Basic instincts

I suppose that the logic - if that’s not too strong a word - to David Cameron’s expulsion of all hitherto existing conservative principles from his election pledges and hints and retractions; his publicity, public speeches and no doubt his table talk, is that if he does so and squats on the middle ground ( “middle” here taking as meaning large State; large tax, anti-patriotic and abandoning any notion of free will and personal responsibility from all aspects of law-making, operating the courts and in welfare spending) is that if he doesn’t EXACTLY resemble yet another metrosexual economic dirigiste and a cultural and moral relativist who just loves to feminise or infantilise every aspect of British life he can get his legislative hands on (about 25% given the EU’s silent imperium): but one dressed in a nicer suit, he will be called horrible names such as, variously:

racist, skinflint, advocate of child labour, militarist, Little Englander, fascist, grinder of the face of the poor, capitalist running-dog lackey, homophobic, sexist, anti-intellectual….

Hey, some of that looks a lot of fun…

Terrible electoral result are supposed to follow as the good people of Britain rise up in their deeply held and universally shard hatred of racists, skinflints, advocates of child labour, militarists, Little Englanders, etc, etc, ad nauseam world without end, Amen.
So you fake it till you make it, and then fake it some more.

It’s a long shot professor, but just might work.

Let’s see how well it does work, shall we children?

Here’s some I made earlier:


Survey End Date CON (%) LAB (%) LDEM (%) Con Lead

YouGov/Sunday Times 2010-02-26 37 35 17 2
YouGov/Sun 2010-02-25 39 33 16 6
YouGov/Sun 2010-02-24 38 32 19 6
YouGov/Sun 2010-02-23 38 32 17 6
YouGov/Sun 2010-02-22 39 33 17 6
Ipsos-MORI/Telegraph 2010-02-22 37 32 19 5
Harris/Metro 2010-02-22 39 30 22 9
ICM/Guardian 2010-02-21 37 30 20 7
Angus Reid/Political Betting 2010-02-19 38 26 19 12
YouGov/Sunday Times 2010-02-19 39 33 17 6
ComRes/Theos 2010-02-18 38 30 20 8
YouGov/Sun 2010-02-18 39 32 18 7
Angus Reid/Political Betting 2010-02-17 40 26 18 14
YouGov/Sun 2010-02-17 39 30 18 9
ComRes/Independent on Sunday 2010-02-11 40 29 21 11
Angus Reid/Political Betting 2010-02-10 38 25 20 13
Populus/Times 2010-02-07 40 30 20 10
ICM/Sunday Telegraph 2010-02-04 39 30 20 9

So Britain’s military reputation lies in tatters; tatters camouflaged by our economic prostration and our social and moral decline, and still somehow the party of the nation-state; of defence; of economic competence; of traditional values and a coherent society manages to raise its head above Labour as of 26 February 2010 by a massively respectable 2 percentage points which, I’m sure the BBC’s psephologists will be quick to point, is within the usual margin of error.

In response, Cameron goes full retard here in The Telegraph:

Every day that goes by I feel I have what it takes to turn this country around and get it moving again. And that is what we badly need to do.

And here he is using hyperbole 8 million times more powerful than the hyperbole used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki:

Mr Cameron disclosed yesterday that the Conservative manifesto would be the most family-friendly ever and said that voters would know before the election what tax breaks he would offer married couples.

Though if you’re hoping that ‘family friendly’ here means building several new jails and filling them with classroom-disrupting hooligans and persistent child molesters, wife beaters and daughter sellers, sister-stranglers and those whose criminal lifestyles have raped any chances of childhood away from large chunks of each generation since the 1970s, and also to abolish the Local Education Authorities and breaking the Marxists’ and the producer-groups’ stranglehold on education and educational training and recruitment by giving the bulk of the spending power to parents, I wouldn’t hold my breath.

I visited my oldest friends at the weekend: lifelong Tory Party workers; former contributors, canvassers, fund-raisers and officials – folk who always laughed at my youthful libertarianism and boyish hopefulness in the power of freedom and market (almost) unaided to bring the good life to earth.
We’re talking suburban driveways with neat, inexpensive cars here. We’re talking life insurance policies and families eating together and going to football together. We’re talking cats, and pictures of cats. And ornaments shaped like cats with pictures of cats painted on them. We’re talking hardcore Telegraph and Daily Mail suburban Tories, from generations of the same and with adult children of the same attitudes and instincts worried for their own kids’ futures.
The base. The heart. Conservative England.

They’re voting UKIP.
Cameron’s not fooled them one little bit – they are the real thing and he’s not.

If folk like these aren’t going along with it, then Cameron’s years-long project of ‘broadening the appeal’ of the Tory Party’s broad church so widely that it’s stretched into the shallowness of a shadow, have been wasted, and all the sacrifices of his hollowing-out of conservative policy, principle and good name have been for nothing.

So when the day comes and the parliament hangs or a tiny majority is achieved despite the economic and social Armageddon that Labour has inflicted, perhaps Cameron’s successor or the Tory spin doctors ought to learn to fear being called a different set of epithets:

apostate, traitor, trimmer, cowardly, appeaser, liberal, Quisling, socialist, coward, unprincipled, dishonest, federast, bully.


Picture from here.