Cameron: more than Maggie masquerading as Morrissey
10:34 am - September 27th 2008
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Now the spotlight shifts to The Novice; with some recent opinion polls putting support for the Tories at 50%-plus, David Cameron is presumably in a buoyant mood as he gears up for the Conservative Party conference that starts in Birmingham next week.
In a set piece interview with Sky – extracts here – he deftly counters the Great Clunking Fist’s accusations that he’s still wet behind the ears, pointing out that for all his experience, Gordon Brown has made rather a hash of things over the last year. There’s even the by now de rigeur sideswipe at New Labour from the left:
I just make this argument: who in the last year has thumped the poor and the working poor with abolishing the 10-pence tax rate? That was an appalling decision taken by a Labour prime minister.
Quite. Welcome to the world of Cameron’s Conservatives; environmentally friendly, socially liberal and completely at ease with multiculturalism. Not the Nasty Party anymore.
This is a development that many on the left are having difficulties in coming to terms with. Most are arguing that the apparent transformation is purely presentational, and that underneath everything, there lurks an unreconstructed Thatcherite authoritarian.
That’s a line I have previously argued myself many times. As a student, I wrote long essays proffering Gramscian analyses of the exact composition of the Thatcherite historic bloc.
As a journalist in the 1990s, I sustained a minor cottage industry in populist denunciations of the Tories as a bunch of reactionary, racist, homophobic, authoritarian, narrow-minded, anti-European, gin-and-Jag belt golf-club bigots. It was easy copy.
And it probably is the case that a large chunk of the rank and file want euroscepticism, they want law and order, they want tougher immigration controls and they want lower taxes. And they want them now.
But I’m starting to suspect that attempts to dismiss Cameron – pictured above – as ‘the same old same old’ are as wide of the mark as the Major government’s laughable initial efforts to brand Blair a closet ‘demon eyes’ socialist back in 1994 and 1995.
Electoral politics can and do reflect demographic changes; New Labour is the living proof of that. Perhaps we shouldn’t too surprised. An ability to move with the times is one of the characteristics that distinguishes a living political organisation from a cult.
The dilemma for Cameron is that there are votes in comfort zone Tory politics. Not enough to win an election, of course. But enough to provide the world’s oldest political party with goodly representation in parliament and plenty of jobs for both MPs and bag-carriers.
On the other hand, the ruling class of the 2000s has different needs than the ruling class of the late 1970s. It doesn’t have to undermine a confident and assertive labour movement, and the game plan of liberalising the British economy, as commenced under Thatcherism, was largely completed under Blair. Ironically, it may now be that the time has come for a certain degree of re-regulation.
The arrival of Cameronism shows is now possible to combine social liberalism with the retention of a core political project of providing a political vehicle for the minority of wealthy people that control society, in a way that could not have been done three decades ago.
In short, the coming Cameron government will of course do lots of execrable and reactionary things that the left will have to oppose. Despite the man’s protestations to be a progressive politician, it is unlikely to do very much that we would regard as progressive.
But there is little I can contemplate him doing that would reopen the deep social polarisation that split British society so deeply in the Thatcher years.
He will have a different mission statement, if only because a different mission statement is required of him. Simply to present the Tory leader as Maggie masquerading as Morrissey would be a mistake.
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Dave Osler is a regular contributor. He is a British journalist and author, ex-punk and ex-Trot. Also at: Dave's Part
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Reader comments
Good article, David (as ever).
Glad to see you started by reminding us that the Tories have actually polled over 50% (i.e. 15% more than Labour and Liberal Democrats together recently). I’m also impressed by Smithson’s Law: the most accurate poll is the one most favourable to the Tories.
It’s too soon to tell whether or not the Tories are the “same old, same old” – yes, they’ll protect the rich whatever else they do, but how exactly does this distinguish them from New Labour? In terms of the membership, which has not been renewed even to the small extent that Labour’s was in the 1990s, and is consequently pretty elderly, the answer is almost certainly “no”. But that probably doesn’t matter – what we need to look at is the new intake of Tory MPs. Maybe I haven’t been looking in the right places (well, I haven’t been looking, to be honest) but there seems to be little analysis of who they’ve adopted in the 200 or so seats they’re certain to gain at the election.
My impression is that the real “hot button” issue at their selection meetings was Europe, or more precisely, Europhobia. Doubtless many of them will cool off on the issue, especially once the City has applied its charm offensive – Mark Field was elected to represent the Cities of London and Westminster as a Europhobe in 2001, but he’s been reprogrammed since – but some will doubtless be foolish enough to bang on about it in that fantasy land where the rest of Europe organises its affairs to suit the UK.
It’s pretty certain that they’ll privatise welfare delivery to a motley collection of more-or-less dodgy start-up entrepreneurs and evangelical churches, but, frankly, the unspeakable James Purnell will do the same given half a chance.
@Dave Osler: “But there is little I can contemplate him doing that would reopen the deep social polarisation that split British society so deeply in the Thatcher years.”
I don’t think that the Thatcher social polarisation was ever closed. We live in an untrusting, mine-is-mine society, one that expects cheap collective provision and then moans about its failures. That is what the liberal left needs to address, and with very simple stories.
When I was a teenager, thirty years ago, the Daily Mail was a filthy rag, purchased by reactionary right wingers. Today, the Daily Mail is a filthy rag, read by “average” people. The Daily Mail delivers simple, hateful stories. This is replicated by right wing bloggers. And there is no simple counter argument.
Thoughtful, Dave – the analogy with the “demon eyes” campaign is spot on.
For the past couple of years Cameron has been making genuine and honest attempts to solve the classic Tory dilemma – the damaging effect of free market economics on traditional social values. No-one has solved this particular problem since Marx first posed it more than a hundred years ago.
It now looks likely that the free market is likely to fall out of favour for a while, what with destroying the global economy and all that. So maybe Cameron doesn’t need to solve Marx’s puzzle after all. He could run a quietly Keynesian programme of economic recovery (he probably wouldn’t actually call it Keynesian -wouldn’t go down too well with the base) along with measures of social reconciliation.
I’d always assumed Cameron would be one of those “interlude” prime ministers (Heath, Major), we get between the big beasts (Wilson, Thatcher, Blair). Now he might have a shot – just a shot – at being one of the greats.
So the change is that the Conservative party is now a vehicle for the wealthy to impose their beliefs on the multitude. Whatever their beliefs are. That doesn’t sound like much of a change to me. It also doesn’t sound like a party rooted in a set of philosophic principles.
The only way such a party can function is through strong central control from the leadership which roots out and removes any sense of dissent – because when any dissent does emerge the coalition becomes unstable and threatens to implode.
Cameron’s change is that it’s more of the same thing: it’s more power politics, more concessions to truth, more compromises with honesty, more inevitable failures and another eventual collapse.
How bad will his end be? Worse than this time round.
[3] “I’d always assumed Cameron would be one of those “interlude” prime ministers (Heath, Major), we get between the big beasts (Wilson, Thatcher, Blair). Now he might have a shot – just a shot – at being one of the greats.”
Blair wasn’t a great Prime Minister. He accepted the Thatcherite fudge left at the end of the eighties. No leadership on Europe, largely unreformed public services and an acceptance of the Tories social authoritarianism. To this he added a willingness to engage in illegal pre-emptive strikes on other countries. The last bit puts him below John Major in my estimation. Cameron looks like he’ll continue the same style of government we’ve had since about 1987.
Ah – but a day is a long time in politics David. This is today’s Tories:
British multiculturalism has left a “terrible” legacy which has allowed extremists to flourish, shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve has warned.
and:
Mr Grieve’s comments come as an ICM poll for the Guardian suggested Labour had narrowed the gap on the Tories.
The poll put the Conservatives on 41%, Labour on 32% and the Lib Dems on 18%.
A ComRes survey for the Independent on Sunday last weekend put the Tories on 39%, Labour on 27% and the Lib Dems on 21%.
Full sorry story here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7639047.stm
Falling in the polls – play the race card. Same old Tories.
David Osler,
I rather expected your ignorant ‘let-them-eat-cake’ attitude to the people’s outrageous demands for law and order and tougher immigration controls. But I think the quote which provides the best insight into your rather insulated, limited mind is the term ‘anti-european’ to describe eurosceptics. I am a eurosceptic but I am as about as pro-european as it is possible to be. You are no more pro-european as I am, only more federalist and therefore an anti-British ignoramus.
[Cameron] deftly counters the Great Clunking Fist’s accusations that he’s still wet behind the ears, pointing out that for all his experience, Gordon Brown has made rather a hash of things over the last year.
Well, quite. If the only criteria for ‘promotion’ to Government was experience we’d never change any of our beloved leaders since they would always be the most experienced (equally Brown should never shuffle his Cabinet!).
What matters is how our beloved leaders are perceived to have handled events.
ukliberty, it’s not so much the line of argument which is unattractive as the way in which Cameron has chiselled it. His lack of imagination and flair in exposing this flaw in Brown and Labour’s armoury does not inspire confidence that he can work out answers to more difficult problems.
Sure youth and experience are two sides of the equation, but Cameron is not unexperienced himself. He wrote Howards manifesto and he was at Lamont’s side during the ERM fiasco, so twice his own track-record counts against him. By comparison Brown is rightly garlanded as a triumphant visionary.
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