I had a conversation at a Christmas party with someone close to David Cameron to whom I complained that the Conservatives had given up real free market policies. He said not to worry, after they won the election...and then he made a gesture as if he were pulling off a mask. The implication was that it was all a public relations act and that, underneath Cameron and co. are genuine Tories of whom Margaret Thatcher would not be ashamed.

But as we went on talking, this claim seemed to wear thin and when I complained, for example, that George Osborne had talked about making state schools as good as private schools and that this showed a failure to accept the true nature of the problem (that state schools, being state-controlled and not subject to market pressures and will never be as good as private schools, therefore continuing to condemn millions to a poor education in which they do not even learn, in many cases, how to read), he became irritated and said I was 'part of the problem' with the Conservative Party. He also complained that I must accept what is politically possible.

There is a certain double-talk among the Cameron ranks as is well explained by David Green in his article for the Sunday Telegraph:

David Cameron is anxious to reassure the growing number of doubters in the Tory party. But it transpires that the assurances are being varied to suit the occasion. Recently, I was talking to two journalists, one on the Left of the spectrum and one on the Right. The Cameron team had told the Left-wing journalist that they did not care if the "old fogeys" joined Ukip, if they could not accept "modernisation" good riddance to them. The Right-leaning journalist, however, had been told that Mr Cameron was a true Tory; all party members were valued, and that everyone will be pleasantly surprised when he gets to Downing Street. In the meantime, it was necessary to say counter-intuitive things to "win the right to be heard".

It is understandable that the Tories are trying to combat the accusation that they celebrate "narrow selfish individualism" and do not care about the least advantaged members of society. So they should. But they have gone about it by accepting that the charge was true in the past and setting out to demonstrate that it is no longer true under Mr Cameron. As proof of their new compassion they have made policy announcements associating themselves with the policies of the Left, including support for the redistribution of income and hostility to school choice through education vouchers.

By accepting that support for Labour's policies is proof that he cares, Mr Cameron has given Labour an effective veto on Tory policies. If the Tories ever have the nerve to advocate school choice or to reduce welfare dependency, Labour can accuse them of relapsing into old "nasty-party" ways. Moreover, far from providing fresh thinking, Mr Cameron has stepped back 30 years to a time when ideologues thought that the state was good and the market bad. He has renounced market solutions in health and education as evidence of how much he cares, but most thoughtful people, including some in the Labour Party, have stopped thinking that way.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in Politics

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