You could be forgiven, if you were only to read the blogs and watch the media, if you believed that the conference season is the centre of everyone’s lives.
According to The Spectator, “David Davis did much to repair the damage done by Mr Cameron’s ‘hug a hoodie’ speech”. Believe me, if you ask ten people on the roadside whether they’d heard of the ‘hug a hoodie’ speech five might say yes. If you then asked those five whether they knew what David Davis said they would look at you blankly.
Since 1994 (and probably before) politics has not been about issues. Since the beginning of time people have voted as their Dad did. Or not, just to annoy him. A small group of people — those who are members of political parties or pressure groups; people who listen to Radio 4 for Today and PM every day — will have gained some more understanding of the more refined message that Cameron’s Conservatives peddled at the conference.
But most people? Most people will be getting a sense that Cameron’s nicer than those nasty old Tories. Some people will say he’s a bit wet even. This is absolute genius. Without changing a policy, just the words, Cameron is now hated by the far right (good), feared by the far left (good) and appealing to the majority.
October 8th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Most people will think of him as nice but ineffectual-not so genius!
October 9th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
I would hardly describe myself as “far-right” and I loathe the man.
October 9th, 2006 at 9:26 pm
I guess the point is this:
In FPTP you have little choice about your vote. It either counts and goes towards Labour/Libdem/Conservative or it doesn’t count and goes towards UKIP/Green/EDP etc.
Now in those three that count if you’re right wing at all you have to vote Conservative. If Cameron upsets us right-wingers slightly with his apparently ’soft’ agenda then he’s not really risking our votes — they’re in the bag. But he does risk picking up right wing Labour and LibDem types.
Even better, though, I don’t think he’s saying anything wrong. If you read exactly what he says rather than the headlines he intends the BBC/Guardian/Mirror to report you’ll see that most of his so-called soft policies are good old fashioned libertarian (as libertarian, sadly, as the party goes) Tory policies wrapped in a sugar coating.