I have hesitated a moment before this final “Big 3″ parties fail for two reasons. Firstly because it would be all too easy to trot out the usual series of problems with the Conservatives, something which would be unfair given the emphasis on contemporanaeity in the previous two posts. Secondly, there is the temptation to wait till after the EU parliamentary election results have been announced, or to foreshadow them in some way. However, as anyone with the time and patience can scroll through back issues of this blog or engage me in conversation to find out my views of the Tories over the langue duree, I am going to focus here primarily on their ostensible re-invention.
So, where do Cameron’s cuddly Conservatives stand on what is (miracles aside) the cusp of entering government? The Tories have never been the greenest party, this has not changed. The only green thing about them is their new logo which implies the environmental credentials absent from a party in the pocket of big business.
Their dedication to the free market (a position which they share with both other main parties) seems to remain undented despite the “unprecedented” economic circumstances. Indeed, Cameron’s criticism of the government, when not vapid rhetoric, seems to rest on the assumption that crass deregulation is a human right of bankers. And Cameron knows all about bankers. Whilst its unfair to paint a whole party with one brush, the attitude that us poor folks are jealous of the rich chaps with their big houses (that look a bit like Balmoral donchaknow) does persist in some parts of the party.
This is similarly latent in the leadership’s at best luke-warm attitude to social justice and human rights issues in general. In this respect the Tories have not out-grown or out-moded the “nasty party” label. Indeed, Cameron has suggested that, in the European Parliament at least, the Tories are closer “ideologically” to the loose conflagration of extreme right wing parties which cluster round a loose collection of ideologies ranging from skeptical Europhobia, homophobia, sexism, a variety of forms of racial supremacy to a fringe Latvian party which holds an annual celebration of Latvian collaboration with the Waffen-SS. Is this really the modern, forward looking, open image of Britain that we really wish to present to the world?
The Tories Europhobia places them at the rough centre of a more generalised British anxiety about the European Union (some of it misplaced, some of it justified). However, this loose far-right alliance is something very different. It suggests that the modern day new hug-a-hoodie Conservative is fundamentally uncertain as to whether bigotry in itself is unjustified.
Couple this with economic policies which implicitly sanction cutbacks of public services (something that “Call me Dave” Cameron has touted several times now) and Britain does not face a rosy future. After all, the implicit caveat of “public services” is not just the bowler-hatted (Brussels-bound) bureaucrat, its also teachers, nurses, firemen, and thats before we consider the various things that public money goes some way toward – cf. roads, railways, protection of the environment, electricity generation etc. Low taxes may appear like a good plan — we’d all like to think Nozick was right a little bit — but in the end they will be taxing on the services which the worst off in society rely upon (Hurrah for Rawls!)
In short, Cameron has performed an image revolution and that is all.
