Anyone noticed the Conservatives behaving a bit oddly lately?
Anyone noticed the Conservatives behaving a little strangely recently?
We have, and we suspect it’s down to the party panicking after being caught with no answers to the living standards crisis.
The detoxification of the Tory brand appears to have been abandoned, but there are several other signs the party is beginning to lose the plot:
1) Green levies
As well as blaming rising energy prices on so-called green levies, David Cameron is reported to have told aids the government should “get rid of all this green crap”.
Downing Street has rebutted the allegation, but it doesn’t seem particularly far fetched to suppose that Cameron might have said such a thing. He has, after all, spent recent weeks trying to blame the rise in the cost of energy almost entirely on so-called ‘green levies’.
And to think, at one time Cameron promised to lead the ‘greenest government ever’.
2) Too many of us are too thick to get on, according to Boris
While there was something of a brouhaha last week over Boris Johnson’s speech to the Centre for Social Justice – the core of the Mayor’s speech was the uncontroversial point that economic equality (as opposed to less inequality) is impossible – his comments about IQ were more revealing. In effect, the Mayor wrote off a large swathe of the population as too stupid to ever achieve anything.
IQ is an attractive myth if you are one of those in a position of power or wealth, but a myth all the same. The children of wealthier parents are more likely to go to the best schools (properties in desirable catchment areas cost on average 42 per cent more), eat the best food, have access to ‘high culture’ and a place to do their homework. They also benefit from a number of other forms of social and cultural ‘capital’ their working-class counterparts lack. Nurture has at least as big an influence as ‘IQ’.
3) Putting VAT on food and childrens’ toys
The Free Enterprise Group is a group of Tory MPs who unsurprisingly advocate a greater role for the market. Treasury minister Sajid Javid is among the group’s members. Last month the group set out seven demands ahead of George Osborne’s Autumn statement this Thursday, one of which was for an end to VAT exemptions and the reduced rate currently applied to many essential items.
This would lead to big increases in the price of zero rated items such as prescriptions, train tickets and food and children’s clothes.
4) Bizarre comparisons of Ed Miliband to Marx, Engels and even Stalin
In George Orwell’s dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty Four, head of the omnipresent government is Big Brother, a quasi-divine leader who persecutes all individualism as ‘thought crime’. While the link between Stalin and Big Brother is somewhat tenuous, the latter is at least a hint toward Stalin’s regime.
Tory HQ appears to believe, however, that it is Ed Miliband who Orwell is referring to
Tory hyperbole over Ed Miliband since he announced an proposed energy price freeze at Labour party conference goes right to the top. At Prime Minister’s Questions last week David Cameron said that Mr Miliband was “no longer a follower of Marx” but “loving Engels instead”.
Weird.
5) Lying about history is fine, provided it makes you feel good
Tory grandee Charles Moore is a former editor of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Spectator. I don’t think it’s too far fetched to say that he is fairly representative of Tory opinion. Observe, then, an interesting paragraph in his recent review of Conservative MP Daniel Hannan’s book on the Anglosphere. Largely favourable, Moore does, however, disagree with Hannan’s history. But nevermind that, he writes, for “Getting its history wrong is part of being a nation”:
The way Hannan gets ours wrong works to the good. Even if it is not always true that we have upheld liberty and the law, it helps us to do better if we believe that this is our special role in the world. In all countries, at all times, there are a shocking number of people who want to diminish freedom.
In other words, nevermind the fact that the British Empire was very often not a place of milk and honey, it makes us feel better about ourselves if we believe it was.
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19 Responses to “Five signs the Tories are losing the plot”
SimonB
They seem unable to make decisions too. At the level of town and parish councils we are trying to finalise our budgets and precepts for the forthcoming year yet we are being left with unanswered questions about council tax benefit. Last year cuts in CT benefit were covered from district council budgets but this year some district councils are so squeezed they are hesitating. The consequence for larger parish and town councils could be that, being prudent, they budget to cover the shortfall. However this could push them into triggering a referendum on their precept if they increase too much, hinted at over £70 Band D. Nobody at DCLG seems able to make a decision, everything is being kept under review and councils at the front line are being kept in limbo. It really is no way to run a country!
The current silence on capping at parish council level is hardly reassuring either.
Localism is widely viewed as being dead, along with Big Society and all the other wizard wheezes of the early days of this administration.
inrepose
I am not sure labour are much better with various Co-op issues and friction with trade union members. I can’t see myself voting for either party and Nick with his U-turn on student fees is also a no. I certainly need something new to vote for.
TheLiberalArms
The Conservatives only followed Cameron’s ‘modernizing’ strategy for electoral reasons – now the polls are against them they’ve shot back to their default position like a released spring.
A little something to cheer you up http://theoccasionalpigeonuk.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/ukip-to-extend-membership-to-moderately.html
TM
‘IQ is an attractive myth if you are one of those in a position of power or wealth, but a myth all the same. The children of wealthier parents are more likely to go to the best schools (properties in desirable catchment areas cost on average 42 per cent more), eat the best food, have access to ‘high culture’ and a place to do their homework. They also benefit from a number of other forms of social and cultural ‘capital’ their working-class counterparts lack. Nurture has at least as big an influence as ‘IQ’.’ It is indeed a cosy myth that IQ plays a major role in the class system and the idea that many privileged Upper class and Middle class people get their positions and privileges because they are smarter than the rest of us. If only that were true, hey Boris! I suspect the irony of his comments are lost on that intellectual giant that strides the world stage only because of his superior intellect and brilliant ideas how to run London. It is another way to dismiss the poor and then blame their poverty and disenfranchisement on them. Not Tory propaganda at all then. It is also the fact that even if you are not that bright at all, no names mentioned here, that when you have connections and privileges and wealth and went to the ‘right’ schools, you can usually sail through life no matter how little talent, intelligence or real accomplishments you have and still end up comfortably wealthy, with a plethora of Right wing prejudices and baggage attached for good measure. This is the class system, Britain’s last taboo and something which the Left should be tackling as par the course.
‘Tory hyperbole over Ed Miliband since he announced an proposed energy price freeze at Labour party conference goes right to the top.’ Surprise surprise! Someone actually challenges the gross injustice and promotion of inequality and they are called a Marxist or socialist or Stalinist or whatever. It’s another way to close the debate and allow business as usual, business being squeezing as much out of ordinary British people as possible and calling it entrepreneurial spirit or free enterprise or some other such nonsense. The rest of us probably call it gangsterism or a monopoly.
‘In other words, nevermind the fact that the British Empire was very often not a place of milk and honey, it makes us feel better about ourselves if we believe it was.’ They have to appeal to little Englanders don’t they and make them feel patriotic and superior and give them the right to hate and despise others who don’t buy all this BE bulls**t. Patriotism truly is the last, and the first, refuge of a scoundrel.
John
Look to the extremes then. The Green parties economic policies only require maturity (they can be a tad idealistic and naive) while UKIP have a surprisingly cohesive set of policies. Up to you which fits your views best of course
Myself, I’ll stick with the Greens. Unlikely to ever achieve power under the current voting system it’s one vote NOT going to the big three.