Conservative Party

We Need A British CPAC

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

CPAC merchandise

 

As UKIP’s spring conference gets underway, The Spectator makes lighthearted fun of the patriotic, themed merchandise available for delegates to purchase. And fair enough – some of it is quite kitschy. In fact, some of the trinkets remind one of the gaudy offerings you might find displayed for sale at the annual CPAC conference, currently underway in the United States.

Bloomberg reports:

The CPAC exhibition floor is about marketing, and advertising to conservatives is the same as marketing to anyone else: everything has to be unique, free, or superhero-themed. 

On the free stuff front, there are dozens of buttons, posters (including one celebrating the day President Obama leaves office), pens, steel water bottles, and other knick knacks people want more than need. The libertarian group Young Americans for Liberty gave out free “Stand with Rand” t-shirts to anyone who filled out a political philosophy form, with questions like “There should be no restrictions against law-abiding citizens owning firearms.” Each response (agree, maybe, and disagree) comes with a score, and the higher the score, the closer the attendee’s political philosophy is to Ronald Reagan.

All of which leads to some pressing questions: Why is there no equivalent of CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Committee, in Britain? And are not British conservatives and big government sceptics greatly in need of one?

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The Overcrowded Centre: Tory MP Attacks Labour From The Left On NHS Privatisation

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Tory Conservative Labour LibDem Liberal Democrat Rosettes

 

2015 is already proving to be a difficult year for those of us who would defend politicians from the accusation that they are “all the same”.

Nobody, save the most ardently partisan Kool-Aid drinkers, is seriously excited by any of the main political parties as they jostle for position in the overcrowded political centre. And as blue merges with red, and red pretends to be blue, who can blame voters for wanting to be rid of any candidate sporting a Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat rosette?

Case in point: Robert Halfon, the incumbent Conservative MP for Harlow (this blogger’s hometown constituency) is now openly attacking his Labour challenger for – of all things – being too supportive of private sector involvement in the NHS.

Round About Harlow reports:

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Conservatives Should Not Apologise For Wanting To Shrink The State

Samuel Hooper10 Comments

George Osborne Ed Balls Austerity Big Government debate

 

“Tories pull into four point lead over Labour” proclaims the headline in today’s Telegraph, citing an Ipsos MORI poll that put the Conservatives on 33 per cent to Labour’s 29. But not so fast: “Labour opens up five point poll lead over Tories” reads a contradictory headline in the Guardian, talking up an ICM poll that put Labour on 33 per cent with the Tories languishing at 28.

Both polls come packaged together with their predictable narratives – Labour have opened a lead because their Road To Wigan Pier attack on the Conservatives is beginning to resonate with voters, according to their supporters, while the Conservatives are gaining ground because of Ed Miliband’s disarray on immigration and the beginning of the inevitable UKIP implosion, according to theirs. But looking past the partisan spin, neither poll makes encouraging reading for Labour or the Tories. In fact, the inability of either of Britain’s two dominant political parties to command the support of more than one third of the electorate is very damning indeed.

The reasons for the Labour Party’s malaise are fairly self evident – residual mistrust and dislike following thirteen recent years in government, a growing alienation between the party elite and their traditional core voters, total incoherence on the topic of immigration and the UKIP threat, and the abysmal personal ratings of their ex-leader in waiting, Ed Miliband. This blog has covered all of these symptoms of Labour decline at one point or another. But far more interesting are the reasons why the Tories are failing to generate any real approval or excitement, even among their supposedly natural voting blocs. These reasons are simple but stark: the Conservative Party has made a hash of delivering against the promises on which it was (kind of) elected, and has spent far too much time apologising for and excusing its policies along the way.

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How Will Lying About Immigration And The Deficit Improve Trust In Politics?

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Spectator David Cameron Deficit Debt Reduction Lie 2

 

Somehow, the message still isn’t getting through.

“We just want you to level with us, own up to your past failings and tell us where you really stand on the key issues we care about”, scream Britain’s voters to their increasingly detatched political leaders, in the subtext to every single opinion poll or by-election result of 2014. In response, our political leaders scratch their heads and look confused. “So you want us to pretend as though we understand and respect you?”

Britain’s established political parties have been haemorrhaging support to the new insurgents – UKIP, the Green Party and the fastest growing bloc of all, those who have given up on politics and voting entirely – since the inconclusive 2010 general election and subsequent formation of the coalition government laid bare how vanishingly little difference there really is between the red, blue and yellow team consensus. And as the 2015 general election approaches, each of the establishment parties will come face to face with their own reckoning: David Cameron’s Conservatives face the humiliating prospect of failing to win an outright majority for the second consecutive time, Ed Miliband’s Labour Party behold the implosion of their 35% core vote strategy and Nick Clegg’s LibDems hunker down and wait for the sweet release of electoral oblivion.

In a sane world, the growing revulsion and contempt felt by the British people toward their political class might by now have led to a degree of introspection and a nagging desire among politicians and political parties to cease their endless cycle of cynical, self-destructive behaviour. But we do not live in a sane world. And so the response of Britain’s main parties to the groundswell of public anger at their inability to be honest about their past records and current policies is not to come clean and give honesty a try, but rather to double-down and turn up the brazen deceit to “maximum”.

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The Obscenity Of Middle-Class Giveaways During Austerity

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Middle Class Benefits

 

Are we all in this together, as George Osborne insists, or are we not?

The Labour Party and their sympathisers in the media have been asking this question non-stop since the coalition government came to power in 2010, shrieking with outrage every time a new policy was announced which failed to forcibly grab enough from the rich and scatter the proceeds over the heads of the deserving poor. And throughout this time we have been treated to some wildly over-the-top rhetoric and mischaracterisations, such as Polly Toynbee’s insistence that “people feel in their pockets … that the middle and lower half are deliberately made to pay the price, while Osborne gifts the richest the most.”

(How could it be otherwise, one might well ask. Labour spent thirteen years in government making even middle-class families reliant on benefits, tax credits and public services, so there was no way that government spending could then be cut in times of austerity without causing more pain and human suffering than should otherwise have been the case. And yet still we look wistfully at Gordon Brown as he saunters off into the sunset, and glare sullenly at David Cameron and George Osborne as they deal with Brown’s toxic legacy).

We may still be stumbling out of the crater left by the Great Recession and the dubious economic recovery, but that doesn’t mean that every tax rise or spending decision has to be, or even can be, progressive. To behave in such a way would be foolish – we would end up in a situation where we forcibly “spread the wealth around” in good times because there is more cash to be expropriated from the successful in an economic boom, and then spread the wealth around some more in lean times because that’s the “compassionate” thing to do. Meanwhile, we would have created such a universal disincentive to work hard, invest and succeed that anyone with wealth to expropriate will have dialled back their efforts or fled the country altogether.

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