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Tatlerite Tories
David Cameron’s ‘Tatler’ Tories are doomed to failure.
They have no idea how ridiculous they look in their open-neck shirts and baggy jeans: somehow it just doesn’t work. Old Etonians trying to look cool by dressing up as plebeians is so transparent. Up north (where Cameron needs to win votes) they are sniggering over their Newcastle Brown’ at these Notting Hill ‘trustafarians’.
Secondly, spin and posing is on its way out as a replacement for political substance, just when they are getting into it. Everyone is sick, sick, sick of Blair’s gimmicks and spin, so why do the Tatlerites think it’s a winner?
Furthermore, the game is up on P.R. because traditional media are losing ground to the digital world and their ability to tell the public how to think through ‘not-so-subtle’ images and stage-managed messages, will shortly be as dated as a fifties 'Daz' advert.
Finally, since the Tories ditched Thatcherism for Tatlerism they are, say the gurus, moving to the centre ground (a fiendish scheme to steal New Labour's voters). In order to do this, Cameron keeps saying things that Blair would agree with but most of his party doesn’t. Like a General who charges into battle leaving his army behind, Cameron's charge to the centre looks increasingly lonely.
In truth the Tories were doomed since they began to search for a new leader and probably long before. Since the word went out that ideological differences and policy were taboo it was bound to end in farce. Politics is about ideas if it is about anything at all. Politics without ideas is like hunting without a fox (something Cameron and his crew can no doubt relate to).
Most, how do you defeat New Labour if you are not prepared to define it and Tories refuse to do just that? They prefer the cock-up theory: “I cant stand all this political correctness”, “they’ve messed up on tax”, or “immigration”, or “law and order”, or “devolution”…”Oh and that dreadful human rights bill” and “Blair’s blown our rebate in Europe you know, the French caught him out.”” Ha! Ha!
The cock-up theory allows the Tories to live in a comfort zone, one where they don’t have to think and don’t have to air unpalatable truths, like the fact that Blair’s government is and always has been totally ideological and has set out and largely achieved its goal, the total trashing of every institution that Tories are meant to stand for.
The institutions that guarantee our freedom, democracy and open society and safeguard us from barmy dogma.
Blair’s New Labour politics is not and never was centralist, it is radical, borderline extremist and Blair is close to fulfilling his promise made at the last election, to “make their achievements irreversible”.
By failing to take on Labour from an ideological point of view and worse, by aping them, the Tories only serve to give the government credibility. If they are prepared to live within the boundaries set for them by Blair then they will fail. Not just fail to get into office but fail to give free minded people a clear chance to be rid of this encroaching tyranny.
