And verily did David Cameron spake forth unto the multitude of political journalists desperate for Bank Holiday copy, and lo he did utter his New Year platitude:
Let’s be honest that whether you’re Labour, Conservative or Liberal Democrat, you’re motivated by pretty much the same progressive aims: a country that is safer, fairer, greener and where opportunity is more equal. It’s how to achieve these aims that we disagree about – and indeed between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats there is a lot less disagreement than there used to be.
How wonderful!
Mr Cameron is, we understand, preparing this January to launch a veritable blizzard of policy announcements – his statement above appears to be paving the way for the Tories to reject their current manifesto, and in its place adopt a large number of Liberal Democrat policies.
Let’s rejoice at that news!
For this means that the Tories will be entering the next general election committed to:
- cutting income tax for the poorest in society rather than cutting inheritance tax for millionaires
- retaining the Human Rights Act
- helping children according to the state of poverty they live in and not discriminating against the 2.3m unmarried couples in the UK
- capping public sector pay increases at £400, rather than freezing pay for all public sector workers
- reversing his immature decision to pull-out of the right-wing EPP alliance (the party of Merkel and Sarkozy) in the European Parliament and instead align with an unstable and oddball fringe of homophobes and extremists
- clamp down on expenses abuses within his own shadow cabinet, instead of letting friends like George Osborne and Michael Gove off the hook for ‘flipping’ their second homes and profiting by tens of thousands of pounds
- understand that localism means decentralising power to local people and local councils – not pledging that a Tory government would step in to freeze Council Tax
- commit to genuine reform of Parliament – ending the scandal of Westminster’s safe seats culture – by supporting proportional representation
- understand that government spending cuts in the middle of a recession are a recipe for disaster, and suggest that his choice for Chancellor, George Osborne, spend more than 40% of his time on the economy
- recognise that the EU makes Britain safer by dropping opposition to the European Arrest Warrant, which has slashed extradition times across the EU from an average of 18 months to just 43 days ensuring 335 dangerous criminals were not freed
- realise there’s more to being green than hugging huskies in the Arctic, and support Lib Dem proposal to increase taxes on pollution to pay for tax cuts for the poor
To be honest, before David “let sunshine win the day” Cameron delivered his New Year message of cooperation, I had little expectation that the Tories would be able to support these kind of policies.
But now the Tory leader has confirmed there are few disagreements between our respective progressive parties I shall await with eager anticipation Mr Cameron making clear exactly where the Tories stand on the issues above before the next general election.
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17 Comments
Come on, we know you’re just yellow Tories. If Cameron wants you, Clegg will be a good little boy and line up behind him.
Of course, he will be repealing the HRA and replacing it with a BBOR, I don’t see why anyone sensible would be opposed to it.
While I have my reservations about the new grouping, at least when it was formed, it’s now quite the good group, forming a real opposition to the European parliament.
No PR, shoo you jumper hugging hippies.
What I suspect there may be change on is cutting taxes
Brilliant Stephen!
I also think this is excellent news, for slightly different reasons: http://liberalneil.blogspot.com/2009/12/dear-dave-thanks-for-your-helpful.html
Correct Neil.
However, of the 100 top Tory targets, 79 are Tory/Labour marginals. Cameron’s message helps them squeeze our vote in those seats. In the 20 seats that are Tory/Lib Dem marginals this message may, as you suggest, make it easier to retain voters we ‘took’ from the Conservatives from (say) ’92 onwards. But doesn’t it make it harder for us to keep votes ‘lent’ to us by Labour supporters who may have begun to suspect these last two years that voting Lib Dem will be helping the Tories?
Happy New Year, everyone.
Bill, I would hope that in the seats where it matters our local campaigning should be strong enough to keep squeezing the Labour (and Green) vote. In the 20 seats you mention there will be Labour ‘voters’ who haven’t actually voted Labour for 12-20 years. Many of them are not people who will listen to Cameron much anyway.
Certainy Cameron’s message is aimed at wavering Lib Dem voters in Con/Lab marginals. This may affect our overall vote but probably not the number of seats.
You missed imposing elected mayors against local opposition.
But we really don’t know much about the ideology of a future Cameron government because we don’t know what the new members on the back benches will allow him to get away with, even assuming that his small ‘l’ liberalism is what he truly believes. If he thinks that he is going to get an easy ride from the socially conservative hordes that are going to flood into parliament after the election I rather suspect that he’s mistaken. But then from all we’ve seen of him since he became established in the party he’s a consumate chameleon who may turn out to be a managerialist who is rather more skilled than John Major in leading his party in several different directions at once.
Hmm, an interesting pivot moment awaits.
I’m glad that he’s deided to come on board with so much of what we support, as that shows our arguments are sticking, but I wonder what it means for those at the other end of the tory party – does Cameron now feel secure about the electoral risk posed by Ukip. It would seem the European elections are now a sufficiently distant memory that the tory grassroots are now more muted.
However, it does make me wonder about how reliable or secure Cameron can possibly be if he is so quick to undermine his shadow cabinet colleagues in his anxiety to succeed in his electoral bid – I can’t say the prospect of a future Conservative regime fills me with any confidence for the country.
All true, Neil. And I hope you are right about former Labour voters who have voted tactically for us in recent years, but the closer we appear to get to the Tories the more we ‘strain’ that relationship.
Also, the closer we appear to get to the Tories the less likely it is that previously loyal Labour voters who are close to deserting will come to us.
Tory policies? All their policy papers are on their website. Their economic policy might be neo-con, but the rest is relatively liberal. Have a look at the freedom they plan to give to LAs to use social enterprises for service delivery. This policy on stimulating social enterprise was in the originally 10 point election manifesto for Cameron’s leadership campaign. He was and has never been policy-lite.
It is pretty obvious that in 1997 there was a covert deal between Labour and the then Lib Dem leadership. I suggest that the ‘offer’ was only withdrawn by Blair on the Wednesday before polling day. The Labour guy I was working with at the time had his appointment for Friday in Downing Street moved forward by four hours on that Wednesday – exactly the length of time believed by senior Lib Dems to be the length of time for the ultimatum Blair would give the Lib Dems to make their decision.
I just hope that this time there isn’t anything going on with the Conservatives.
Good article! But seriously, Cameron’s that any party who wants to form a government has to listen to the Liberal Democrats. Other parties adopting our policies makes us stronger not weaker, more relevant not less.
All the more reason for wavering Tory supporters to vote for the Lib Dems instead, then!
David Cameron said he would pull out of the EPP and has done so. Good for him! It is only the EU’s stupid rules that have forced him to join the group he has joined. He has stuck to his promise, unlike the LibDems over the EU Consitution / Lisbon Treaty
The sooner we leave the EU the better. I hope that any EU-sceptic Liberal Democrats will consider joining the Liberal Party, so that at some stage we will have a clearly EU-withdrawalist Liberal Party – as well as an EU-fanatic Liberal Democratic Party .
We badly need a clearly EU-withdrawalist Liberal internationalist alternative to the beyond the pale EU-withdrawalist BNP and the right wing grammar-school-in-every-town and abolish-Inheritance-Tax EU-withdrawalist UKIP.
Dane – the Liberal party are a minor party, and will always remain so. Despite the shrill scaremongering of your “EU fanatic Liberal Democratic Party”, I hope members of the Liberal Party will consider joining the Lib Dems to help ensure we achieve real (liberal) change in Britain.
Bill – I agree with you completely that Cameron’s “lovebombing” is actually about scaring off soft Labour tactical voters.
“Grammar Police”
I am not sure about the meaning of shrill scaremongering!
I seem to remember being told that the LIberal Party was a minor party and will always remain so in the 1960s! Then, from a standing start, I very nearly was elected in Newbury in 1974 on a platform of greater equality of opportunity in education, health and the inheritance of wealth and the privatisation of all activities other than those which either cannot or ought not to be rationed by price – a platform which clearly straddled the two other parties – in the days when there was less Liberal Party discipline.
If the LIberal Party – of which I am currently not a member – became a clear LIberal alternative to UKIP it would do very well. So, like you, I hope that EU-enthusiastic members of the Liberal Party will consider leaving it and joining the Liberal Democrats, as did Michael Meadowcroft, the original re-founder of the LIberal Party, because the Liberal Party became too EU-sceptic for him.
Will David Cameron toe the Thatcher line on immigration?? This is worth repeating for all who imagine Lib Dem – Conservative partnership is possible !!
Papers released to the National Archives at Kew, west London, under the 30-year rule cast fresh light on the former Prime Minister’s attitude towards race and immigration.
They record a meeting in July 1979 between the premier, Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington and Home Secretary William Whitelaw to discuss the plight of hundreds of thousands of “boat people” fleeing communist persecution in Vietnam.
According to the minutes, Lord Carrington, who had visited refugee camps in Hong Kong where some refugees were being held, gave a “vivid account” of the conditions he found and suggested Britain should accept 10,000 over a two-year period.
He expressed concern that if the UK did not come forward with a significant offer, there would be a “damaging reaction” both at home and abroad. Anything less than 10,000, he said, would be “difficult to sustain internationally”.
The suggestion drew an angry response from Mrs Thatcher who said that there were already too many people coming into the country.
She said that “with some exceptions there had been no humanitarian case for accepting 1.5 million immigrants from south Asia and elsewhere. It was essential to draw a line somewhere”.
Mr Whitelaw weighed in, saying it was a mistake to mix up immigrants and refugees. He further antagonised Mrs Thatcher by adding that his postbag was showing a shift in opinion in favour of accepting more boat people.
“The Prime Minister said that in her view all those who wrote letters in this sense should be invited to accept one into their homes,” the minutes noted.
“She thought it quite wrong that immigrants should be given council housing whereas white citizens were not.”
Mrs Thatcher then raised the question of the implications of such a move in the light of the expected exodus of the white settler population from Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) once majority rule was established.
She added however that she had “less objection to refugees such as Rhodesians, Poles and Hungarians, since they could more easily be assimilated into British society”.
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Happy New Year Roger !
Heard the dramatisation of those exchanges between Thatcher and her Foreign and Home Secretaries yesterday on Radio 4 – fascinating.
I remember at that time having two refugees from Vietnam to stay with me. I often wonder where they are now.
How will our members in the House of Lord’s be involved in any Party consultations should no single party have a majority in the next House of Commons?
How will you all ensure that there is a proper Consultation System in place before the election – the one that Bob Maclennen and others put together pre-’97 would be a good starting place. Every Constituency Chair was to be consulted.
B
Happy New Year to you Bill. I’m sure that we must decide our “direction” at every level of the party early in the New Year so that everyone is on board with an accepted consultation process in case of a “hung” parliament. With an opportunity to enact truly Liberal Democratic policies it would be fatal for us to be divided. I don’t think it sufficient merely to consult Constituency Chairs – we need more than what happened in 1974 !!
I’m certain that our best chance ever can come in a May election.