Conservatives: party of jobs and opportunity?
David Cameron this morning asks us to believe that an entity he notably refers to as ‘the new Conservative Party’ is now ‘the party of jobs and opportunity’. Either the overnight transformation took several tonnes of fairy dust, or it is a hallucination caused by some other magical powdery substance reputedly once much favoured by opposition frontbenchers.
Nobody who is historically literate will forget that it was the Tories that ruled Britain through most of the 1930s and all of the 1980s, the only two decades in which the dole queues topped three million.
And didn’t Cameron once work as special adviser to Norman ‘Black Wednesday’ Lamont, the Conservative chancellor who famously argued that joblessness on a massive scale is ‘a price well worth paying’ to control inflation?
The truth is that the brand of free market economics to which all good Tories subscribe clearly maintains that involuntary unemployment can only arise in a limited range of special cases. Until Cameron explicitly disavows this doctrine, the suspicion has to be that he agrees with his former boss. continue reading… »
BNP’s Barnbrook goes for Barking
BNP Assembly Member Richard Barnbrook is planning to stand as an MP for Barking at the next election, according to Tory Troll.
He unveiled his campaign on his Telegraph blog.
Bizarrely enough, as commenters pointed out, the massive poster had no mention of the fact he is a BNP candidate.
Barnbrook was recently suspended from Barking and Dagenham Council for one month following an investigation. He had made and published a video which contained false claims about murders in his area.
He says:
It’s very easy for a politician to spout what everyone wants to hear, and then do nothing. Pretty words come cheap. But trust is dearly bought.
Indeed.
Here is a recent video of Barnbrook dancing
Pt 2: How the Tories abandoned gay rights over Europe
I’ve been collecting information on one of David Cameron’s allies in his new European grouping. This is the second part of that investigation, the first part is here.
In part one I exposed how the Lithuanian member of David Cameron’s new European grouping had voted to support some very homophobic legislation.
To reiterate, the ‘Law on the Protection of Minors from the Detrimental Effects of Public Information’, which has been described as a harsher and more wide-reaching version of Britain’s old Section 28, bans discussion of homosexuality not only in schools but in any public places and media that could be accessed by young people.
It has been condemned by Amnesty Intl, the European Union itself and activists in the UK.
Valdemar Tomaševski, the Lithuanian MEP in question, is also on record as having branded homosexuality a “perversion”. Yet the Tories apparently did not view that as a reason not to welcome him into their European alliance.
continue reading… »
Cameron’s dishonesty over his EU intentions
contribution by pagar
Assuming the polls are right and David Cameron is set to become our next Prime Minister, any signs that we are about to enter a new era of honest government are completely undermined by his currently stated position on the Lisbon Treaty.
This is as follows.
1) He is against the treaty being implemented.
2) In a referendum on UK ratification he would campaign for a no vote.
3) If the treaty has not been ratified by the time he takes office he will hold a referendum on the issue.
4) If the treaty has been ratified by the time he takes office he will not tell us what he will do regarding holding a referendum.
5) The reason he gives for not telling us what he will do is that to do so could influence the decision of the remaining two countries that have not yet ratified.
His dishonesty is exhibited by the obvious disconnect between 1 and 5 above. If he is against the treaty being ratified, why does he not commit now to a referendum if that would be the best way of influencing those still to ratify not to do so?
continue reading… »
Watch: Cameron dodges Qs over wealth, crisis
On the Andrew Marr show today, David Cameron got asked questions about how he much was worth. “Is £30 million an approximate figure, as some have said?” asked Marr. But Cameron kept avoiding the question.
Later he asks him about financial regulation. “You claimed bitterly about the way the financial crisis was run. But all the way through the crucial years, you were calling for less regulation. … In terms of bad calls, that was about as bad as it gets isn’t it?”
Cameron tried to pin too much regulation for the crisis.
Watch:
Nick Robinson criticises Cameron on EU
The BBC’s Nick Robinson has written an unusually critical blog post on Cameron’s refusal to give a straight answer over the EU.
So what does the self proclaimed “straight talking” guy say about one of the biggest foreign policy dilemma he’s likely to face if he becomes prime minister?
Nothing. Nowt. Nix. Zippo. Zilch.
David Cameron’s official explanation for not telling us what he’ll do if the EU’s Lisbon Treaty is law by the time he reaches office is that “you can only have one policy at a time”. He adds that he doesn’t want to do anything to “undermine or prejudice” the ratification proceedings in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The real explanation is that he is determined that his last conference before the election will not, to use his phrase, “obsess about Europe”.
…
I joked with one senior Tory that the headline should have read “Betrayal postponed”. He smiled before chastising me for my cynicisim.
The Tories are desperately trying to kill off any internal fighting over Europe.
Roger Helmer MEP attacked Ken Clarke on his blog:
Ken Clarke appears on the front page of Saturday’s Daily Telegraph, pointing out what a huge disaster it would be if next week’s Party Conference were to be over-shadowed by a row about Europe. Of course he’s right. I think most Conservatives would agree. So if you don’t want a row about Europe, Ken, why start one? Or do you think that you can raise the issue, drop coy hints of your private (and not so private) reservations about Party policy, and assume that everyone else will shut up?
The very headline sets up the dilemma: “Clarke: Don’t let Europe wreck Tories’ chances”. So what exactly does he mean by that? Let me paraphrase. He means “Keep Quiet!”. No one should mention the EU (except, of course, himself — the licensed elder statesman).
…
The best way to avoid a row is (A) to set out a clear and unequivocal policy in line with the deeply-held convictions of the great majority of the Party; and (B) for the tiny minority of Europhiles in our midst to take a self-denying ordinance, and keep quiet.
And here we were, under the impression that the Tories valued internal debate and dissent. Only when it’s one way apparently.
More Tory turmoil over EU friends
At the end of their front-page article on Cameron today, the Observer picks up our little story:
Last night it emerged that another of Cameron’s European allies had been accused of holding extreme views after backing anti-gay legislation in Lithuania. Valdemar Tomasevski, an MEP and a member of the Tories’ European coalition, voted for a Lithuanian law on 16 June that bans discussion of homosexuality, not only in schools but in any forum open to young people.
Soho Politico will write more about the extent of Tory hypocrisy over this issue tomorrow morning.
Controversial MEPs to speak at Tory conf.
Two prominent east European allies of the Tories at the centre of a bitter row over their far-right links will be attending the Conservatives’ annual conference in Manchester next week.
David Miliband, the foreign secretary, yesterday accused Michal Kaminski, the rightwing Polish leader of the Conservatives’ caucus in the European parliament, of having an antisemitic and neo-Nazi past. He also said the rightwing Latvian party led by Roberts Zile, For Fatherland and Freedom, was guilty of celebrating Hitler’s Waffen-SS.
Leading Jewish figures have condemned the invitation, describing the actions of the Latvian party as “vile”. The two men are to take part in a conference fringe meeting on the future of Europe. Both strongly deny the charges levelled by Miliband.
Kaminski, a member of an extreme nationalist Polish party in his youth and a close ally of the president, Lech Kaczynski, is to speak at the session on Tuesday, which is also being attended by the Tories’ Europe spokesman, Mark Francois, Conservative sources said.
…more at The Guardian
Normblog’s verbal flip-flops
When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
Alice in Wonderland
In a post here a couple of days ago I noted that the term ‘liberal intervention’ had been discredited due to its association with Tony Blair’s disastrous foreign policy adventures and that humanitarian aid workers were amongst its sharpest critics. This was because we objected to the perversion of the long-established principle that military interventions on humanitarian grounds could be justified, as a last resort during humanitarian crises – in Rwanda for example – for regime-changes invasions like Iraq. In a reply entitled ‘liberals confused about intervention’, Norm states that I myself tend to use the terms ‘liberal intervention’ and ‘humanitarian intervention’ interchangeably’ .
I suppose I could just thank Norm for illustrating my point so succinctly, but since the two terms are so obviously not the same, it does beg obvious questions like ‘so why do you that then?’ or ‘so what do you think that they actually mean?’
The doctrine of humanitarian intervention is a long-established concept in international law.
continue reading… »
Cameron wants pics of his journey to No 10.
David Cameron has hired a press photographer who charted his journey to the threshold of No 10 to work full-time for the Conservatives.
Andrew Parsons, who has worked for The Times and the Press Association, is to provide behind the scenes images of the Tory leader to the media as he fights to win power.
Parsons has taken some of the best-known images of the Tory leader. His portfolio includes pictures of Mr Cameron dog-sledding in Norway and visiting Rwanda, and a number of family portraits.
The appointment is a first for British politics and Mr Cameron’s aides are nervous that it will be portrayed as evidence of presidential pretensions.
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