David Cameron

General Election 2015: There Will Be No Passion Until We Rediscover Our National Ambition

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

David Cameron - Nick Clegg - Passion - General Election 2015

 

As the 2015 general election campaign grinds past the halfway point with none of the main party leaders doing or saying anything remotely interesting or inspiring – choosing only to shriek about the chaos and carnage that their opponents would do in government – people are starting to ask: where is the passion?

The Spectator’s Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth pick up on this supposed lack of “passion” in politics in their recent interview with David Cameron, conducted as the Prime Minister hurtles around Britain failing to electrify voters with talk of his Long Term Economic Plan and doomsday scenarios about a Labour-SNP government.

Interestingly, Cameron appears totally bemused that his coalition government’s technocratic, risk-averse management of the country from 2010-2015 has failed to win him legions of adoring fans:

The Prime Minister is aware of the criticism and finds it ‘frustrating’. ‘I feel I have worked my socks off for the last ten years to get to this point,’ he says. ‘I feel we are on the brink of something amazing in our country. If I don’t succeed on 7 May I will be furious more for my country — but furious for myself.’ He says this quietly, not crossly, as if he has been confronting his own political mortality. ‘We have done so much to get so far — I do not want to pull back now.’ And then, a promise to do better: ‘If I need to do more to communicate that I will.’

What he is trying to communicate in the final fortnight of the campaign is that Britain’s recovery has been extraordinary, but that it didn’t happen by accident. And that if people want the recovery to continue, they’ll have to vote Conservative. He is writing the speech he’ll give that day, with ‘jobs’ scribbled as the first bullet point. He has created them at a faster rate than any prime minister in history, which he puts down to tax cuts and welfare reform. So he is travelling to Yorkshire to sell ‘an extremely positive plan to transform the education of young people in our country, to keep going with this welfare revolution’.

He accepts that the revolutionary character of his government is not widely appreciated. ‘I think it is very undersold in many ways,’ he says. He doesn’t say by whom. He later refers to the government’s ‘quiet revolution: pro-work, pro-saving, pro-enterprise’.

Revolutionary character? The coalition government came into power promising an economic recovery and the elimination of Britain’s vast budget deficit. It achieved the former but failed spectacularly to eliminate the deficit, reducing it only by a third (now changed to a “half”, thanks to the disingenuous use of different metrics). The Labour Party would have likely done far worse, but this is beside the point – a stable economy should be a hygiene factor, the absolute base in terms of expectations of a “revolutionary” government.

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Election 2015: Why Won’t David Cameron Talk More About Europe?

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

David Cameron - Conservative Party- Brexit - Britain and Europe - General Election 2015

 

We need to talk about Europe.

With Labour and the Tories deadlocked in the polls and Britain on course for a hung parliament, The Spectator asks an interesting question: in an effort to break the deadlock, why won’t David Cameron and the Conservative Party start “banging on about Europe”?

From The Speccie’s leading article:

It is hardly as if the issue of an in-out referendum has been neutralised. David Cameron, in committing himself to such a poll, seemed to be in a strong position over Ed Miliband, who has declined all pressure to follow suit. Cameron can justifiably say to anti-Europeans that a vote for him is the only way to ensure that the country has a chance to reject EU membership. For EU supporters, he is offering the chance to settle the matter of Britain’s membership for a generation to come. And for sceptics in the middle who want to be part of the EU, but a reformed one, he is promising renegotiation of Britain’s terms.

Ed Miliband’s position, by contrast, is simply one of denying the people a say on an issue which divides the country — on the basis that voters cannot be trusted with such questions. It is entirely believable, should Labour come to some sort of pact with the SNP after the election, that we will end up having two referendums on the subject of Scottish independence, with the EU question remaining unresolved. Even the pro-EU Greens want an in-out referendum on the — for them, unusually solid — grounds that the issue of Britain’s membership will be an issue until it is seen to have renewed democratic legitimacy.

The Spectator concludes:

David Cameron ought to be turning European turmoil to his electoral advantage. With Ukip at around 13 per cent, he would win a strong Conservative majority if only he could persuade a quarter of Ukip’s potential voters over to his side. Contrary to talk about the left being in advance, the conservative parties (the Tories plus Ukip) between them are registering a substantially bigger slice of the vote than in 2010.

But this is where the Spectator’s analysis falls down – the misplaced assumption that if only David Cameron talks more naturally about his personal beliefs and the Conservative Party’s official policy on the European Union, hordes of recently defected UKIP voters would return to the Tory fold.

People don’t generally support UKIP just because they want Britain to go through the democratic exercise of holding a referendum on our membership of the EU, letting the chips fall where they may. They support UKIP because of all Britain’s non-extremist political parties, Nigel Farage’s gang is the only one that unequivocally disagrees with remaining in the European Union under more or less any circumstances. Gaining popular consent may be great, but the goal is Brexit – and UKIP are the only party who are committed to that end.

From this perspective, David Cameron’s pitch to the electorate is little better than Ed Miliband’s – both say that they want to get the “best deal” for Britain in Europe (whatever that may be), but when push comes to shove, neither of them believe the EU to be a fundamentally flawed, undemocratic or threatening to British interests. If they did, we wouldn’t be talking about a referendum, Britain would secede tomorrow.

Why would UKIP’s growing ranks of supporters vote Conservative when they know that they will get a Prime Minister and government that may honour their promise to hold a referendum, but then in all likelihood campaign for Britain to remain part of the EU after the largely cosmetic “renegotiations” are complete? More to the point, why would a rational voter vote for wishy-washy feigned euroscepticism when there is another party (UKIP) and another leader (Nigel Farage) who still trusts the British people to have their say, but is actively committed to campaigning for Brexit?

UKIP supporters have generally made up their minds that the EU – with its growth-sapping regulation, control-freakish infringement on national sovereignty and persistent undermining of the nation state through common security and borders policies – is a bad thing. They may understand that the rest of the country needs a little more time to educate itself and arrive at the same conclusion, but they do not expect the party they vote for on 7 May to have to go through the same tortuous process. Ukippers want out, as soon as possible, because they believe that this would be best for the country – the clue comes in large letters on the front page of their manifesto, titled “Believe in Britain”.

So to answer the Spectator’s original question, there is a very good reason why David Cameron has not spent – and will not spend – more time in this election campaign “banging on about Europe”. True eurosceptics, especially the ones who have made the leap to UKIP, know that David Cameron’s offering of a referendum is a move intended only to placate his party’s right wing, not a promise borne of a personal desire to free Britain from the EU. Therefore, every day that David Cameron spends talking about Europe is another day he alienates the Europhiles and the politically indifferent, while winning back only a small fraction of the UKIP vote.

You can observe the deafening silence from the Conservative Party on Europe and admire David Cameron’s political radar and message discipline, or you can despair that the Prime Minister simply doesn’t see Britain’s emancipation from the European Union machine as a cause worth fighting and risking political office for. But either way, it’s no accident that the EU is the non-issue of the 2015 general election campaign.

Tim Montgomerie, The Good Right And The Battle For British Conservatism

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

David Cameron - Conservative Party - Tory Compassion - General Election 2015

 

With the opinion polls still neck-and-neck, David Cameron and the Conservative Party have good grounds to worry that they are not pulling ahead of Labour in the final month of the 2015 general election campaign.

The BBC’s poll of polls puts Labour and the Conservatives on 33% each, which, when constituency boundaries which favour the Labour Party are factored in, means that Ed Miliband’s party are potentially on course to win more seats than the Conservatives, throwing several highly unwelcome left-wing coalition scenarios into play.

Naturally, this is causing much hand-wringing both within the Conservative Party and the Tory-friendly press. But interestingly, much of the free advice being bandied about is encouraging the Conservatives to try to fight the election on Labour’s natural turf (such as emphasising the importance of public services), or to tack even further to the centre, in spite of UKIP’s challenge from the right.

The chief proponent of this strategy is Tim Montgomerie, who uses his most recent Times column (+) to argue that “a show of compassion” (whatever that means) from the Conservative Party could help to “swing the vote” in their favour. Montgomerie is absolutely correct in his diagnosis of the situation – an increasingly coddled, government-dependent British population representing unfertile electoral ground for the politics of individualism and self sufficiency – but hazy on his proposed remedy.

First, the good analysis:

The centre right has to worry that while Tony Blair was wooing Middle England it was really Gordon Brown who was running Britain. Blair was at the front of the shop but Brown was in the control room, overseeing the huge expansion in the number of people who received part or all of their income from the state. Even now, with austerity under way, 52 per cent of Britons receive more from the state than they pay in taxes. There are, to echo Mitt Romney’s infamous and ham-fisted description, more takers than makers. People who are dependent upon the state have every incentive to vote for bigger and bigger government and to get someone else to pay for it — especially, of course, “the rich”.

A redistributive, bash-the-rich message was exactly what helped Barack Obama defeat Governor Romney. If America, land of the free and home of the brave, was willing to choose big state interventionism over small state individualism then it’s hardly impossible that Britain might do the same in a few weeks’ time.

If ever there was a statistic to shock and shame British conservatives, it should be the fact that 52 percent of Britons are net financial beneficiaries from the state. In the conservative model society, there should be generous welfare support available for those suffering true hardship or disadvantage, but a level playing field and light-touch government regulations freeing everyone else to succeed to their potential.

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Why Should UKIP Voters ‘Come Home’ To The Conservatives?

Samuel HooperLeave a comment

David Cameron UKIP Voters Come Home To The Conservatives General Election 2015

 

With only a month to go until polls open for the 2015 general election, the smart money is saying that Nigel Farage’s insurgent party, UKIP, are on the back foot.

A growing number of articles and opinion pieces are talking down UKIP’s prospects, citing poll results which point to a decline in UKIP’s level of support from recent highs of 20% back down to the mid teens, and even speculating that Nigel Farage could fail to win his seat of South Thanet and be forced to follow through on his plan to resign the party leadership if he does not become an MP.

Finally sensing weakness after months on the back foot, the Conservative Party have pounced with David Cameron using an interview on the Tory battle bus to appeal to disaffected former Conservative Party voters to “come home” and abandon their new allegiance to UKIP.

From the Telegraph’s interview with David Cameron:

Asked if he believes Ukip defectors are finally returning to the Tories, Mr Cameron says: “A little. I think that is beginning to happen. There are people who have been frustrated about wanting more changes on immigration, wanting more certainty about the situation in Europe and they can now see that we have listened to those concerns. The referendum is now there, as it were, on the ballot paper if I’m prime minister before the end of 2017.

They can see the tougher approach we’ve taken to immigration. They can see the changes we’ve made. And I think it’s the time for Conservative voters who went off to Ukip – it’s the time to come home. On the basis that the real choice in this election is economic mayhem and chaos under Ed Miliband, possibly backed up by Nicola Sturgeon, or the certainty of continued competence and growth under the Conservatives.

“This election is about choosing a government. It’s not a moment of protest. It’s not a moment to send a message. Those times are over.

“I would say to those voters who have concerns – message received and understood. Now please, come on, let’s get together and take the country forward and avert the danger of a Labour government.”

This is more than a little patronising.

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Cameron / Miliband’s Bland And Inoffensive Path To Not-Quite-Victory

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

 

Today saw the launch of the Conservative Party’s latest election broadcast, emailed to their supporters and promoted on YouTube. And from a strictly artistic and technical perspective, it’s not bad.

The video was distributed along with this blurb:

Samuel,​ <– thanks, mail merge personalisation

Have you seen our new Election Broadcast?

It shows how our plan is securing the things we all want for our children and grandchildren: a good education, a decent job, great public services and the chance to make the most out of their lives.

It’s really important that everyone knows the choice at this election: a better, more secure future with the Conservatives or putting all the progress we’ve made at risk with Ed Miliband propped up by the SNP.

Cue lots of video footage of babies and small children, and voiceovers in which the parents express their hopes that little Johnny will emerge from the British educational system reasonably literate and numerate, never have to “worry about paying the bills each month” as an adult, and to come of age in “a Britain with opportunities” (duh). All of this is accompanied by the gentle strumming of guitars familiar to any fan of the TV show Gilmore Girls, and the same amiable whistling that TSB currently uses in advertisements to trick people into thinking that they are a friendly local bank.

But despite the focus on youth, in reality the Tories (and Labour too) are much more concerned with “securing the things we all want” not for our children and grandchildren, but for our parents and grandparents. The welfare state certainly needed reforming in 2010, and Iain Duncan Smith’s rollout of Universal Credit could yet go a long way toward eliminating the benefit trap, but it cannot escape anyone’s attention that the younger generations have borne the brunt of the necessary corrections to excessive government spending.

Meanwhile, Britain’s pensioners – who are much more likely to be homeowners and free of the cost of young raising families – have not been asked to contribute a penny, even as we were told that we are “all in it together”. Instead, the older generation are showered with non-means tested benefits such as free television licences and bus passes, while their pensions are protected with a “triple lock” which ensures that they will always get richer in real terms.

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