A Chameleon, a car salesman and a bleach blond fop take over CCHQ... what happens?

"La rupture, ce sont souvent des réformes transgressives en symboles mais marginales sur la substance."


Many have heralded the recent Tory fortunes as the signs of a New Conservative Era, signs that New Labour has run out of steam and that the Cameron brand is a viable alternative to the current administration, brimming with new ideas and hope. I must admit that when the local election results were announced a few weeks ago, I was gripped by an intense panic, for the first time since I have been politically active it well and truly seemed that New Labour was dead in the water and that Cameron was effectively going to be the next prime minister, the Tories were on the road back to Downing Street. But now that the dust has settled, that New Labour have been rattled and the smirks on the Tory front benches have grown wider, my panic was lessened, replaced however by a growing sense of disgust, at once at the misfortunes of Labour and the complete hypocrisy of the Conservative Party.

Watching the Conservative Party today one would think they have entered the realm of Narnia, surely we're looking at the wrong party. I couldn't help thinking as I watched David Cameron address the Prime Minister in the Commons that I was watching some kind of freak show, as the Leader of the opposition criticized the Prime Minister for his removal of the 10p tax band and his abandonment of the poor. What made me sick however was at once his complete inconsistency with what he had voted for the previous year and his complete incapacity to promise it's reinstatement should he help his party return to power in 2010, despite his rebirth as a man with a social conscience, sticking up for the little guy. It was as if I was on the mother of all come downs and someone had stuck U2 on, I had to stop watching as my stomach nor my nerves could take it.

What people seem to forget is that the negative effect the removal of the 10p tax rate has upon lower incomes is in the process of being corrected, which is by the by a lot more then any Conservative administration would do. For god's sake they were against it's creation in 1999, as they were against the minimum wage and various forms of tax credits for the poor. How dare they launch such an attack on Labour when in fact they honestly could not give a toss about lower income earners. The worst affront was the seeming incapacity to back up this outcry, with any meaningful policies or proposals: this was cheap point scoring by a most sinister PR man.

Now this doesn't mean Labour are absolved for their mistake. The mistake which they tried to cover up and backtrack on, was a clear sign of a party which has lost touch with it's purpose and is falling behind on the promises it made in 1997, 2001 and 2005. Labour has accomplished much in the last 11 years, it has made an outstanding effort to reduce poverty in this country, increase equal opportunity and in the process has managed to combine this with modern and mostly effective supply side policies. But Brown is low on ideas and originality, his time has come I feel, but I'll save this for a later post. The Conservatives, who despite giving us a new way of approaching State intervention and monetary policy, fed the illusion of freedom to us for 18 years on the twin opiums of greed and nationalism, while plundering our social services and making sure that one child in three was born in poverty: I don't think any of us should forget that on polling day in May 2010, when we cast our votes.

Cameron may be charming, with his weak chin and his "call me dave" airs, while his eminence grise, Osborne, may be professional and brutally intelligent. But this Notting Hill brigade which rides bicycles and tries to reduce it's carbon footprint, while hugging hoodies at the same time, is but a complete pretence upheld by a most brutal and dogmatically monetarist party, who view their so called "natural role" as the leaders of this country, as some kind of celestial providence.

Cameron has done nothing to modernise his party into the centre ground. They seem to have little to show for their apparent adherence to the third way, their policy output beyond giving a couple of tax cuts to the rich and opposing Government proposals, not for the general good, but to score a few points, is a vain attempt to cover up their complete and utter policy vacuum. What surprises me most is the general public's complete lack of awareness as to this. Cameron has simply painted over the cracks of the party and benefited hugely from the popular fallout of Labour since the botched election plans last autumn.

His party is still hugely anti-Europe, it can barely hide it's elitist leanings behind the rather weak attempts to defend the 10p tax band, nor can they say they have any proposals to modernise the NHS and better our education system, beyond the tediously overused phrases of "waste management" and "rationalisation", which can only be interpreted as tax cuts and neglect (the effects of which I don't feel I need to remind anybody of) since they have proposed ABSOLUTELY nothing and Labour with it's audits and managerial emphasis on public services is doing it's best to rationalise anyway.


Alan Duncan MP and Tory front bencher, said to Labour Health minister Alan Johnson last Thursday that Labour "are just as bad as us". This clearly shows where the part is at, so to speak. Benefiting hugely from public disaffection with Brown and effectively being considered a protest vote last month, as opposed to an aspirational one, Cameron and his Etonian chums may grin and smirk, but we should all hope and pray that this rather farcical and frankly offensive freak show which is the Conservative "Manifesto" will be revealed for what it is sooner rather then later, and these absurd and mostly redundant Labour/Conservative comparisons dropped. Before these buffoons and PR men enter Downing Street and realise they have nothing to offer but silly smiles and comic appearances on topical game shows, and we all suffer as a result.