Is this the final meltdown of the British Conservative party?

Posted by Steve Edwards on July 09, 2006, 05:07 AM | #

David Cameron is an unspeakable Marxist cretin. I’m not sure how to adequately express my contempt for the man.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 02, 2006, 03:21 PM | #

A few thoughts from Christopher Hitchens’ elder (and much smarter) brother:

Because of the cultural, educational, and moral changes they failed to resist in the 1960s and 1970s, Tories stopped passing on their values to their own children. Traditional conservatism as a disposition and a habit of the mind is disappearing among the British. Local [Tory] party organizations are kept going by increasingly elderly survivors, and voters are dying faster than they can be replaced. [...]

This [Cameron-centered Tory] revival is an entirely managerial, professional phenomenon, devoid of any serious conservative political element. In fact, it is worse than that. It is based on a belief that conservative policies are a liability and that office can be obtained nowadays only by embracing the supposed center ground.

Cameron and his allies specifically and often brutally reject positions once closely associated with their party, and they deliberately stress their passion for causes their party once disliked or mistrusted. The Union flag, once waved with rather un-British enthusiasm at Tory conventions, was not even displayed on the platform of the most recent gathering. [...] Mass immigration, an issue of great urgency, cannot be mentioned. Cameron has talked of his sympathy with “hoodies,” menacing young men who lope around the streets of British cities in hooded jackets, looking like junior horsemen of the Apocalypse and creating justified unease among the respectable. [...] And he recently affirmed his support for civil partnerships, a form of virtual marriage open only to homosexual couples. 

There is also the matter of style. Cameron makes speeches that are indistinguishable from Blair’s. Games are played in which the contestants try to guess which of the two has emitted a particular cloud of vapid platitudes. He has even spoken to friends of his desire to be “the heir to Blair.” [...]

Jeff Randall, one of London’s leading business journalists, recently recalled, “[...] In my experience Cameron never gave a straight answer when dissemblance was a plausible alternative [...].”

The story of how this curious individual became the great hope of British political conservatism has yet to be properly told. During the contest for the Tory leadership last year, Cameron was not—at least to begin with—seen as a serious contestant. He had no important political experience. Yet he somehow acquired the significant support of many in the British media, who greatly over-praised a speech he made and were excessively cruel about a speech made by his main rival, the more traditional conservative David Davies.  [Scroob note:  which would implicate Jewish influence on things, the media in the U.K. as in the U.S. being disproportionately Jewish-controlled and influenced — no?  Jews naturally would favor someone such as this Blair clone over a more traditional Tory.]

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 02, 2006, 07:18 PM | #

Which likely has a lot to do with why this Yorkshireman living in Holland (first comment in the thread hereunder) believes the BNP will win “quite a few seats in the next election”:

There is definitely a sea change here in Europe:  we saw it in the Swedish elections and we will certainly see it in England where religious tensions [due to Moslem immigration] are are definitely on the rise.  The aboriginal population of which I call myself a member, although I now live here in the Netherlands, have certainly had enough of Islamic intimidation, and I can see the British National Party winning quite a few seats in the next election.

He’s commenting on a Snouck log entry discussing the good showing of the communists and Geert Wilders in the Dutch election just held in which Snouck identifies the themes common to both victories:  anti-immigration, anti-E.U., and pro-nation.  If this trend continues in the U.K., who but the BNP are Brits supposed to vote for to express these themes, given the choice of candidate the Tories and Labour will be offering?  They’ll simply have no choice, those with eyes to see.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on December 06, 2006, 12:09 AM | #

As David Cameron ends his first year as leader of the opposition there are clear signs that the greatest gamble in modern British politics has not come off.  The little group of ex-public schoolboys who last year hijacked the Conservative Party have seemed to gamble on just one strategy:  list everything the party used to stand for – low taxes, the family, rolling back the power of the state, encouraging business, upholding our defences, curbing criminals, common sense – then go for the opposite. [...] What many voters sadly begin to conclude is that Dave and his cronies seem so hopelessly ill-equipped to take on the serious business of government that, if we have to choose between one gang of PR merchants and another, better stick with the devil we know.