Cameron’s ten pledges: the pretense is over, Thatcherism is back!
October 2nd, 2009
Adam Lent on Cameron’s 10 election pledges - oddly enough delivered in the Sun:
If you needed to sum up these pledges, the following wouldn’t be an unfair precis: deep spending cuts, tax cuts for the rich, tough on long-term benefit claimants, not much to offer the newly unemployed.
Good to see that Cameron’s progressive and compassionate conservatives have finally made that break with their Thatcherite past.
That’s about it. But in case you want more:
Despite the fact that he says the Conservative Party has changed and is now “paying attention to the big issues of the future”, there is not a single mention in his pledges of the environment.
Good, isn’t it? The man is beyond belief.
Talking to the ‘progressive Tories’ reassured me for a while over the last few years, but like red squirrels, they all seem to have disappeared: I think we may be headed for an insanely right wing Cameron administration.
In one way, you could argue that the cloud has a silver lining, as the more extreme the Tories are, the easier it’ll be for Labour to get back in - maybe after only one term out of office. But a lot of very vulnerable people are going to suffer very harshly at the hands of these nutters.
It’s quite possible Cameron may be over-confident and overplaying his hand - sounding increasingly like William Hague or Michael Howard; both of whom went down to defeats when they took a similar hard-line stance. This election may be a whole lot closer than people currently think. let’s hope so.
best bit of news I have had all week
Labour are out of power for a generation, possibly for ever.
The fact that even the Guardian accepts the game is up should put it beyond doubt.
You might not like Cameron, but Brown is clearly a liar (referendum on Lisbon anyone?) and has no leadership qualities. So that’s that then.
as a senior member of the Jersey elite you can’t vote mad - thankfully
Richard,
I was in the UK in 1997 and voted for Blair. I have never voted Conservative in my life but I would in the next election. I doubt even 10% of the Labour party would suggest Gordon Brown has leadership qualities, so I doubt 40% of the electorate will.
But I like “senior member of the Jersey elite”. You’d never know that I am the only member of my family to ever go to university and my parents met when my father used to drink at a pub where my mum served pints.