Cameron has the positioning right - but fiscal questions remain

Simon

By the way Fraser. Congratulations, you must be the first intellectual to write for the News of The Screws.

Tiberius

Remember, Fraser, that even Reagan had to wait until the end of his first term before saying, "you ain't seen nothing yet".

Alanbrooke

Why should Cameron fire off all his ammo now?

1. The public sector deficit is a mess and no-one knows the true scale of the problem - why commit to a number now when it will only be wrong and used against you ?

2. By holding back Cameron has won the cuts argument ( at least give him some credit for that !.) Now all spending cuts begin with a baseline of £ 57 billion which Labour cannot argue against since it's their number.
3. There are 3-4 months of election campaign to go, you appear to want the Conservatives to run a sprint when they are competing in a marathon.

Perhaps if you put your criticisms in a constructive fashion such as suggesting areas for spending cuts yourself, readers would be less inclined to think you want a hung Parliament.

perdix

Labour is supposed to be in government - THEY should be laying out detailed plans for spending.And it appears that there will be a Budget before the Election, so who knows what they will have tied up in some way then.For Cameron to announce detailed spending plans now will invite all kinds of dividing line tricks from Brown.Brown will not change in spite of assurances otherwise.

Minnie Ovens

Immigration should be one of the most important issues for the Conservatives since their core base is furious at the lack of any control by Nu Labour.
Yet Mr Cameron does not look at the very destructive nature of a population of over 62 (heaven forbid 70) million people which has become very apparent in the breakdown of government and social structures in a Great Britain which used to have a sense of a core identity.
No, Mr Cameron looks at "net" immigration!
He is totally unconcerned that British people are leaving these shores because of immigration and the decline of a once vibrant culture and morality.
He ignores the loss of those who are educated and intelligent middle class Britons who put little strain on the financial services of the State (which has invested in their education) while continuing to allow "hundred of thousands" of, most likely, uneducated and impoverished persons who will further test our outdated structures while feeding off the State.
This also does not take into account the deliberate weakening of ethnic Britain which seems a priority to both major parties.
Does Mr Cameron go out of his way not to take account of what middle Britain thinks, basing all his philosophy on the opinions of his Cambridge and Notting Hill monied friends?
There's a reason why the Tories are stuck on 40% and Mr Cameron's "do as little as possible and on no account frighten the voters" may leave the Labour party with a lot of room to manouvre when this whole thing should have been a done deal.
What an apology of a man and his party.

Any Colour but Brown

I suspect that Cameron is saving the big stuff for when he is certain who he is up against in the GE.
Also your contention that maintaining the NHS will mean deep cuts elsewhere are rather worrying. Everyone (apart from you, apparently) knows how inefficient and ineffective the NHS management structure is. To streamline that and make it into an effective management would save billions and increase the satisfaction with NHS services. The only people, who need to suffer, are those in the non-jobs.

DavidDP

"NHS spending before the military"

Good.

"So the 8.12 million English voters...were on the fringes?"

He said the party, not the voters. They are different things.

TGF UKIP

But Tiberius, I don't think RR could and would have said that he was the US equivalent of "A relatively liberal One Nation Conservative" who wants "a more equal society, a fairer society, a greener society."

Your boy is no RR or Maggie T, don't even pretend or dream it.

lawrence greek

Fraser

Please don't think me a pedant, but may I politely request that you never use the typeface 'Comic Sans' in your graphics again (in the text 'tens of thousands territory')?

It is a hideous abomination of a typeface, suitable only for play-school walls and fridge magnets. We grown-ups are more than comfortable with a nice sans-serif, a Helvetica or Universe if you will.

On the subject of the article, it would be interesting to compare and contrast how radical Thatcher was at this point in the electoral cycle. Although I don't remember it, my guess is she played her cards close to her chest also.

sport billy

Minnie

I am currently in the process of completing my residency application for Australia. I am young(ish), skilled and entrepreneurial. My wife and I are leaving because of the destruction Labour have waged, however I don't expect Cameron to say anything to persuade me otherwise - why would he? We will return to the UK if Cameron succeeds in wiping away the nanny state and if he creates an atmosphere that is friendly to business, lower taxes, less red tape and so on. Give him a chance - I certainly will, even though I'm not prepared to hang around in the interim.

On a wider point, I think the Tories have had poll leads for so long now, and Cameron is clearly leader in waiting, people like you just assume he is actually in power. He isn't. Give him a chance to win the election with any pre-electoral strategy he chooses. Then judge him on his actions in government.

Verity

Lawrence Geek - The most elegant typeface in the world is Times Modern. Sans serif typefaces are uncomfortable to read for long periods of time.

TGF UKIP

Poor old Fraser, you really are having a lot of difficulty in facing up to who and what Dave is, even after four years of him as your leader.

In your penultimate sentence today and in your final para last week, you express the belief that he will turn out to be a transformative PM, if by some miracle he actually wins.

But Fraser, he keeps telling you who he really is, " a relatively liberal One Nation Conservative" and as such an instinctive trimmer and temporizer, exactly like his predecessors Pym, Gilmour, Prior etc were in the early eighties. Incremental not transformative change is in the DNA of the One Nation gang. Social Democracy with a bit of extra added free market capitalism is at their core. And because of that, the fear you express in the final sentence of point 6 above is likely to be fully justified.

Aside from any conservative core, the other thing that is entirely missing is an enemy. His hero Blair elevated the Tories to the status of enemies of the people so he could promise, on their behalf, to smash the hated Tories to pieces. Mrs T had the unions who had, by 1979, elevated themselves to enemies of the British people and they elected her primarily to do just that which she duly did (in the face of course of the opposition of the One Nation gang.)

The Heir though apparently seeks no enemies and even goes out of the way to praise Labour for schools policy among other things - I'm amazed you let that pass, Fraser.

No clarion call for or against anything or anyone, no wonder this milk and water lot can only manage such a feeble and softening poll lead.

Alan Douglas

Fraser, as an admirer, here I think you are wrong. Cameron cannot spell out too many specifics because he has no actual figures to work with. You should be hammering Brown and Darling for this, not Cameron.

Also, someone said this is a maarathon. Also, too many specifics would give "rave" ammunition to the Brown/McBride tendency.

Alan Douglas

Jez

Great illustration to tell me that 0-100,000 would be the 'tens of thousands' catagory.

Cheers!

(I'll certainly keep today's cynical opportunist bullsh*t from Cameron in mind when i'm voting for someone else that'll actually do something in March)

To try and snatch just a millimetre of sanity back from the establishments utter mind-boggling approach to destroying the country as we know / have known it;

The third world is not getting any better in Africa and certain areas of Asia. The third world is not managing itself properly (in Africa especially). The third world is knackered because of man made mis-management.

The third world unfortunates that have been cursed by their globalist sponsored dictators / presidents etc are now flooding to the EU and the US.

No more to be said.

Cameron hasn't got the background or stamina to cope with what has been started by Nulab- only as an opinion.

The liberal-elite are losing ground as rapidly as the country is being sold-out.

Nulab / BluLab etc, have rushed to break the country up too much- far too soon.

maisieW

Alanbrooke Spot on. The pressure of being editor is getting too Fraser Why slam Camerons every move when you didn`t do so before

welease woger

TGF UKIP, are you deliberately misquoting Cameron?

He called for greater equality OF OPPORTUNITY- a traditional and fundamentally important principle of conservative philosophy. Do you not believe in this? If not what sections of society do you think should have less opportunity to succeed?

Also, what is wrong with wanting a fairer society? Do you want an unfair one?

I admit, I could do with a lot less of the phony green agenda but I like 90% of what Cameron stands for and that ain't bad particularly when compared to the 0% that Brown scores.

As for Fraser's article, it is just not realistic to expect Cameron to detail exactly what he will cut and when in advance of the election. The manifesto is being drip-fed to us (too soon for my liking as it plays into Labour's hands) and we have a pretty good idea of the principles that motivate Cameron.

These may not be principles that receive full support from Fraser or some commentators on here but they are recognisably conservative and they will, I believe, resonate with the British public.

Cameron, like all PMs, will be defined in office not before. Please let's give him a chance because the alternative is unthinkable.

TGF UKIP

Welease Woger, no I am not misquoting. I am quoting exactly from his interview with Peter Oborne on 21st October 2009.

anne allan

Jez,
David Cameron had the stamina to keep going when he was sharing the nursing duties and broken nights when Ivan was alive.
Having had to run my life with a son who was a stranger to sleep for his first 18 months, plus my experiences working as a night nurse, I can tell you that a great deal of stamina is required.

John

Another day, another sneer or two about Cameron.
Fraser, did you listen to Any Questions this week.
Daniel Hannan was on. I imagine he's your kind of politician. Tells it like it is.
He bombed. Like John Redford, he has no idea about courting the electorate to get into power.
And the first responsibility of Cameron is to get into power.
Wise up!

Jez

With all due respect Anne that has absolutely nothing to do with what i have just said.

I sincerely respect anyone who fights on a daily basis struggling to deliver the very best for a family member with a disability. Full stop.

This is politics. The country. Our futures.

He has to be the top of his game. Director number one- yet he seems to be incapable in making a rational, to the point statement / descision.

This country has been sold out Anne.

Cameron is using almost lawyer type language whilst tippy-toeing around a massive, gaping black hole of a social disaster that is getting bigger and bigger each day.

He *thinks* this or that makes no difference;

*What the hell is he going to do about it?*

Nothing. Because he's sat on an EU / Golbalist (i hate using that word 'Globalist' because it's too sweeping, you lose everyone with it) conveyor belt and if he actually goes / went against the flow, then his career will be knackered- as an opinion.

As you are entitled to yours.

lawrence greek

welease woger - well said.

Verity - Times Modern is an excellent typeface, much preferable to the ghastly Comic Sans.

emil

Fraser - any opposition politician who set the sort of specific policies, especially on finance, you so clearly crave would IMO lack any credibility whatsoever, as I think I'm right in stating that they don't yet have full access to the exact parlous state of the (please God) post Brown nation's finances. Thought he did a very good job in the face of the constant interruption and contradiction that Marr never, ever gives to any Labour politician.

Tom Jaffray

God give me strength - what a load of absolute and total tosh!

Can I say first that I am certainly not a Labour supporter. But I DESPAIR about the Tories. I cant help feeling that David Cameron would do anything to get votes - he has shown no real spine, nor any coherent independence of thought as far as I can see. And can you really take George Osbourne seriously, never mind the rest of the deadbeats who would be in Cabinet if the Tories won?

My view - fear? - is that the Labour party are adopting a longer term strategy. They know they are going to lose the next election so they go for scorched earth to make the Tory task impossibly difficult; they minimise the Tory majority by their core vote strategy - Eton toffs and so on, and they thus hope to ensure a one-term period of office for the Tories - a bit like the Republicans in the US vis-a-vis President Obama. God help us then.

As emigration is unaffordable, I think I shall have another drink.

Peter From Maidstone

I am not sure that protecting the NHS is the same as preserving the NHS budget. Since a great deal of money is wasted in the NHS it seems to me that it should be entirely possible to cut the budget while preserving all front-line services. My wife is a nurse and I am well aware of the waste in hospitals. Just look at the NHS jobs website. The huge salaries are all for management jobs that have nothing to do with frontline services. (I am well aware that some management is necessary). That is not the only waste by any means. Making working conditions difficult for mothers (who make up most of the nursing staff) means that wards are short-staffed instead of staffed by many skilled part-timers, and tends to mean that hugely well-paid agency staff are called on to make up numbers - often with no experience on the wards in question. There is plenty of money to save in the NHS without cutting any frontline services.

Jez

Anne,

Let's imagine;

You work as a night nurse- so you will have a plan, a regime of sorts every time you set out on a shift. You will have contingencies in place for unforseen issues when these arise. You will have these because that is the professional approach in embarking on any type of working activity.

In that shift time it becomes apparent that there is a problem that's above and beyond your expected job requirement. You cope but tell you regional manager / co-ordinator.

He/She does nothing.

You tell that person again. And again. And again... but she does nothing.

What do you do then- Leave? Look for another job?.... then you find out the hypothetical 'night nurse co-ordinator' hasn't done anything because she wants the present nurses out and there are cheaper, newer nurses lines up to come in.

Hypothetically- that describes the massive chunks of urban population in this country that have been shouting out to our 'managers'- e.g. the politicians in Westminster that it's all going wrong in many parts of the UK.

London? It's not a good thing to have one population completely replaced by a myriad of different religions, races and cultures in a matter of 10 years.

Birmingham. It's totally gone.

The M62 belt- the new states of Pakistan / Bangladesh.

Then we find out that it's all been a very clever plan from the Nulab (via Neather).... and the Westminster Opposition are silent- because they are (as far as i have heard from Cameron) completely deviod of any coherent policies about anything.

Tron

I saw the Cameron interview and heard Radio 4. Any Q's.
Labour MPs and journalists always sell socialism as just common sense and fairness."We want to help the sick and the poor , Tories don't." or "We get things wrong but our heart's in the right place " etc. The Conservatives are always on the defensive. They always have to prove they are not the Nasty Party. (Who called them that ,I wonder?)
If you check out Ann Coulter you will see a Right Winger who is pretty, funny, bright, well informed and always on the attack. On Fox she makes mincemeat of the lefties.
Hannan lacks the common touch. Dave and George always look a bit embarrassed to be Conservative particularly on the BBC. When Dave sat on that sofa with three lefties he so wanted to be part of the in-crowd.

Fergus Pickering

John. I heard An Questions. It was in a frigging Mosque for God's sake and packed with lefties. Hannan was outnubered three to one, plus that wanker Dimbleby. I admired him for sticking to his guns on a couple of things and PARTICULARLY for telling us how to evade our Television Licence. But J.C. himself would have bombed in that company. I agree that cameron is doing (most of) the right things. If his model is Disraeli rather than Maggie, I think that is right for the times. Think about Disraeli. There was a man for you. Fund the Tory party in ruins and built it up so that he trounced Gladstone at least once. Brown is no Gladstone. Our man wil prevail. And I have great hopes of George. Other posh guys are wankers in my opinion, but doubtless Cameron will shed them as Maggie shed her wets. The new intake will provide. I WISH he would promote that great man John Redwood, but you can't have everything and, the election won, perhapos he will. Redwood should be in the Treasury, giving baleful looks to all and sundry. Vulcans have their uses.

Jez

Fraser,

"Cameron can do more than anyone else to end it (as Thatcher killed off the National Front with the ‘swamped’ word in the 1970s)."

Is it best to use something that has been actually proven (many times over) to be a political ruse?

That's not a positive to use an instance when something was presented to solve a social concern (which then was cynically ditched by the Conservatives) and then re-introduce that very same tactic as magic-and to combat 'NeoFascism'.

E.g. you are placing emphasis that Cameron's main concern is not to actually come out and tackle the social upheaval that 400,000 immigrants, with the 200,000 British emigrants causes but to use language ('swamped') as a tactic to somehow persuade 1 million voters that 'everythings ok'.

Why can't anyone say no more immigration, as a starting point?

Then with error and real life situation, settle for 15,000 when all's said and done?

Answers on a postcard.

oldtimer

I only saw and heard the last ten minutes of the Cameron-Marr exchanges so will not comment on your analysis. I have watched two or three of the Cameron Direct question and answer sessions with the general public. In the course of the 50-60 minutes that these last, the public do ask quite a lot of pointed questions and do get straight answers - in the latest Hammersmith session, for example, he was quite specific about being against an in or out referendum on UK membership of the EU. I do not recall seeing or hearing that before - but that may just be me.

So my question to Fraser Nelson is this. Have you, or any other Spectator journalist, made a systematic analysis of the Cameron Direct encounters and formed a coherent picture of what he has said and what he stands for? If so, can you write a critique of these sessions similar to the one you have written above? If not, then why not? It seems to me to provide a unique and freely available body of evidence which simply does not exist for any previous candidate for the office of PM. Cameron deserves credit for doing this.

Philip Walker

Can the people who want a cap on numbers (70mn is the usual figure, but others have been proposed) explain what measures they would back in the event of natural population growth taking us there?

Would they be in favour of forced sterilisation? The slaughter of the innocents? Mass deportation?

canonalberic

On the interesting point of how the blessed Margaret behaved at a similar point in the electoral cycle the BBC had on their website the immediate pre 1979 election interview they set up for her with a very hostile panel of pundits including Mary Goldring and Peter Jenkins.

Knowing what we know now she was conspicuously moderate even misleading - its a fascinating performance.

Fraser - is it actually possible on any realistic growth forecast to reduce the deficit by as it where pure liberal economics and maintain social order, and if so how?

Also you rightly give Dave a hard time, but to be frank you allowed the gruesome Maguire and Livingstone to best you in (admittedly cheap) debate so from someone who apparently knows all the answers a little modesty might be in order.

John Richardson

First, I must confess I have not seen ANY of D.C.'s interview.
Nor Brown's.
Nor any other politician since they were asked to explain the theft of all that money/expenses.
Nor for some time before. Some years.

Please hear me out though.....
Secondly,I must confess to be almost proud of the fact.

This is because all party politicians, and all MSM are lying to us all the time.
The lies have a drip-drip corrosive effect.
It's hard to accept we can be so stupid as to swallow these lies....so we start to lie to ourselves; 'There must be some truth to this....otherwise I'd have realised...I'm not stupid'.

Case in point :-

Cameron expresses the wish that there might be lower immigration.
He even offers a vague figure.
The press consider this aspiration on it's own terms.
All total rubbish.
All that matters is deportation of illegals.
Without deportation no immigration target matters.
Without deportation the 170,000 illegals from Africa in London alone (Met.figure 3 years old) will continue to encourage friend and family to follow.
Without deportation the French will continue to facilitate Europe's poorest most desperate illegals next to the Chunnel. Or a little along the coast.
Without deportation, no policy on immigration is honest.
No numbers are real.
It's all lies.

Strange, reading the above article earlier today, I thought about it, and it took me until; 10:00pm to remember why I did not listen to politician's interviews.
Strange. Must be the weather.

Cogito Ergosum

I am sure Peter from Maidstone is correct in saying that the NHS could spend less andyet be more effective. However, there are other government activities which could be totally scrapped, with civil servants being made redundant, with no ill-effects on the country.

1. Child protection services - these are nothing more than an exercise in cover-your-back paperwork.

2. Education - mostly a complete waste these days.

3. Five-a-day fruit and nut advisors.

4. Everything related to green/global-warming issues.

5. Refuse collection - they have not been to my place since the snow fell. Might as well just tell everyone to take their rubbish to the tip.

I could go on, but I would like to reinforce my comments about educationists.

There was a rumpus last summer when it emerged that money had been spent on consultants to devise a phrase, not including the word 'error', to characterise the fact that different examiners give different marks to the same script.

Anyone with a knowledge of probability and statistics could have immediately given the answer: standard deviation. Dealing with the attainments of any large group of people, not just children's exams, is work that needs a basic understanding of statistics. But neither the Education Department, nor their consultants, appeared to have that basic knowledge.

They are useless! Sack the whole lot of them.

Mr Commonsense

Obfuscation and schoolboy graphs will not answer the micro questions about the immigration explosion.What does Dave have to really say about illegals,bogus asylummers,bogus student visas,family reunification with 4 wives,bogus or arranged marriages,etc,etc.Do you really expect the public will swallow the codswallop of a minimum of ten thosand and what about the thousands of inter company transfers from Tatra,India.

Peter Briffa

Simon. Loads of intellectuals write for the News of the World.
Read this, for example.
http://blogs.notw.co.uk/bb/

Liz

Could be he's keeping his powder dry!

Fergus Pickering

Philip, mass deportation every time. I can think of so many people I would want to deport. Simon Hughes, Polly Toynbee, that Leather woman, every mullah who can't speak English properly, everybody who supports Manchester United who doesn't live in Manchester, all readers of the Guardian, sundry Scotchmen...

Cuffleyburgers

Cameron is right to give away as little as posible.

However I am concerned about his position on the NHS. This monster must be reorganised. I am aware that it is electorally lethal, but there must be a way of conveying the fact that the Tories will searhc for ways to deliver the same or better outcomes for less expense. Insist that it can be done because it is being done in other places.

lawrence greek

Philip - I would be in favour of sterilising persistent criminals. In fact I'd be in favour of such a measure without a population of 70 million.

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