Might there be some fight left in the class war after all?

Scott

It's an interesting tack. I do wonder how Brown would respond if Cameron prefaces his questions in future "If the PM is going to answer questions on the economy by referring to private education, perhaps he should defer to the Chancellor?"

2trueblue

Cameron must hit the fact that Brown was so quick to get their upping of the allowance and gain traction on that front. Why?

The expenses is a clear winner to revisit and make a clean sweep. Brown has no intention to righting this problem.

Cameron could take a stance and turn the tables on Brown and Labour who have created a 'political class' that have and make their own set of rules, make themselves very, very rich, totally at our expense. Does the party have the balls to hit Labour with it?

J H Holloway

Short memory? Didn't work with Boris, did it?

"Be afraid. Be very afraid

Unbelievable as it may seem, Boris Johnson has a real chance of being elected London mayor today. Zoe Williams and other Londoners imagine what it would be like if this bigoted, lying, Old Etonian buffoon got his hands on our diverse and liberal capital

Zoe Williams
The Guardian, Thursday 1 May 2008"

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/may/01/boris.livingstone

Followed by.....

"I was wrong about Boris Johnson

A year on, it seems London's mayor isn't a bigot, or malicious, but his random ideas are reminiscent of a columnist in the wrong job"

Zoe Williams
guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 May 2009 10.30 BST

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/may/01/boris-johnson-year-london-mayor

J H Holloway

Moreover, Brown's 'Eton' line was very badly received today on The Times' comment board.

The big hurdle with this is that the Left has beaten into everybody the notion that nobody should be mocked for their background, so Brown's line for the General Election is not only 'illiberal' but unattractive to most voters.

I bogged endlessly on Guardian, during the run up to the London Mayoral election that Labour had got this utterly wrong. Just because Labour politicians felt insecure when they first met the 'county set' at a Russelbridge Freshers' Week, doesn't mean that everybody had that experience.

A man at a bus stop in Stoke on Trent would not be able tell the difference between Brown's background and Cameron's. To him, they are both super-privileged.

The Liberal Establishment's inability to see its own privilege as others see it, is its great weakness.

Let us reflect on these two gems, from the Zoe Williams article above...

Bianca Jagger
Campaigner

"As a human rights campaigner who is concerned about climate change, I am personally supporting Ken Livingstone for Mayor of London. He is committed to addressing the impending climate change disaster. I regard him as a 'Mayor for Peace': he opposed the war in Iraq and he opposes nuclear weapons. He doesn't make decisions because they are popular, but because he feels they are morally right."

Vivienne Westwood
Fashion designer

"Boris as mayor? Unthinkable. It just exposes democracy as a sham, especially if people don't vote for Ken - he's the best thing in politics. Unthinkable."

I sure the liberals and lefties must get terribly frustrated with the 'little people' when they fail to place their cross in the right box...

Vulture

You are right. Liebour's class war has traction against Dave, Osborne, Leftwing, Zac & co precisely because they are - and act - the way they are portrayed : as a cliquy, closed, self-regarding millionaires' club.
Out of touch because they move in a closed circle; and divorced from concerns abt jobs ( they have never needed one); health( they can pay for it); education ( ditto); and immigration ( just as long as the nanny's papers are in order). So easy to paint them as Tory toffs because....ahem...they are Tory toffs. I remain to be convinced that a coterie of Old Etonians can win a General election in the 21st century.

Publius

It's time the Tories stopped treating Brown/Balls as gentlemen. They aren't.

logdon

So which is it to be, either......

“Etonians and Bolsheviks
Lloyd Evans 2:52pm
A terrific PMQs today.”

Or......

Might there be some fight left in the class war after all?
James Forsyth 6:34pm
The Tories are in mild shock following PMQs, they never expected Cameron to get clunked like that.

toco

The hapless and dysfunctional Brown is in danger of opening up a can of worms for Labour when it comes to handing out rewards.There are several families and close associates who have derived considerable benefit from the largesse bestowed upon them by Brown and Blair in terms of title and position which many feel is ill deserved,not in the National interest and little short of nepotism.

Dorothy Wilson

The Conservatives should turn the tables on Brown by saying that his attitude to Inheritence Tax is yet another example of his attack on the family. After all, it is a perfectly natural for anyone to want to leave something for their family.

They should then say that raising the threshhold for the IT is an aspiration and, when it is possible to do so, it will be raised in stages. These days if you own a house in the south you don't have to be particularly rich to leave an estate of, say, £400k. That level could be introduced first and then, as the economy improves - provided it does - the level at which the tax is paid could be gradually put up.

teledu

Strapworld made an excellent point in an earlier post on PMQ as follows:-
"Just a thought- to stop Brown in his Class attack.
How many Ex Public Scholars have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan!
Brown cannot have it both ways!!!

How would Brown reply to that?

John David Barnett

Every time I read one of Vulture's nasty diatribes, I feel more determined than ever to do my bit for the Conservative Party and its fine leader.

dilys

I've voted Conservative since Heath but I'm unlikely to vote for a government heavy with Etonians. What do they know of my needs and life? They'll happily tell me what they think is best for me and that would be no different to this shower

Dorothy Wilson

Vulture: you really do sound a nasty piece of work. Why don't you - for once - turn your attention, and your bile, on all those ex-Communists/Marxists/Trots and sundry hard lefties who have parked their back sides on the Labour front bench in recent years?

Alan Douglas

Can anyone suggest what the alternative to "toff" might be. As in : a country run by Labour chavs ? Pickpockets ? Legalised pirates ?

Alan Douglas

Martin Cole

The problem, as it has been from the beginning, is David Cameron and his lack of substance and character, not his school or class. Ask Boris and perhaps soon Lord Pearson!

Pie

Gwyneth Dunwoody was on Labour's old right, so it made sense for a well mannered rightie to take her place, especially at the peak of Gordon Brown's unpopularity. Class war works to some degree, it will affect Tory attempts to woo lib dems.

Nicholas

The trouble with Cameron's don't scare the horses strategy of letting New Labour lose the election rather than trying to win it is that Brown and New Labour have begun to win it.

Cameron & Crew should have factored in:-

1. The rank stupidity of 95% of the British population

2. The criminal stupidity of 99% of the media

3. The fact that Brown could commit genocide and the BBC would still not report it other than in glowing terms for Brown.

4. The fact that scandal slides off the socialists like rancid oil of a warm teflon coated pan but sticks to the Tories like shit thrown against an artexed wall.

5. The fact that in a fight you have to . . . er . . . fight in order to win.

Brown tells BIg Lies. Unless Cameron accepts risk and courts controversy by opening up each of New Labour's carefully hidden cans of worms he is going to lose.

Cameron is embarking on Operation Market Garden and has forgotten the Germans.

Ivy Eileen

I have long hoped that Cameron was going easy on Brown in order to keep his (Cameron's) powder dry for nearer the Election and to make certain Brown was not dumped by his own Party. I'm not so sure now.

Cameron doesn't seem to read around the subject and do his homework - for example, he didn't pull Brown up on the claim of Spain being a G20 Member. He also doesn't vary his style. He sits forward on the Opposition Front Bench with a frown, as if a schoolboy learning how to behave in the classroom.

You don't play your opponent according to his strengths. You play a different game; short and varied questions, so ponderous Brown has little time to think. You certainly don't play the game according to Brown's rules and on his terms, by inviting replies that are full of bluff, bluster, brownies and tractor statistics....and allowing yourself to be subject to moral blackmail. Dorothy Wilson @ 7.54p.m. gives a good example.

Moraymint

Ah, now the true Marxist colours of the Labour Party are starting to reappear after all these years.

They've tried so hard and, in some ways, done so well to keep their rampant and infantile class politics hidden under the blanket. Now that the going is getting tough, we're seeing the real and rather nasty Labour Party for what it is: economically illiterate; spiteful; envious; self-centred; statist; graceless. In fact a pointless political party whose legacy to the nation is to have bankrupted us.

The sooner we get rid of this shameful shower, the better.

Frank Leader

What's wrong with the Playing Field of Eton, except in GB's distorted views.
I left School in 1942 at the age of 14. Throughout my long life I have seen more damage created by successive Labour governments. Old Etonians are quite harmless by comparison. The Politics of Envy will not work Brown should be ashamed of himself.

Andy Leeds

I think Brown is a fool to launch this one. People are more worried about their jobs etc than in class war. The Left are so badly out of touch it just isn't true.

General Zod

For Heaven's sake, the answer on IHT is easy: in the Southeast, an estate of £1m is middle middle class nowadays. The word "million" is irrelevant. The 70 year olds living in millon pound houses paid far less for them and never earned much more than the average.

Victor Southern

Vulture dislikes wealthy people and also those who had the benefit of a fine education. It follows then that the cabinet ideally should be composed of poorly educated paupers. Failing in that their education should have been obtained at a comprehensive, any degree must be from a second or third rate university and they must not have inherited any wealth.

So, fall out and resign Brown, Harman, Balls, Woodward, Straw, Mandelson, Darling, the Milibands and others. Stay in place Johnson, Knight, Ainsworth and the like so that we can indeed have a cabinet of proven mediocrities.

Brian E.

I don't think class war will work because many of those who voted for Tony Blair did so because he effectively abandoned it and they felt that he could now represent them. If it comes back, these people will feel that they are no longer represented by Labour and turn elsewhere. Even a die-hard Labour supporter said to me recently "The trouble is, they no longer have any one with any brains as when I was young, and we need some brains to solve the present crisis". Bringing back class war won't help, people like my friend realise that competence not rhetoric is required.

cityboozer

Publius

"It's time the Tories stopped treating Brown/Balls as gentlemen. They aren't."

Spot on. There is a scene in the Colonel Blimp which exactly covers this:

"""
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: I read your broadcast up to the point where you describe the collapse of France. You commented on Nazi methods--foul fighting, bombing refugees, machine-gunning hospitals, lifeboats, lightships, bailed-out pilots--by saying that you despised them, that you would be ashamed to fight on their side and that you would sooner accept defeat than victory if it could only be won by those methods.
Clive Candy: So I would!
Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff: Clive! If you let yourself be defeated by them, just because you are too fair to hit back the same way they hit at you, there won't be any methods *but* Nazi methods! If you preach the Rules of the Game while they use every foul and filthy trick against you, they will laugh at you! They'll think you're weak, decadent! I thought so myself in 1919!
"""
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036112/quotes

I would usually flinch from the Nazi analogy (even against Labour) but it just fits too well.

cb.

toco

No need for anyone to panic.The hapless one is only reverting to his Old Labour type because he has lost the battle and he can see the removal van arriving.There is no way Middle UK will vote Labour anywhere near power again.Once bitten.....

TrevorsDen

I would have thought the number of ex public schoolboys killed in Iraq and Afghanistan would be very small indeed. Strapworlds point is crap.

More like, 'how many ex public schoolboys have been leader of the labour party".
Atlee went to Hailbury
Gaitskell went to Winchester College
Foot went to Leighton Park
Blair went to Fettes

I guess we have to rule out Kinnock who went to Lewis School, though Lloyd George did describe it as 'the Eton of the valleys'
Of course Jim Callaghan left school to work as a clerk, but he did send his daughter (Baroness Jay) to the private Blackheath High School.

In terms of brains I suspect Harold Wilson was by far the cleverest person ever to lead a political party this or any century. But much good it did him or the country.

No matter which schools he went to, Brown has never learned anything.

Fergus Pickering

Re Wilson. Gladstone was cleverer in the narrow sense. In the broader sense surely both Disraeli and Lloyd George were cleverer. And Lord Salisbury was no fool. Don't fall from this absurd degree business.

David Lindsay

The Tories only won Crewe & Nantwich (as the SNP only won Glasgow East) because of Catholic anger at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Cameron has not exactly shored up that electorate since.

Bevan rejected class war, calling instead for "a platform broad enough for all to stand upon" which "makes war upon a system, not upon a class". But Blair and Thatcher were class warriors, obsessively hostile both to proper toffs and to the lower orders.

And it is Cameron who is a class war politician today, regularly making snide remarks on the subject and packing safe seats with people whose only qualification (if it can be so described) is that they share his background, the interest in which his tax policy is also explicitly organised.

Mucker

Cam's regret:
to me, the biggest cock up was failing to make hay out of the abolition of the 10% IT band. So much political capital was wasted because of the slow witted. Even Blair did not realise what Brown had done until the taxi ride home ("take from the poor to give to the better off"). Shit. If this results in more labour govt. i will be v sad.
M

Lady Mudflaps

After 3 goes with New Labour the next election is the Tories' to lose. Having said that, I'm not at all sure that they (the Tories) can pull it off. Too many media-savvy hits below the belt, and not enough courage in their policies. Sorry. I'd vote UKIP, first time ever.

Fragmeister

We should ask which child chooses the school he or she goes to. Not many. I'm willing to bet Cameron didn't choose Eton as Blair didn't choose Fettes. I thought we shouldn't blame the sins of the father on the child.

strapworld

Trevors Den has such a fine way with words. He must be Old Etonian! But we all bow to his superior knowledge in all matters political. I am just quite amazed that Fraser Nelson has not offered him or her a column in the Speccy! Talk about rose tinted spectacles!
---
A point was made, in criticism of Vulture- who, like me, is entitled to his opinion! that he should attack communists or rather former communists. Well, with Pickles finally admitting that he was a former Communist do we know how many of our 'leading alleged tories' were communists or members of the socialist party?

Whilst accepting that people can and do change their minds, it is a rather strange path to conservatism, is it not? Do people know the political history of Cameron? was he a young conservative? what were his early political beliefs?

(I believe, by the way, that my point about former public school
scholars in Iraq and Afghanistan is quite valid. And the comment made in another blog on CoffeeHouse from a eye surgeon, a former Etonian, was very interesting and showed another point for attacking Brown)

As a former Govenor of a private school, I can tell you that the parents of so many pupils go to extraordinary lengths to pay for their children. Great sacrifices are made and these are by no means people with means. They just want the best education for their children.

Cameron should throw back at Brown the education statistics. More children leaving school now after twelve years of Labour misrule, who cannot read,write or even count! That is why ordinary working class people are struggling - with two or three jobs- to pay for their children to attend public schools.

Could that fact be why Labour placed Quango Queen Suzi Leather as chairman of the Charities Commission to end public schools charity status? So that Labour could dumb down every school?

The post by ivy eileen is right. Cameron should ask hard hitting questions. BUT each one should be a different subject. Get advice from Hague- he used to do this brilliantly with Blair!

Cameron could do a lot more for credibility by bringing in John Redwood and David Davis into his front bench team, and getting David Davis to take over the Environment portfolio would signal that he was concerned about the evidence of manipulation on global warming!

But, that would take leadership and Cameron is no leader!

michael

TB/GB have successfully created 'The more you get The more you want' class from state employees. White collar wealth (+dependants).... half the country!

The spin surrounding cuts made for the media can easily be dispelled in private.
Rumour mongering about those nasty hard nosed Tories wrt pay/job/pension insecurities:

He who pays the piper...

Talia

Every time any Labour minister mentions the IHT cut, they say it is for the benefit of “the richest 2,000 estates in the country”. This is absolute rubbish as it would benefit the heirs of anyone with an estate over the current threshold: ie practically all homeowners in the nicer parts of the south-east. And yet no one ever challenges them. Why the hell not?

NickW

The Conservatives reply to Eton jibes should be to draw attention to the socialist political millionaires and their hypocrisy,Labour's failure to address child poverty and the gap between rich and poor. These failures are due to the fact that Labour politicians have been too busy making money for themselves to bother about their jobs.

Blair
Prescott
Mandelson
Kinnocks.
Followed by drawing attention to the socialist aristocracy.
All this is legitimate comment with far more relevance than an MP's.schooling.

Sean Haffey

There is a genuine issue related to how the parliamentary Conservative Party appears. The number of Old Etonians is utterly disproportionate. Are Winchester, Harrow, Rugby, Charterhouse and so on also not outstanding schools? What about the many Royal Grammar Schools? Or even, perhaps, the dozens of excellent state schools.

When there appears to be an enshrined clique where power is concentrated, there will be suspicion. This is a much bigger issue for Conservatives than the matter of women MPs as it is so disproportionately unrepresentative and perceived as elitist.

Eton is an outstanding school. But this is bizarre.

Keith

Fragmeister - your comment illustrates just how insane the 'debate' about education has become in this country. Why should it be a "sin" to send your children to the best school available?

AngloWelshDragon

I am starting to despair. For months opportunities to put the boot into Brown come and go with no real effort to exploit them: 10% tax rate, decline in social mobility, Neather, Smeargate, child poverty, declining educational standards.

Every time another labour disaster hoves into view I think "Here we go.. Brown will be mullered at PMQs" then, lo and behold, sod all happens.

Most coffeehousers could do a better job. FFS Cameron, give him a good (metaphorical) kicking!

Cuffleyburgers

In a war of soundbites, Brown managed a couple of decent ones yesterday.

The is no "debate" and facts are irrelevant, especially inconvenient ones.

Cameron's being measured, thoughtful and right will not cut it either with floating voters or with his own grass roots.

Time to get the gloves off; the most sucessful tactic hs been ridicule, and for PMQs there's no point trying anything else. It's not as though proper questions get answered anyway.

Ridicule, humiliation, and needs to dance lke a butterfly sting like a bee. Come at him from 6 different angles during one session. Short questions that don't give him time to think.

Aim low and aim to humiliate. Then he will crack up.

Uri

One would have thought that taking Brown to task for the uncountable numbers of problems facing the UK would be like shooting fish in a barrel. A basic skill required for the leader of the opposition. Dave hasn't got it or refuses to use it if he has. It's time he got angry like the people are at what is being done to this country, the real issues. But, he's set his stall, he's not the saviour, just part of the problem.

Percy

I really believe that after the sort of financial upheaval we've had there are going to be some pretty seismic geo-poltical shocks when us mere mortals finally wake up to how we have been utterly shafted by the establishment and we continue to lose our jobs and start losing our houses (when rates start going up - and they will); Dave really has got to come up with something a bit better than merely replacing the Milibands with a couple of Rees-Moggs or a few very rich non-doms; he's got a real problem because there is a growing perception that in general he wants a nice cosy set-up of people like himself and sod the rest of us; the fact that even someone as stupid as Brown has cottoned on should be a real wake up call.

Marcher Baron

At least Etonians receive a decent education, which is more than can be said for the cannon fodder who have been 'educated' under Labour's State indoctrination social engineering regime. I don't care where people went to school (not even Fettes); what I care about is what people stand for and whether they have the good of the country (not just self or party) at heart.