Scottish Tory hack Fraser Nelson came somewhere close to intelligent thought in his Spectator blog entry entitled The British Obama this week. The astute piece noted what many political commentators, wrapped up the possible defeat of mysogony slash racism in the US, have missed.
Yes yes yes, says Nelson, so Barack Obama may give the US its first black president, thereby helping to mobilise 100s of 1,000s of disenchanted voters and empower America’s black and largely underdog population, but lets focus on what’s really important here – getting Tory Boy David Cameron into power.
Regardless of whether or not silver spoon Cameron and Man of the People Obama have anything in common, should Cameron pretend they do he could hi-jack the momentum gathering behind the Democrat and dismantle Gordon Brown, warts and all (literally), from his unelected thrown. Change, says Nelson, is what the two leaders share and the Torys should drive this home.
A brilliant, subversive and largely overlooked arguement. Hurrah, this bloke is the best blogger ever to hit cyber space…but oh wait…what is this….
Reason Five why the Tories and Obama should get in bed, Nelson writes: “[Tory MP] Liam Fox is fond of saying in speeches that ‘I didn’t come into parliament to run public services better than the socialists.’ A great line, which shows how a Tory government would be fundamentally.”
No, Nelson, no – it is not a great line. It is actually a direly worrying calamitous mess of a statement. Those lefty socialists you refer to may have got the NHS into indescribable debt but they also keep the NHS alive for those of us who can’t afford private healthcare. If you didn’t come into power to “run public services better” than the opposition, they what do you actually have to offer to the electorate, aside from Boris Johnson? My God, Hilary Clinton will be turning in her (political) grave…
Secondly, and most worryingly, Nelson continues “[This line] shows how a Tory government would be fundamentally”. Reader, I am in disbelief. Change, you say? At least when Labour decided to throw out all the political values they had built their reputation on in the name of Winning a General Election and renamed themselves the Conservative Party, sorry New Labour, they carried the promise through and legilslated until their hearts were content against small businesses and other die hard voters until they were so far right they were in danger of bumping into Stalin.
The Tories however are rubbish at this spin lark – after all it was Blair who invented it – and can’t even make it through a poxy blog without revealing their common people contempt. If Nelson can’t manage to pretend he wants to run public services better, it is hard to see how he can present the Conservative Party as change at all. Let’s not forget, the Labour Party have been living by the it’ll have do, now lets-talk about the £600 million Millenium Dome ethos for the past decade…
Filed under: conservatives, obama, politics | 2 Comments
Tags: Add new tag, conservative party, obama, politics
-
Recent Comments
Start Counter
Ugh, well said. Every time the Tories think of some new reason why David Cameron is a credible public figure, the more woefully inadequate and ungenuine he appears. Who is this man? The wild, arrogant Bullingdon club hell raiser of his university days (good pictures of him and Boris Johnson floating around)? The cool dad in Converse trainers? And, now, Obama-style champion of the underdog?
His supporters, I’m sure would be very quick to make out that he is not at all the first of these David Camerons. He is certainly not the “cool” figure of the second, to an embarrassing extent (and a foolish one – Cool Britannia was bad enough). And as for the third – who knows?
What is certain is that it is neither appropriate nor needful in this country for him to be any of the above. A focus on the interests of minorities (although these are important and obviously shouldn’t be overlooked) is in the general scheme of things as inappropriate as a focus on the interests of the grossly privileged. What we need is, as you suggest, a leader who cares about improving public services for the good of the entire populace. I don’t think David “Identity Crisis” Cameron can ever be the man for that job. Not because he’s a Tory but because, whatever form he takes at any given moment, he consistently fails to grasp what is at stake in the running of a country, apart from the getting of power, in and of itself.
Always nice to see the most recent of masks plucked from the faces of the Tory spin doctors!