A strategic dilemma for the Tories

JohnAnt

"This problem is a consequence of the Tories using Cameron for every big and serious announcement."
I suggest that it's simply that nobody trusts Osborne, neither in style nor content. He looks gauche and shifty, behaves immaturely (e.g. Deripaska, Mandelson), and speaks evasively.
Alas, he is - as Butler might say - the best Shadow Chancellor we've got.

Dave B

Don't they have to use Mr Cameron for announcements, because the 'Leader of the Opposition', is the only member of the opposition who people have heard of, and who will make it to the TV news clips?

TGF UKIP

Poor old Fraser! All that assiduous promotion of Boy George, all to no avail - Joe Public well and truly has his number.

Mind you it was always a virtually impossible PR mission. Osborne not only looks a snidey, shifty, sleazey little shit - he is one and in spades too!

Bit of a problem though for the Tories in what is going to be an election dominated by matters economic and financial.

Kevin

Can we call a political commentary "time out"?

Who says that the daily concerns of commentators reflect what really matters to people about government? The Tories can't get their message across? What message? "Give us your money and your cringeing subservience instead of that lot"?

How long, for example, has it been since there was a parliamentary debate on the restoration of the death penalty?

It's never going to happen, is it? Unless by death penalty you mean what happens to someone generally minding his own business who happens to tell off a group of teenagers for urinating in his infant's paddling pool?

Death is no deterrent, you say? How likely are you to tell off a group of teenagers for doing anything wrong these days?

Come to think of it, how about talking about restoring our right to self-defence, i.e. gun ownership? Canadians can own guns, why not Britons?

Michael Taylor

This is only a problem if, after election, Cameron hogs the light and lets no-one else grow. Maybe Cameron is a bigger man than that. Let's hope.

Suki

This is very interesting because Osborne has been - and will be - the man in the firing line and yet he's not very good at it.

He still needs more media coaching - big time.

TrevorsDen

I count a round dozen angels on the head of this pin.

Jupiter

Why can't you guys write some original posts instead of always writing about other people's newspaper columns?

David Cameron, please note.........

Whether its EU, the economy, health, law and order, immigration, Islamic extremism etc - its extremely difficult to know what the Conservative policy is on these areas.

David Cameron has managed to come across as a decent family man and that is an asset but on too many occasions, policy is too light and vague.

If Cameron wants to make his mark their needs to be something more definitive and substantive in terms of policy. At the moment Cameron leads because Brown is an unmitigated disaster but that won't deliver a commanding majority.

Given the massive cuts that are coming in public spending (necessary)and the public anger that follows, Cameron could end up being a one term slash and burn premier.

Likewise with the EU, Cameron is travelling too light on policy commitments here. Millions of voters, as a minimum, want the EU state rolled backed in a major way and yet Cameron still prevaricates.

Cameron can't slash and burn public spending and ignore the EU question forever and expect a big majority or a second term, he has got to address both questions.

I except the need for large public spending cuts and don't blame Cameron for this (but millions will) but for me he has got to address an over sized state and far,far too much EU interference. If he does not address this EU democratic deficit then I won't return to voting Conservative.

A guaranteed referendum/renegotiation will get my vote, otherwise UKIP

Victor, NW Kent

It is noticeable that when Labour hits on what they think is a good selling point they manage to get 10 Ministers on TV within 48 hours, all spouting an identical script. Mandelson alone has about 6 or 7 times the TV exposure of any Tory except Cameron.

So, it is not so easy for the Conservatives to have the variety of Shadow Ministers on display that they might wish.

Shadow Ministers mostly only appear where the government or both other main parties are there to debate. Labour Ministers usually have solo spots - just them and the interviewer who is often partisan to a fault.

oldtimer

Like the Guardian/BBC attack on Coulson last week, this looks like another NuLab attempt to unsettle the Conservatives - this time using private polling leaked to the Independent.

So who did they poll? What questions did they ask? What was the sample size? We shall never know; as such it is worthless as polling information. Best ignored.

jim

Err, the country will be bankrupt before the election. I don't think people will be focusing on minor details, they will be focusing on food.
Cameron will win, but he is unlikely to survive for long, he just isn't smart enough.

Andy Leeds

Voting UKIP is the one thing which might yet save Gordon the Moron. I hope President Klaus will prevaricate and not sign the Lisbon Treaty. If this is the case I am sure that Cameron will give us the referendum Labour and the LibDems promised and lied about.

Irene

"Labour's research suggests"

Really!

I am not remotely interested in Labour's research.

CS

***Death is no deterrent, you say? How likely are you to tell off a group of teenagers for doing anything wrong these days?***

You're raving. You want to live in a society where teenagers' respect for their elders is based on the existence of a death penalty?

Anyone who seriously imagines that people who kill others make a decision to do so based on their only getting years in prison if caught instead of death needs a reality check.

TrevorsDen

Correct 'oldtimer'.

Labour leak a 'poll' which surprise surprise says Osborne is less trusted.

Paul

Ha Ha Ha - Labours internal polling! Made up stuff to smear the opposition you mean. And Forsyth runs with it as it was designed he and others should do.

I agree with jim. People will be too worried about much more impotant things at the next election.

Verity

Jim, above, I agree that Cameron "just isn't smart enough". He has never said anything incisive or compelling. He has never voiced an original idea that hadn't been winnowed through the pr machine.

Andy Leeds, I don't know why, but English men (only English, in the Anglosphere) think "prevaricate" means "procrastinate".

From the start, he was busy sending "non-verbal messages", like standing on an ice floe in a brand new parka with a sled hitched to a couple of handsome huskies who are still living on the tale. "I 'ad that David Cameron in the back of my sled once."

Cameron pantomiming painting over grafitti with a brand new paint brush, fresh out of its plastic folder, with no paint on it.

David Cameron pretending to be a middle manager with his jacket off, making important announcement clutching a cup of coffee. David Cameron and his team going all Italianate with use of large, vivid hand gestures. To drive - home - a - point. (What do they think we have words for?)

I'm willing to bet that David Cameron has not voiced an original, or even amusingly recycled, thought in his life.

He's running the Conservative Party like an ad campaign, not a political party of deep beliefs held by millions.

He's not a Conservative, that's for sure, which leave Conservative voters bereft and searching for somewhere to put their X.

Verity

CS - Errrr, yes. At least among that level of adolescent council flat adolescent boy who doesn't know who his father is. Yes. This kid is probably out of control. Society needs to rein him in.

The "why" is irrelevant. The kid's got to be stopped.

At least based on the fear of their own humiliation -- and not the arrest and the taking of the DNA of an innocent citizen who tries to reprimand them.

Yes, the presence of the death penalty would be concentrate "minds", if I may so aggrandise their mental equipment.

Before that, for shitty little miscreants with no fathers and slag mothers living as guests of the taxpayer, I would first offer the stocks. So their mates could pelt them with rotten tomatoes, call them names and humiliate them.

CS, you didn't specify: the threat of the death penalty ... for what? Murder? Yes, of course.

Playing silly buggers, humiliation in the stocks, videoed by their mates on their stolen cellphones. Preserved for all time. Not just in the memory of folk.

Indeed, choice videos could be played in the market place on Saturday nights while the snivelling, aggressive little shit was humiliated in an amusing loop for several weeks. It would be a new element for market days.

TomTom

Labour, Conservatives, LibDems are simply wrappers around the same product - political groups funded by The City and pitching to fleece taxpayers to preserve Nomenklatura.

The voters are simply serfs to be bilked of their votes by the oligarchy that runs this island statelet

True Bred Pomponian

There is a simple solution to this. Appoint someone competent as shadow chancellor. John Redwood is the obvious candidate and, even better, he doesn't mind being disliked.

drakes drum

Blair was the constant spokesman prior to the first Labour General Election win. Brown was known but he didn't do interviews! (we all now know why!)Mandleson did but not half as many as Blair.

The shadow cabinet were largely as unknown as Cameron's, save for David Blunkett who was known from his Sheffield Council days and Robin Cook.

Cameron's lot contain so many who are not known by anyone outside the Tory Party itself.

Last Thursday's Question Time was a case in point. A woman who is a Vice Chairman of the party, I had never heard of her or read anything of note about her. She is so totally unknown that one questioner asked who she was and another referred to her as 'the lady in pink', a total nonentity and, on that programme's evidence, totally useless.

Then we have the shadow home secretary- whoever he is- telling the world his major idea for tackling youth crime is to take away their mobile phones!! for a week, or a month etc.
One just could not make up such a stupid, crass statement!

Then we have the question of expenses and Cameron's, rather stubborn and illogical, refusal to sack any of his shadow cabinet who have proved to have had their fingers in the trough. (I am sure that will backfire).

We find that one of his main advisers, yet another Eton pal, is a rabid PRO European Union fanatic. Yet Cameron wants the people to believe he is going to hold a referendum!

There are two people in the shadow cabinet who the people know and respect. Hague and Clarke.

Am I alone in thinking that both will be jettisoned if and when Cameron wins the election.

Hague is Cameron's shield on the EU and Clarke gives the people that feeling of security. (After all he was the last Tory Chancellor who left the Country in an excellent state).

I have read here that Cameron's refusal to hold a EU referendum will tear the tories apart and would lead to Hague's resignation.

Cameron could say, in all honesty that Hague was the problem. It was he that kept promising the referendum etc.

Clarke will be ennobled and made leader of the Lords to keep him quiet and stop him causing any problems in the Commons.

That will leave Cameron in a far better position that Blair. He will appoint all his pals (obviously mostly public school boys) and we will not notice the difference between Blair and Cameron.

Under Cameron, Great Britain will begin its retirement from world politics. Its place on the United Nations Security Council will be taken by the EU. (Although France will retain its place!). The British Armed Services will be amalgamated into the EU Security Force. The British police will be part of the EU Police Force and our courts will follow the European pattern.

Cameron will welcome President Blair to this Country will all the pomp and circumstance required.

The people will be happy and contented!!

Question. Does Eton teach its pupils that the EU is a good thing? It makes one wonder!
Perhaps Eton gets grants from the EU?...just a thought, but it is odd that so many taught there have only one view of the EU!

Kevin

***Anyone who seriously imagines that people who kill others make a decision to do so based on their only getting years in prison if caught instead of death needs a reality check.***

So how likely are you to tell off a group of teenagers for doing anything wrong these days?

Are we a nation of wimps?

CS. May I say that it was a fact that Criminals, prior to going to do 'a job' searched each other to ensure no arms were being carried! For the very reason you say people need a reality check.

A criminal who is caught in the process of committing a crime, these days, has nothing to fear if he goes on to kill that witness.

The maximum he will stay in jail is nine years! IF CAUGHT and they take the view that they stand a better chance of not being caught if their are no witnesses! A fact.

One day, CS, you will realise that there are people who do not care,as you obviously do, for their fellow man.

That there are people who can kill for pleasure, for sexual kicks or just because they love violence.

There are some really truly awful people in this world who have no respect whatsoever for human life.

I realise it is difficult for people like CS to accept that and then accept, as I do, that we should just, after a fair trial etc, eliminate them!

Years ago I met an African professor who had been thrown out of his country during a political upheaval.

We had just removed the death penalty and he told me that, in his view, it was a tragic mistake and that more people will end up being killed. (How right he was!).

He told me that in his tribe a killing would result in the killer and the killers entire family being killed, to remove the bad blood from the tribe.

I had and have no way of disproving what I was told.

BUT tell me that that would not be a deterrent!

The death penalty IS a deterrent.

GeoffH

CS.

You've completely missed the point.

***Death is no deterrent, you say? How likely are you to tell off a group of teenagers for doing anything wrong these days?***

The yobs (teenage, or not) haven't abandoned the death penalty. They exercise it whenever the feel like it; usually when a law-abiding person confronts and upbraids them for some sort of anti-social or illegal behaviour.

The fact that most adults shy away from confronting such mis-behaving groups shows that death *IS* a deterrent.

John Page

More accurately, "Labour spin that their research suggests...".

Ken Clarke, of course, commands headlines.

Ex master

I can't believe your all discussing this as if it's a live arguement. I have the utmost respect for coffee house and it's commenters but on this issue, many I feel have got it wrong
The death penaly will have absolutely and catagorically no effect on those in our society who are young (both physically and emotionally)and who it is very clear to see cannot connect actions with consequences, (sex and babies being a very clear example)A further belief in the young that they will never be old maens that the death penalty is utterly irrelevent to them even at the point of whielding the knife or pulling the trigger.
What they need is clear rights of passage into society and I don't mean passing a driving test I mean a modern day equivelnt to being given an assagie and told not to come back until you've killed a lion.
Verity's stocks option is a great idea but how long before one of the stockees fetches a gun and "goes nuts"

Longtimetory

Verity, you have consistantly told us that Cameron is not a conservative, is lightweight, useless, etc, etc, etc......You have never told us who, among the total collection of British politicians, you DO support. Care to enlighten us? Or could it be that no one lives up to you exacting standards....(Remember the saying "the best is the enemy of the good").

Susan Hill

Michael Gove makes most of the running on educational announcements and comments - Cameron leaves those to him because he knows he has someone who has authority in tha area and that he himself cannot pronounce and be taken seriously on education because, fairly or unfairly, of his Old Etonian background. Otherwise, they could let William Hague speak up on all sorts of matters as he does it so well.Ken Clarke gets a hearing, as does David Davis and Redwood.
I don`t think their Front Bench is as lacking in talent and weight as people make out - if we just forget Osborne. Which isn`t difficult.

Verity

Ex-Master - How is a stockee going to aim a gun with his hands through the stock holes, wide apart, and and tied to the wood? You think he'll get a gun and kill people later, after being emotionally eviscerated in the stocks, by his mates and the general public, and videos of his humiliation playing in the market place for around a month? I don't. The jeering and mimicking by his mates is going to go on and on. That nasty little Cro-Magnon is not going to feel like such self-important, powerful hot shit any more.

We should listen to our ancestors. The stocks worked.

Kevin - good response.

True Bred Pomponian, I agree with you about John Redwood. He is my favourite in the Tories after William Hague.

Drake's Drum - unless Cameron is replaced pdq, you are right. Our only hope is that the Tories lose this next election and then, under a new leader - a Conservative down to his/her toes - win the next several elections. We need someone with the heart to destroy the Socialist party, not use them as a template.

Verity

Longtimetory - I have voiced my support for William Hague noisily and consistently. And I believe he will be the Leader of the Conservatives again, and this time lead us to victory.

The people around Hague last time were way, way, way over-impressed with the vapid Blair and were listening to Labour-style spin doctors the last time he was Leader. No one with the best interests of the Conservative Party at heart would have urged him to wear a baseball cap, nor to go to the Nottinghill Carnival. He's older now and wouldn't tolerate advice like that. Unlike David Cameron, whose dream it is to be perceived as Blair Mk II.

Next, True Bred Pomponian above thinks John Redwood would be an excellent Chancellor, and so do I. I believe that he and Hague have the two cleverest, most incisive minds in the Conservative Party. Hague and Redwood will lead the Tories to victory in around two years' time. But David Cameron's febrile, white-knuckled fingers have to be prised off the wheel.

logdon

Verity
July 19th, 2009 12:29am
"I 'ad that David Cameron in the back of my sled once."

Funniest thing I've read all week.

You could add, as they gazed around the unending stretch of frozen wastes, "And that wanker tells us all this will be gone in a matter of years.'

De Rigueur

Dear Verity,
Devastating sentence:

"We need someone with the heart to destroy the Socialist party, not use them as a template."

How right, as usual, you are.

Ian C

Alot of hot air about this by all(well, most) and sundry as usual.

It's a problem the Labour Party would love to have. They neither have a leader nor a Chancellor that anyone will trust.