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David Cameron: What a Disgrace.

By: Josh LeGuern (Diary)  |  April 23rd, 2010 at 04:00 AM  | 

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I don’t think any US conservatives expects any UK Conservative Party member to be as conservative as we expect our leaders to be, but David Cameron is an absolute disgrace and an embarrassment to the party that Margaret Thatcher built into a powerhouse and men like Cameron have helped destroy.

Cameron is all style, and very little substance. He wants the UK Conservative Party to be a “blue/green” party by embracing disastrous cap-and-trade policies that have cost British families millions of pounds every year since it’s adoption by the Labour government. He’s wobbly on economic policy, last summer he slammed MEP Daniel Hannan for suggesting that the UK would be better off with out the NHS.

Where is your spine man? Cameron can’t break 50% and he’s running against two liberals: the disasterous Gordon Brown and the far left looney-toon Nick Clegg from the Liberal Democrats, who are now running ahead of Labour and Conservatives according to some polls. If Clegg pulls off an upset and runs a coalition government with Labour, the US-UK relationship as we know it is toast. Clegg HATES the relationship with US has with the UK, he’s called them “America’s poodle” under Blair and Brown. Of course the UK isn’t, nor has it ever been, our “poodle”, they’re our most trusted ally our greatest strategic world partner!

Mr. Cameron, shame on you for being so wishy washy you can’t even inspire a center to center-right leaning country to give you more than 33% of the vote! The people of the United Kingdom and the people of the world deserve a better leader of the opposition and definitely a better Prime Minister than you, sir.

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  • Gandalf

    First: Thanks for posting a diary on international politics. I think it?s important for conservatives to be up-to-date on what?s going on in other parts of the world and, since I live in Europe, I find European politics to be particularly interesting.

    There are a couple of things I want to correct in your post:

    1) The U.S. and the U.K. no longer have a special relationship, according to the Obama administration. Your discussion of the damage to US/UK diplomacy would have been right on? had Bush still been in office. Regardless of who wins the British election, we won?t have any sort of special relationship with the UK as we did pre-2009 until Obama leaves office.

    2) The U.K. is NOT a center or center-right country. All you really have to do is spend some time there and you pick up on that very, very quickly. The fact that the left and far-left parties are garnering (and have always garnered) around 60% of the vote should be a give away that the electorate is not generally center-right. The last time the Tories broke 45% in the polls was in 1970 and they haven?t gotten close to 50% since the 1950s. Even Thatcher was never able to get over 43% of the vote.

    3) Much as I disagree with David Cameron on certain things, this diary is completely off-base when it says that he is responsible for the Conservatives? problems in the UK. In reality, he is the first Tory candidate for Prime Minister to actually have a chance at winning since John Major began losing seats in 1992 and lost the election in 1997 to Tony Blair. The Tory brand has been toxic in the UK since the early ?90s, and Cameron, for reasons mostly unrelated to policy, has successfully de-toxed the brand. I won?t go into whose fault it is that the Conservatives have had problems for the last 18+ years, but Thatcher/Major have more to do with it than Cameron.

    4) I won?t say that the Lib Dems won?t win a surprise victory, but do you have ANY idea how much of the vote they would have to win for Nick Clegg to be Prime Minister? They would have to win over 38% of the vote, assuming 10% for the smaller parties and the rest evenly split between Labor and Conservatives, in order to actually have the most seats in Parliament. Even then, they would have to form a coalition with Labor or try to run a minority government. For the Lib Dems to actually have a majority, they would have to win over 40% of the vote with 10% to smaller parties and the rest evenly split between Labor and Conservatives. There is next to a 0% chance that Nick Clegg will be Prime Minister.
    By comparison, Labor only has to win 32% of the vote to win a clear majority.

    5) Nick Clegg?s popularity and sudden rise to power is the exact same phenomenon that brought Barack Obama to power: the Media?s intervention in the election coupled with a population aching for a celebrity savior instead of a responsible authority figure. Obama winning had more to do with the media?s love fest and overt bias and the immaturity of the American people than it did with the Clintons?, McCain?s, or Palin?s inability to do anything. The same is true in Britain: If Clegg wins or even plays a spoiler and helps Brown remain PM, it has more to do with the media?s infatuation with him than it does with Cameron?s inability.

    • JamesSmith130

      Clegg isn’t going to join a coalition where Brown is PM, and even many Labour bigwigs probably want to dump Brown.

      While Cameron is probably the best that we can get in the UK, isn’t Clegg (and the Lib Dems) further to the right than Cameron as far as cutting the budget and privatization? I was under the impression that the Liberal Dems were liberal in the old fashioned sense of the word, i.e. pro-market, free trade, and libertarian. Of course Clegg is quite nutty on many other issues.

      • Gandalf

        My reply ended up getting posted below. Guess I hit the wrong button.

  • josephusmyer

    As others have noted, the UK is, unfortunately, not a right-wing country. Over 50% of GDP is now government. And very few people – apart from the brilliant Dan Hannan – care. Talking about even REFORMING the NHS is usually political suicide.

    There are still proper conservatives and fiscal libertarians around, but far too few. The one place that they are in a majority, however, is probably the paid-up card-carrying Conservative Party members. I’ve met few of them who like Cameron – most acquiesce to him because we think he can win, and he’s better than Brown. If we don’t win, the mob will bay for his head on a stick – metaphorically, of course, since Tory members tend to be fairly civilised.

    Simon Heffer, a columnist at the Telegraph (“Torygraph”) called David Cameron a lefty and a Lib Dem. Most Tories agree. Most will vote Conservative holding their nose; a few will split off and vote for the truly conservative UKIP, potentially costing us the election.

    The UK is on a road to ruin. Unlike the US, the people won’t stop the government before it’s too late. I hope to emigrate before that happens.

    • Gandalf

      Cameron has done the Tories a great service: He has detoxed the brand to the point that the Conservatives are actually a viable party again.

      Honestly, I’m sure Cameron is more left than most would like, but he’s had some very, very good stuff to say in the debates. I’m convinced he would at least try to stop the disintegration of the nation. His views on immigration and the EU seem fairly solid to me, as are his views of national security, nuclear technology, etc. His insistence that Muslims must integrate or get out is invigorating.

      Even his views of the environment, while a little greener than I like, are not crazy or anti-business but instead purport to empower individuals and companies instead of imposing regulations.

      Also, his insistence that the government cannot fix problems but that individuals and families must be where change starts has really impressed me.

      Sure, he?s not perfect. I disagree with him on loads of stuff. But I don?t get conservatives (here I mean British, American, Canadian, whatever) demanding a candidate to be perfect before they get excited about him.

      It seems to me that Cameron has a lot of good about him, even with a few negative strikes against him. I don?t get why it would be considered ?holding one?s nose? to vote for him, especially if the other two choices are Clegg and Brown?

  • Gandalf

    The Liberal Democrats are further left than Labour… on just about everything. They do have a streak of so called ?libertarianism? in their manifesto, but that’s only because they haven’t ever held office. Some would stay, but it isn?t what conservatives would call good libertarianism: It mostly has to do with legalizing certain drugs and deviant behavior.

    The Lib Dems support more nanny-state policies than Labour and propose raising all kinds of taxes as well as creating new ones to pay for the increase in ?services?. They are in favor of sacrificing national sovereignty to the EU and the UN (even more so than Labour). They are the nuttiest of nutties regarding the environment (the Green party doesn’t really exist in the UK because they mostly just support the Lib Dems). Their immigration plan is something slightly less sane than Kennedy?s amnesty plan. They have criticized Labour for it?s failure to promote multiculturalism, ?tolerance?, and ?pluralism.? And, of course, one of their signature issues is that they want to get rid of Britain?s nuclear weapons and push for European disarmament.

    On the social side, Nick Clegg would be the first openly atheistic PM and a hard social liberal, in favor of loosening abortion regulations, increasing homosexual ?rights?, and so forth. He worked extensively with the EU Green Party while serving as a member of the EU parliament.

    They are NOT to the right of Cameron on ANYTHING.

    You are right that Brown probably wouldn’t be able to get Clegg to support him. Clegg, just like Obama, is mostly about arrogance and ego, and there?s no way he would place himself into submission to someone as humble and unassuming as Brown (I think the guy is awful politically, but he is a generally decent human being).

    The most likely situation at this point is that Clegg steals enough Conservative support that Labour retains a minority government. Brown wouldn’t really need Clegg to officially support him; just pick up enough votes from MPs of all parties in various issues. For example, on national security issues he would get the Tories to back him while the broadening of the Welfare state would be supported by the Lib Dems.

    Of course, there is the slim possibility that Labour would jettison Brown and appoint someone else Prime Minister of either a minority or coalition government. That situation wouldn’t last 2 years before someone (all of the three parties would have good reason to) triggers a new election.

    The bottom line is that there is next to 0% chance that Clegg will be Prime Minister next month, which is good for the UK, the US, and the world. Cameron has about a 50% chance of winning and Brown has about a 45% chance of being reelected. There’s about a 5% chance that someone else not on the ballot will end up as PM.

    But then, I wouldn?t have thought a socialistic, anti-American freshman senator from Chicago could possibly get elected as President of the United States either?

    • JamesSmith130

      I was for some reason under the impression that the Lib Dems were something like the Free Dems in Germany.

  • the_invisible_hand

    Good God! Is it too much to ask for the slightest consideration for the political realities of a party trying to regain standing in a leftist country?

    The Tories stand as the thin red line against the barbarians in Britain and I support any and all Tories in the UK.

    • Gandalf