All entries for Friday 16 February 2007

David Cameron

Why is it that everyone seems to think that David Cameron is the greatest thing to happen to British politics since the conception of Winston Churchill? for most of the past eighteen months we’ve been hearing about how he’s wonderful, how he’s the great white hope not just for the Tory Party, but for the nation as a whole. Surely his pronouncements today on the subject of family values are a perfect example of his general modus operandi. A slew of vacuous jeremiads about how dreadful it is that there are all these broken families combined with some vague policies, the upshot of which is that parents should be encouraged by means of tax breaks to stay together for the sake of the money. One of the worst aspects of New Labour has been its belief that no one is truly capable of taking care of themself and their family without the benign supervision of the state, and now we have Cameron effectively saying the same thing.

I know that many people have made the comparison, but Cameron really does remind me of Tony Blair before the Messiah complex really took hold; all the same elements are there: the careful management of appearance and publicity, the even more careful tendency to avoid actually making any policy decision beyond a token sigh about global warming, chocolate oranges, and children’s clothes, and the general hubbub about how Cameron is the Promised One who will lead the Tories out of the wilderness and back to their rightful place in government. Even if I were disposed to do anything other than despise the Tory party, it would still be insupportable to me to think that just as we were about finally to get rid of the Rev. Blair, we might see his heir and imitator in his place come the next election. So in my view Cameron can take his fatuous rhetoric and his pathetic inability to duck questions about his pharmaceutical past and follow Blair into oblivion.

: 16 Feb 2007 22:55 |  Tags: Politics |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem