Skip to main content

Dressing to the left

Having accepted higher taxes, more state interference, and virtually all of the Blairite agenda, even David Cameron's hair has moved left.

The one thing that David Cameron is not is a Liberal of any description; his controlling agenda now differs little from the surveillance state enacted under Labour.

The paternalist agenda of the Cameroons is now clear, even without a whisper of actual policy. So, although the desire for a change from NuLabour is becoming stronger across the country, there is little enthusiasm for the Cameroon clique, even (in fact, especially) amongst liberals in the Conservative Party.

Although many Conservatives are grateful to be a bit more popular, the current lead in the polls is fragile, and plenty of economically literate commentators are becoming hostile towards the Tory leader and his half baked ideas.

To my mind, I do not see Controlling Conservatives as an improvement on NuLabour failure.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Whereas of course your uber Brusselite desire to change our constitution via the voting system without refernda isn't naturally. You can say it is in your manifesto Cicero but it isn't anyone elses. Therefore the people have to be consulted. Face it,l the reason you want to avoid it, is because like your friend Mr Yuri Phile you fear losing.

Your attacks on Cameron seem to becoming increasingly polemical. For us or against us. Black or white. All my oppenents are the same. A myopic refusal to acknowledge people like life don't come in exactly the same flavour. Know who also thinks like that George W Bush. Congratulations Cicero, you are becoming less tolerant and thus less "Liberal" each day.

Lepidus.
Liberal Polemic said…
Blimey! Who rattled his cage?

I think the comment about the "controlling Conservatives" "paternalistic agenda" may have struck home.
Cicero said…
Yes Tom- And the interesting thing is the number of Tories who have actually been agreeing with me!

"Lepidus": we will just have to agree to disagree. If Liberal Democrats put forward a manifesto and we win an election, then why should we need to go through referendum on our policies any more than Labour have had a referendum on ID cards or the Tories had one on entering (or leaving) the ERM. For right or wrong, the Queen in Parliament is Sovereign in this country- and even a referendum can only be advisory. So you might want to brush up on your knowledge of the British Constitution before launching into a rather dotty attack like this one. The irony is that Liberal Democrats support enshrining the use of referendum under certain circumstances, and the Conservatives have historically bitterly opposed their use.

And for the record, of course I am against a Conservative party that lacks the maturity or the honesty to put forward one single policy that is not half baked PR bullspeil- and you as a Conservative should be embarrassed that your party seems to have grown so intellectually lazy. It is dishonest opposition and it would be a pathetic re-run of all the worst bits of Blair in government.

Popular posts from this blog

Concert and Blues

Tallinn is full tonight... Big concerts on at the Song field The Weeknd and Bonnie Tyler (!). The place is buzzing and some sixty thousand concert goers have booked every bed for thirty miles around Tallinn. It should be a busy high summer, but it isn´t. Tourism is down sharply overall. Only 70 cruise ships calling this season, versus over 300 before Ukraine. Since no one goes to St Pete, demand has fallen, and of course people think that Estonia is not safe. We are tired. The economy is still under big pressure, and the fall of tourism is a significant part of that. The credit rating for Estonia has been downgraded as the government struggles with spending. The summer has been a little gloomy, and soon the long and slow autumn will drift into the dark of the year. Yesterday I met with more refugees: the usual horrible stories, the usual tears. I try to make myself immune, but I can´t. These people are wounded in spirit, carrying their grief in a terrible cradling. I try to project hop

Media misdirection

In the small print of the UK budget we find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer (the British Finance Minister) has allocated a further 15 billion Pounds to the funding for the UK track and trace system. This means that the cost of the UK´s track and trace system is now 37 billion Pounds.  That is approximately €43 billion or US$51 billion, which is to say that it is amount of money greater than the national GDP of over 110 countries, or if you prefer, it is roughly the same number as the combined GDP of the 34 smallest economies of the planet.  As at December 2020, 70% of the contracts for the track and trace system were awarded by the Conservative government without a competitive tender being made . The program is overseen by Dido Harding , who is not only a Conservative Life Peer, but the wife of a Conservative MP, John Penrose, and a contemporary of David Cameron and Boris Johnson at Oxford. Many of these untendered contracts have been given to companies that seem to have no notewo

Bournemouth absence

Although I had hoped to get down to the Liberal Democrat conference in Bournemouth this year, simple pressure of work has now made that impossible. I must admit to great disappointment. The last conference before the General Election was always likely to show a few fireworks, and indeed the conference has attracted more headlines than any other over the past three years. Some of these headlines show a significant change of course in terms of economic policy. Scepticism about the size of government expenditure has given way to concern and now it is clear that reducing government expenditure will need to be the most urgent priority of the next government. So far it has been the Liberal Democrats that have made the running, and although the Conservatives are now belatedly recognising that cuts will be required they continue to fail to provide even the slightest detail as to what they think should guide their decisions in this area. This political cowardice means that we are expected to ch