Deliverance Conservatism: the desperate screech of the Tory Right
5:01 pm - March 12th 2013
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by John Clarke
Yesterday, Liam Fox delivered a banshee screech from the past with his speech at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). The noticeably cracked wall behind the podium he spoke from was an apt reflection of the speech’s contents.
His speech highlights a big problem for the Tories. A large, vocal and influential section of the party is stuck in an intellectual backwater. The solutions offered by Fox are a strand of thought that hasn’t shifted much since the late 1970s. The IEA is the policy equivalent of the Georgia wilderness in the film Deliverance. Liam Fox’s intervention was the sound of duelling banjoes.
The mind boggles at how out of touch his ideas are. Apparently it was socialists who made ‘wealth an embarrassment’. If only. I think the wealthy, in particular the bankers, can claim responsibility for that.
His call for cutting capital gains tax to zero and ending ring fencing for the NHS is likely to do more PR damage to the wealthy than anything the ardent ‘socialist’ Tony Blair ever did. How is it going to look when many wealthy people benefit from a tax cut when your neighbour’s Gran can’t get a hip replacement? As the Spectator’s Alex Massie points out it’s a one way road to defeat at the next election.
The former Defence Secretary railed against a phantom ‘great socialist coup’ that had taken place over the last decade. Fox, who may have been confusing Tony Blair with Arthur Scargill, was tilting at windmills with such enthusiasm he was practically horizontal.
Of course, he isn’t the only right winger who believes this stuff. This is what happens when new ideas are resisted with a passion. The old ones intermingle and become deformed. Narrow intellectual gene pools cause problems, as Labour saw in the early 1980s.
It’s a losing battle for Cameron. Deliverance Conservatives can’t be changed. They can only be defeated and Cameron isn’t strong enough to do this.
This leads to two problems for the Prime Minister. First, there is clearly a group within Conservative ranks opposed to Cameron. Second, every now and again someone from this group will make an intervention ‘retoxifying’ the Tory brand by calling for policies which steal from the poor and give to the wealthy. The two combined will bring more media attention every time a set piece crack pot speech is delivered.
This is where it will get tough for the Cameroons. Like the city slickers of Deliverance, Cameron and his half hearted modernising allies started off enjoying their trip to the top of the Conservative Party. But their joy quickly turned to horror as they found that the locals were from a different age. The Cameroons aren’t trusted. The Cameroon’s are outsiders. And we know what happens to outsiders.
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John Clarke is chair of Islington Fabians. He tweets from here and blogs here.
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Reader comments
I like your analogy.
Cameron can hear the sound of banjos – he’d better paddle faster before he finds some weird right wing good old boy from the shires right behind him, pissed on 30 year old single malt scotch, shrieking “Squeal like a pig boy, squeal like a pig”.
Said good old boy may even be related to the local elected police commissioner who’ll make sure there’s no investigation.
Cameron is toast.
More matter and less art.
While I distrust Fox’s motives, I don’t think ringfencing is that great an idea in theory. If you can honestly find a way of delivering the same service for less, you shouldn’t feel forced to keep the remaining money where it is just to avoid angry newspaper headlines.
That said, the Tory Party is no friend to the NHS, so from my personal standpoint, if they’re pressured into ringfencing that’s all to the good.
@2 Chaise
As the OP says, the speech as a whole was so knowingly a blast from the past it was extraordinary. The Tory equivalent of Socialist Worker, still happily in their fantasy comfort zone. The Speccie rebuttal is a dream too: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/alex-massie/2013/03/liam-fox-shows-david-cameron-how-to-lead-the-tories-to-a-historic-defeat/
Some stuff worth saving for later in that!
Fox is seriously barking. But what was more disturbing was the coverage it got in the media, with very little critical analysis.
@4 gastro george: Well said.
The Cameroons aren’t trusted. The Cameroon’s are outsiders. And we know what happens to outsiders.
Gay rape. There’s a joke that’s never not funny.
Looking back at the 80s – Labour spilled blood on the conference floor to oust the most ludicrous extremists – with councils and constituency parties all over the country waging war internally to resist efforts by extremists to take control again and again.
The Tory Party meanwhile seems rather different. The unelectable extreme rubbish doesn’t seem to generate the same angst among the party faithful. Indeed they seem to quite like it. That gives the next tory leader who wants to win an election a very tough task. NK had the backing of his membership to wage war – and the membership stood by him. Will Cameron’s successor modernisers ever have the same?
“I don’t think ringfencing is that great an idea in theory. If you can honestly find a way of delivering the same service for less, you shouldn’t feel forced to keep the remaining money where it is just to avoid angry newspaper headlines”
Actually Chaise, ringfencing has a lot to recommend it in the right circumstances: your point is very well made, but the value of ringfencing is that if essential services can be delivered under budget (and despite what The Right has to say about it, every public servant out there is doing his best to achieve efficiencies), the ringfenced remainder can then be used on truly desirable – if not necessarily “essential” – services that might otherwise be starved out.
Where the NHS is concerned I can think of many such non-essential services that the nation still *wants” and would it would benefit from.
Shouldn’t Liam Fox be languishing behind bars?
@ 8 Keith
Agreed – I’m happy for any money saved in the NHS to go back into the NHS. I was thinking more in terms of ringfencing as a general principle.
@6
Gay rape. There’s a joke that’s never not funny.
Tim, there’s no way in the world that the infamous scene in “Deliverance” can be considered “gay” anything. It’s not about homosexuality, it’s about people who have been so isolated for so many generations that some individuals have taken to getting the depraved pleasure they desire from violently fucking anything with a hole in it – the less able to resist the better.
In fact, I’d say as an analogy for the attitude of some so-called “Free Market” fundamentalists it’s pretty damned apt.
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