate.

So I was delighted to see an article by David Mitchell on this very subject in today’s Observer.

The article cites David Cameron’s declaration that he would not go for a third term as prime minister as a paradigm case of a politician being punished for candour.

David Mitchell’s argument is that we should give Cameron’s straightforward answer an ovation; instead politicians (and we) have hauled him over the coals.

Anonymous LibDems and Tory MPs were appalled by Cameron’s statement.  (“It was an ‘oh fuck’ moment” said one Tory.)  And Labour’s election boss, Douglas Alexander, is singled out in Mitchell’s article for extended criticism.

Surely, argues Mitchell, Alexander knows that Cameron was answering a question predicated on public endorsement – therefore it is disingenuous to suggest that he answered the question with hubris.

So this whole affair is “a nasty Westminster squall,” the kind of thing that puts us all off politics.

But Hang On A Minute.

Did you see Gogglebox?  It is a brilliant show because it gives the sofa reactions of families at home to drama and news.  You see the patterns instantly.

Gogglebox

And when the Gogglebox families watching the kitchen interview heard Cameron’s answer to the third-term question, they all railed!  What!  He shouldn’t be talking about a third term when we haven’t even settled this election yet!  Who does he think he is!?

It wasn’t just a Westminster squall.  It was also an unaffected public reaction on sofas around the country.

That doesn’t prove it was a justified reaction.  Mitchell may be wrong about it being a phenomenon peculiar to the Westminster village, but right about it being a reflection of our irrational expectations of politics.

But Mitchell is wrong on that too, isn’t he?  He argues that Douglas Alexander would have hated the answer just as much if David Cameron had said yes, he would go for a third term.  His conclusion is that Alexander would only have been happy if Cameron had not answered the question at all.  “The likes of Alexander” do further damage to our already-discredited system, “insulting” us and wasting our time.

But this lament entirely misses the possibility of the “normal human” response from Cameron which, I’m afraid, we did not get.  Cameron did not, as Mitchell suggests, have a choice between irritating obfuscation and the clarity of “no”.

Because the normal human response would have been, “I haven’t had a second term, yet!”

That’s what you or I would have said.  It’s what Prime Minister David Mitchell would have said.

If pressed for more, we’d have said, “If I get a second term, that might be enough for me, and then it might be time to give another leader a go.”

That response would’ve had the candour and honesty Mr Mitchell craves.

And it would have been modest.   Not falsely modest.  Just normally modest.

Stripped of the element of presumption in skipping five years of assumed premiership without comment, that response would have offended precisely nobody.

Cameron did not give the “normal human” response.  The folk at home on sofas, the politicians in Westminster, and above all the opposition’s chief election strategist, have a right to react in the way that they did.

 

 

Calling Ed, Bob & Tom

Posted on by
Reply

22nd December, 2010


In case you’ve been wondering where I’ve been lately, the answer is: on Twitter.  There are lots of things that are amazing about it.  Lots of things that are horrible too, but there.


One of the things Twitter is no good at is subtle arguments or packages of ideas.  You can’t always boil them down to 140 characters, and if you split your thoughts across 3 or 4 messages, someone will read you out of context and be confused.


So I still need my blog.


I wanted to say a couple of things about the Vince Cable story.  Vince has been tricked by a couple of female Telegraph journalists posing as giggling star-struck constituents into making at least two big mistakes.  Firstly, he boasted that if he was pushed too far he could use “the nuclear option” and resign from the government, which would (in his view) bring it down.  Secondly, we subsequently learn, he has “declared war on Mr Murdoch” and set himself against Rupert’s proposed buyout of BSkyB.  In response to the former boast, he was made to eat humble pie in Cabinet and out.  When the second element of the story broke, David Cameron withdrew Cable’s ministerial authority on the BSkyB transaction.


There are many issues raised by this turn of events.  My focus is on Labour’s response, which is troubling.


On Monday night, Cable had boasted about going nuclear and bringing down the government.  Labour’s response?  John Denham saying that this demonstrated the government was “paralysed by infighting”.  Of all the criticisms you can level at this government, paralysis is not one of them.  It is perhaps the busiest, most radical government in living memory.


Where are Bob Roberts and Tom Baldwin, Labour’s new spin doctors?  What are they thinking?  It could be that they were caught on the hop, it being Christmas and all, and needed an overnight to get their response straight.  That would have been disappointing, but worth it if they had come out the next morning fighting.  They didn’t.  On Tuesday John Denham went to press online with the same lame accusation of paralysis.  The pot, sadly, was calling the kettle black.


Surely there was an opportunity on Monday night for quick-fire political jibing.  Surely there was something in Cable’s unguarded comments which sharp minds at LPHQ could have fired right back at him.  I’m not arguing for glibness, just a sound-bite to tide us over before the measured response comes, as it surely will, from the political big guns.


But then, what about that measured response?  What does Ed Miliband say, the next day, when the story moves to its second stage and Cable throws away his credibility with daft comments on Murdoch?  He says that he, Ed, would have sacked him.


(Actually his response was smarter than that, to be fair – he said that “having apparently broken the ministerial code”, Cable should go.  He asked whether David Cameron had made the decision to keep him in post in the interests of the country, or just in the interests of the government.  The trouble is that all the press is going to hear is, “Miliband says Cable should have gone.”  And sure enough, the news tickers said exactly, and only, that.)


The trouble with an Opposition response which can be reduced to a call for resignation is that it sounds, and is, lazy.  Perhaps Ed Miliband thought it would help him to look stronger and more decisive than his counterpart, but we already know Ed can be ruthless.  And as for decisive, the flipside of that is to be collaborative and inclusive, qualities for which Cameron is rightly admired.  I fear Ed’s call for resignation only made Dave’s call for calm tolerance appear the more mature.


Ed Miliband was in a difficult position on this one because he wasn’t able to go in hard on the content.  Cable was only saying what a lot of people on the left want to hear on BSkyB, and I can’t imagine Ed Miliband being a stout defender of the Murdoch faith.  So Ed could only go on principle (the ministerial code) and on leadership qualities (“I’d have been tougher”).  Not thrilling.  Not enough.


What Ed so badly needs is a story for situations such as these.  He needs a line of attack on the government which sees past the headline events of the day (there are so many in these busy and uncharted waters) and gets to the nub of content.  Further, he needs to shape his critique so that it segues into a clear, passionate, inspired alternative policy offering.  He has hamstrung himself on this score by calling for an extended (two-year!) period of navel-gazing inside Labour.  If he leads from the front now with policy initiatives, it will be conspicuous that he is not waiting for his own policy review process.  If he waits, he will leave the public with nothing but his own sense of the Labour alternative to think about – a party, which in his own words, has “lost its way” (22 Nov 2010).


Ed’s is not a difficult choice.  Waiting is the worse of the two options.  If Cable shows us anything, it shows us that the Coalition is fragile.  If things “go nuclear”, Labour will need a leader.  Now.





The Urgent Truth

Posted on by
1

5th August, 2010



On Monday 7th June (see here) Prime Minister Cameron argued that his actions were necessary and unavoidable.  We don’t like what we’re doing, but someone’s gotta clear up the mess. He said:


“We are not doing this because we want to. We are not driven by some theory or some ideology. We are doing this as a government because we have to, driven by the urgent truth…”



David Cameron answering questions from the public in Birmingham on 3 August 2010.


Yesterday, 4th August, the Prime Minister addressed a “PM Direct” event in Birmingham.  He was asked by a local fire brigade worker:


“Will you give me a pledge today that when these austere times are over, and you have the money back in the bank or you’re balancing your books, that you will look at anything that is cut during this period and go back and get those fire engines back in the places they are needed to support the public?”


Mr Cameron did not give the pledge.

 

“The direct answer to your question – should we cut things now and go back later and try and restore them later?  – I think we should be trying to avoid that approach.”


Surprise, surprise, Cameron doesn’t intend to restore public services when the deficit has been repaid.


He is not cutting public services because the money isn’t currently in the bank.  He’s not clearing up a mess.  He is not, as he claimed on 7th June, driven by an “urgent truth”.  He is not doing it “because he has to”.


He is doing it because he wants to.