Cameron: Juggling As He Goes
The Sunday Times reports that David Cameron – the newly elected leader of the Tories (well… ‘new’ – last year) – has to provide some clarity. People, by now, know what the Tories, under his leadership, are against but both politicians and voters, are now urging Cameron to make clear what it is he favors (and don’t even get me started about Pelosi’s empty “100 hours plan“. Never saw such a ridiculous thing in my life. As I commented: “Does she want to raise taxes to pay for improving education or health care? What does she plan on doing against the ridiculous deficit? “Pay as you go”. Pff. The question is, how the heck does she plan on ‘going’?” and “she should be embarrassed” and “what plan?? Am I the only one noticing that she said just about… wait.. let me think… nothing? Of course she said some good things, but those things are mostly ‘normal’ or should at least be considered as such. If I were American, my questions to her and the Democrats would be: “well, that sounds mighty fine, now please tell me what you are planning on doing after those first 100 hours? Do you plan on doing something to improve health care? Education? (Alternative) energy? What about the environment?
How does she plan on encouraging entrepreneurship? How does she plan on handling Iraq? How does she plan on dealing with terrorism? How does she…. This was more a TV add than anything even closely resembling a plan.
I am trying to read something lasting, something serious and something very telling into it… but I can’t. It’s empty. Throw some nice phrases into there and hoppakeey, you’ve got yourself a ‘plan’”).
“The leadership has done a good job of saying what the Conservatives are not now for,” said Lord Blackwell, former head of the Downing Street policy unit, now chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS). “But it is time for the other side of the coin — the principles the party is for and the policies that flow from them.”
And this might prove to cause trouble:
For Cameron this is a potential nightmare. The Conservative party is no longer riven with ideological division in the public way it once was, but the “mods” and “rockers” are still there, tooled up and ready to rumble. Indeed some suspect that the peace exists precisely because Cameron has steered clear of making tough ideological pronouncements.
Amassed to the right of him there are those who have never forgiven the party for dumping Margaret Thatcher — a group that one moderniser calls “the head-banging Europhobic tax-cutters”. They want to see a flash of the old, a firm commitment to reducing taxes and an end to the “namby-pamby” politics of equal rights and work-life balance.
On the other side are the “über-Cameroons”, metropolitan-based modernisers who want their leader to go further in burying his party’s unpopular past and set out a more principled compassionate agenda. They value social workers above tax cuts and cheered Cameron’s recent apology to Nelson Mandela on behalf of the party for having once branded him a terrorist.
More:
Much more troublesome is Blackwell and the growing gang on the right who will demand that Cameron demonstrate some genuine substance in Bournemouth. Blackwell will fire the opening salvo today with the publication of the CPS’s own manifesto for change. The centrepiece is a call for tax cuts, including scrapping inheritance tax, capital gains tax and increasing the level at which people begin to pay the basic rate of income tax.
“Tax cuts are an economic necessity,” he said. “It is all part of declaring what the party stands for — limiting the size of the state, encouraging enterprise and supporting families.”
More groups will publish their own ideas about tax cuts: the Tacherites (No Turning Back Group) will publish a pamphlet calling for severe tax cuts. Importantly, this pamphlet has the support of 54 Tory MP’s.
The Tax Reform Commission – headed by Lord Forsyth – will publish a report which will, like the groups mentioned above, call for tax cuts as well -> up to £19.5 billion.
These groups, of course, are all quite far to the right. To the left other groups are pushing Cameron to take a quite different approach. They want Cameron to ‘address’ problems like “depression, diabetes, Aids, those coping with terminal illness, and the 60,000 children in care.”
These Tories are doing something highly important: they are pushing their own leader to make his exact plans clear: even when that pressure might hurt the Tories as a whole. In short, they favor honesty and openness over mere criticism that does not really offer an alternative.
As I see it, GB desperately needs a right of center PM / government. Some of England’s biggest (future) problems are the economy and integration. Well, perhaps I should say the lack of integration. England and France are the two European countries with the largest integration problems. Especially England, though, harbors quite some extremists who are able to influence lots of individual, young, Muslims.
18 Responses to “Cameron: Juggling As He Goes”
Well since you bashed Pelosi’s ideas, can you please tell me what the Republicans great plan is, if you’re going to bash a plan, I think you should look at both sides plans, and bash equally, or else its obvious who you favor, and with the last coupla things you’ve written, you seem tilted towards republicans
So wait. I cannot criticize the Democrats if I do not, in the same article, criticize the Republicans? That’s belony.
No no…you can criticize the Democrats all you want, I will just think you support the Republicans, maybe its just the partisan times we live in, and maybe if it wasn’t Pelosi but just a dumb Democrat, there are a bunch ( I personally don’t like Jim Moran a local Democrat who sticks his foot in his mouth all the time). I’m not saying you HAVE to, I’m just saying that if you don’t, you look like you’re a republican supporter
Matt, I see your point. I must say, as I have said before, that if I were American I would have quite a difficult time deciding who to vote for. I would strongly consider supporting the LP for instance.
And sorry for the perhaps somewhat short reaction. I am noticing myself becoming a little bit short regarding the kind of criticism I thought you were aiming at me, because I get it thrown at me every day now.
Well, I’m sure you get nasty invective from both sides, this is a moderate site, and it would appear that moderation is not the phrase of the year, although I personally believe partisanship is a good thing right now, because moderation is for after the election, right now we need partisanship and CHOICES. I want a Democratic Party that is distinct from the Republican Party, I used to not think of the Democratic Party as really distinct, that they were both corporate whores, but now I feel like, even with its flaws, and its sometimes silly rhetoric, I’m not really scared of Democrats being in charged then the Republicans. Bush isn’t an idiot, and people need to start recognizing that, he’s a shrewd politician behind an ‘aw shucks’ veneer, and he’s using his pulpit to push for massive presidential power, if anything, I think anyone, especially a Libertarian as yourself, would at the least, want a check on the Unitary Executive. If the Democrats make dumb decisions, Bush is still in power, he might actually wield that Veto thing, and the Democrats will get smashed. But at the least, they’ll be willing to say, “No, you can’t do that!” Something I believe we’ve needed in this country for a good while.
I agree completely. Because I criticize the Democrats quite some and favor an aggressive foreign policy, some people automatically think that I would favor the things Bush is doing. Do not be mistaken. I do not. Gitmo, Abu Graib, the idiotic and disgraceful bill about torture, er, the treatment of enemy combatants, the NSA program, etc. are just a few things I would never, never support.
The beautiful thing, though, is that I am Dutch and as such I do not feel any loyalty to either party. I say what I think about it and leave it at that. That being said, personally I regard integration, muslim extremism, terrorism, etc. to be very, very important issues and as such I tend to focus a lot on that.
Lastly, I would strongly urge you to read this thread of today at TMV. It is a long thread, but some good, very good debates. I will post something tomorrow about the emptyness, the lack of substance in American politics.
I’ve been following that thread some, it has got to be very close to a record in sheer number of posts for TMV.
And as sad as Pelosi’s “plan” may seem, it is pretty specific compared to our Iraq victory plan: “stay the course–when they stand up, we’ll stand down–democrats are evil incarnate, and appeasers to boot.”
Oh, and if elected, the Democrats might subpoena people, and mess up this little Camelot we’ve built up over the last few years!
MvgD,
The Libertarian Party in the US is against foreign intervention. They were against Clinton going into Yugoslavia and Bush going into Iraq. I don’t think this party fits your thoughts.
Here is a link to the LP platform page. Like I said above, the non-interventionist stand of the LP doesn’t fit your views.
LP Platform
LOL -> I have studied it quite closely Rudi and although I do not agree with them on that, there are many, many other things I do agree on with them.
I belive your alliance is with VVD, the Liberal Conservatives. Who do they differ from the Dutch Libertarian Party – Libertarische Partij?
*How do they
Umh, do we have a libertarian party? LOL
According to Wiki you do.
Link: Libertarian Dutch
Pleaase explain the difference between VVD and LP in a post someday, the web translator crashes.
MvdG, what do you not like about these 3 things in Pelosi’s 100 hours plan.
1. Put new rules in place to “break the link between lobbyists and legislation.”
2. Enact all the recommendations made by the commission that investigated the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001
3.Broaden the types of stem cell research allowed with federal funds
I for one don’t see anything wrong w/ them. The breaking of lobbyists and legislation is good for everyone. It would improve the legislation being done in D.C.
I don’t know all of the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, but why WOULDN’t we implement them?
Stem Cell research is likely going on in other countries, the U.S. needs to keep up.
Lastly, is there a reason we shoudn’t do pay-as-you go. Instead of massive deficit spending and sky rocketing debt.
Make no mistake, I’m not a Pelosi fan, but these things seem quite middle of the road to me. Finally, I prefer not to have all sorts of hearings. I can see w/ my own eyes the Repubs in power have simply gone off track, removing some of the more powerful ones (Delay, Santorum, Ney) is good for America as a whole. I don’t need congressional hearings to waste time/money telling me that.
MvdG,
Nevermind, I’m reading the 132 comment thread. Geez, its gonna take me at least another soda to get through it, what a hard Saturday afternoon for me indeed!!
You know I coulda sworn the subject of this blog post was the Tories….IN ENGLAND.
Now Michael, do explain why you felt the need to take your usual dig at the Democratic party of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
I find it rather confusing you’d feel the need to take a stab at a political party not even part of the EU which you are a citizen in, in an article about another political party in your locale.
Your need to inject yourself into our goings on here in the manner you just did gets my patriotic go to hell feelings riled up. And also makes me really understand why the people of this country told Europe where to get off long ago. I’m starting to feel we as a nation have sneered at the wrong Europeans (French) just for the sake of having a definable target. Rather than sneer at the interlopers that are working our system from afar.
I wouldn;t be getting peeved right now, but you are writing as a political operative, not as an observer. How do you think your fellow citizens would feel if I tried my best to alter their voting/politics from several thousand miles away? I’d hope they’d tell me to go to hell, but I’m not so arrogant to even attempt it.