One year on and it's UKIP versus Cameron's Blue Labour...

thorsten · 10-12-2006, 12:46 AM

The Conservatives lost their way some time ago. It's still amazing however to see that the influence of Dave Hilton has turned the party into Blue Labour (an imitation of the excretable NuLabour original) so quickly.

The public at large don't trust Cameron (as they might well have trusted David Davis) because he is clearly showing minimal conviction on any matter, and so they will not vote for Blue Labour over New Labour when the time comes.

It's now very clearly a battle of UKIP versus Blue Labour, and the UKIP has a renewed chance now. The Conservatives are going in such the wrong direction that there is little hope of redeeming them before the next election (if at all under this lot).

If the UKIP wants to make a difference, and gain the votes of the many disillusioned party members, creating a rallying cry and policy website around the Blue Labour concept is likely a winner.

Quote:

November 27, 2006
Blue Labour

Daily Mail, 27 November 2006
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles-new/?p=466

The sheer cynicism of it simply leaves you open-mouthed. Last week, the Conservative leader David Cameron committed his party to tackling relative poverty, which he defined as not having the things that better-off people take for granted.

His strategy, by now so familiar, couldn’t have been more brazen —or insulting to his party’s past. Getting rid of the Tories’ image as the ‘nasty party’ meant repositioning it as the party of compassion for the poor. To do so, he and his warm-up man, Greg Clarke, knocked Winston Churchill off his plinth as party hero and installed instead the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee as the Tories’ new icon.

As the nation variously split its sides, went into shock or simply scratched its head, the Cameroons did high fives over their brilliantly counter-intuitive coup. But in their obsession with image, they have failed to grasp that such opportunism does indeed suggest that they have hearts of stone.
...
[Cameron] is for state controlled public services but also for using the voluntary sector, which would be effectively nationalised; for tax cuts but also for public spending increases; for stable family life but also for lone parents; for a tough approach to crime but also for hugging hoodies and loving louts.

Such radical incoherence enables him to pose as a compassionate Conservative, while leaving us all in a fog about what he would actually do in office.

It is also part of his strategy to enrage traditionalists and newspapers like this one. The louder such protests, the more the Cameroons rub their hands over their ‘Clause Four’ moment in defeating their ‘dinosaurs’.
...
Now an opinion poll suggests that Mr Cameron’s progress may be stalling. If so, this is undoubtedly because people can see through the spin. They don’t want Blue Labour; and they will never trust politicians speaking out of both sides of their mouths.

Throwing Cameroon stardust in people’s eyes may work for a while. But the British are not likely to buy a Polly in a poke. If they can vote for the organ-grinder, after all, why elect the monkey? It’s enough to make a dinosaur laugh.

Bluemerle · 10-12-2006, 11:46 AM

Excellent article. I have sent it to all my Tory friends.

thorsten · 10-12-2006, 02:26 PM

Just to clarify as Britannist pointed out elsewhere, Cameron's Svengali is Steve Hilton. I was being tongue in cheek when I referred to Dave Hilton, but should have made the reference more clear.

Such is Hilton's purported influence on Cameron that leader and "special adviser" are being presented as indivisible, a kind of 'group mind'; Hilton is the only one who can interrupt Cameron in shadow cabinet meetings, commissioned the new laughable scribble of a logo for the party, decides policies based on minuscule focus groups, etc, etc.

So to my mind, Dave Hilton is the leader of Blue Labour, not David Cameron.

Long live the new UKIP as it takes over the the torch of freedom for the UK, while Blue Labour dies the coming multi-year death it so richly deserves. Later UKIP can consider allying with what's left of the smouldering ruins of what was once a party of government.

Blue Labour, No danger... to anyone except Conservative party members.

10-12-2006, 02:26 PM	#3 (permalink)
thorsten Junior Member Join Date: Dec 2006 Posts: 73	Blue Labour, No danger... Just to clarify as Britannist pointed out elsewhere, Cameron's Svengali is Steve Hilton. I was being tongue in cheek when I referred to Dave Hilton, but should have made the reference more clear. Such is Hilton's purported influence on Cameron that leader and "special adviser" are being presented as indivisible, a kind of 'group mind'; Hilton is the only one who can interrupt Cameron in shadow cabinet meetings, commissioned the new laughable scribble of a logo for the party, decides policies based on minuscule focus groups, etc, etc. So to my mind, Dave Hilton is the leader of Blue Labour, not David Cameron. Long live the new UKIP as it takes over the the torch of freedom for the UK, while Blue Labour dies the coming multi-year death it so richly deserves. Later UKIP can consider allying with what's left of the smouldering ruins of what was once a party of government. Blue Labour, No danger... to anyone except Conservative party members.

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10-12-2006, 11:46 AM	#2 (permalink)
Bluemerle Uber Member Join Date: Jan 2005 Location: Dorset. Posts: 3,252	Excellent article. I have sent it to all my Tory friends.