Reinventing the Tories seemed so simple: New Tories are racism free, they’re cool with homosexuality and they love the Public Services. Everything you need to win over those squishy swing voters, it seems.
Well, sort of. There’s something else they need to do, too. Something that distances themselves from the sins of the past: First they need to keep quiet about Immigration. Second they need to keep quiet about Europe.
Europe is the Tory curse, it seems. Even if it’s not causing them to fight amongst themselves (like Dan Hannan standing down from the front bench to pursue the Lib Dem policy of an In or Out referendum), it’s still forcing them to talk about it.
When they talk about it they upset the anti-EU types because they don’t go far enough. They upset everyone else by simply being seen to be interested in a subject that people don’t consider important.
In my opinion Europe remains toxic for Cameron. The EU is still the top political story (what with a French Minister becoming highly emotional about a potential loss of British influence in the EU) and, for me, it feels like the first serious crack in the Tory machine.
But worse than bringing up Europe (although in fairness the other two parties are keeping schtum and letting the Tories flounder around on their own here) is the constant, constant “when” rather than “if” on the subject of the Tory Government.
Hague was doing it on Radio 5 live last night (while talking about Europe at the same time), and it made for repellent listening.
Get it sorted: If Brown gets another term, I’m blaming you.
Terence Eden said...
5 Nov 09 at 12:23 pm
The problem for the Tories is that they’re cobbled together from lots of different factions. I don’t see how the Free-Marketeers sit happily with the Moralists. How does Pro-Big-Business sit with Euro-Skeptics?
Smaller parties are needed. Pro-Euro-Tories and Anti-EU-Tories should be separate parties. They can vote together on legalising fox-hunting or whatever else they have in common and they can robustly debate – and vote against – European issues without the worry that they’ll lose support from the Party bosses.
The same goes for most other political parties. No individual MP is ever going to agree with 100% of his party’s ideas – that shouldn’t be a crime. Splitting the party is a consequence you risk when you insist on a monoculture.
T
Surreptitious Evil said...
5 Nov 09 at 1:33 pm
“Get it sorted: If Brown gets another term, I’m blaming you.”
Rather than blaming your own party for not bothering to be electable enough? Okay, seems a bit hypocritical though.
Charlotte Gore said...
5 Nov 09 at 1:36 pm
Okay, fair enough. If the worst happens I’m sure there’ll be blame and recriminations enough for everyone.
Rod C said...
5 Nov 09 at 2:41 pm
I’m sorry but I just cannot conceive of any set of circumstances which would result in the British public re-electing Brown. And that certainly includes Tory splits on immigration and/or Europe. It probably even includes Cameron revealing that’s he’s left his wife and set-up home with Kerry Katona. No – Hague’s confidence is almost certainly well-founded and far too many people will end up voting for them in reluctant preference to the ‘devil they know’. As for the Lib Dems, well we should do very when you look at the alternatives on offer. But if that breakthrough doesn’t materialise then I think there are questions to answer.
Philip Walker said...
5 Nov 09 at 3:13 pm
That future tense is tricky, isn’t it? Manifestos are customarily written as “A Herod government will slaughter the innocents” etc., and it’s only a hop, skip and a jump over to spokesmen saying what they will do once in government.
Roger Thornhill said...
5 Nov 09 at 4:29 pm
Charlotte, the LibDems were shamed by their PP over Lisbon. The talk of an in or out would have some clout had they not done what they did over the vote in the House.
Are you suggesting that there are precious few federasts in the LDs?
Gregory Carlin said...
5 Nov 09 at 5:54 pm
“Smaller parties are needed. Pro-Euro-Tories and Anti-EU-Tories should be separate parties. ”
Like the liberals with Home Rule (Ireland).
Churchill had a working formula, post-WWII. Unfortunately Britain wasn’t interested, France would have liked the UK as a cuddle-chum, rather than West Germany.
Odd really, when one thinks the Free French had to swim to France on the 6th of June
I exaggerate ever-so slightly
Gregory
Niklas Smith said...
5 Nov 09 at 6:10 pm
Does anyone else think that the irony of Dan Hannan stepping down because he wants precisely what the Lib Dems demanded (an in or out referendum) is delicious?
The argument that a Lisbon referendum would attract lots of no votes from people who were anti-EU even though saying no to Lisbon would do nothing to change the EU for the better was very sound. What was less sound was going back on a promise to have a referendum on it anyway. Ideally the Lib Dem position should have been to have two referenda: and in-out one, and a Lisbon one. This would hopefully have led to a better public debate during the referendum campaigns.
Gregory Carlin said...
5 Nov 09 at 7:27 pm
“The argument that a Lisbon referendum would attract lots of no votes from people who were anti-EU even though saying no to Lisbon would do nothing to change the EU for the better was very sound.”
The EU is nu-Sovietism. Very similar.
It is also like do you wanna Queen or a Republic, and with Lisbon, there are enough opposed to warrant assigning some legitimacy to the entreprise.
Of course I am Irish, and if you ask me again, I may gave a different view
Gregory
Liberal Eye said...
6 Nov 09 at 6:41 pm
But is Hannan actually arguing for an “In/Out” referendum? I don’t think so.
His beef is about the lack of democracy in the EU and also within the UK which he clearly sees as all of a piece – as I do! (This is not to say that I agree with all his remedies).
For the rest he has declined to join UKIP and is careful to suck up to Cameron (translation: he wants to be on the shortlist for a plum job at some future date) which makes me think that, the democracy aspect apart, he is probably not to far from the Tory mainstream.
And that the Tories are notoriously eurosceptic does not mean, as is commonly supposed, that they all want to ‘leave Europe’. Only the terminally stupid want that (and only UKIP and the Lib Dems want it to be a referendum option). No, what the Tories want is a EU made over in a typically Tory way – a safe playground for big business which is why they always bang on about having signed up only for a ‘common market’ and not a ‘federal’ (by which they mean ‘centralised’) superstate.
Well, as it happens I am also against a centralised superstate where powers are accumulated by a ratchet-like process – a one way street heading to Brussels. It is a thoroughly illiberal concept. Why do we not argue for a liberal vision of Europe to set against (a) the Tory one, and (b) the EU apparatchiks’ one (the one we have blundered into supporting)?
As a liberal, I would like to see a decentralised Europe where the only functions handled by Brussels would be those which, by common consent, would be better done centrally and where powers would be repatriated if/when we changed our mind. That would be consistent with our desire for greater local democracy.
The fight is not Britain vs Europe as it is usually framed. It should be liberals from across Europe vs Tories vs apparatchiks.
That is a battle we could win! Unfortunately the Cowley Street set has chosen the blind option fondly impagining that the issue will go away if they refuse to see it.