Cameron's winning optimism

David Broad

give a few months and they might even have some concrete policies!

Richard

All sounds a bit out of sorts with the rest of the Tory support. Could Dave be forgetting he needs all his core voters and some of Tony Blair's to win?
I would suggest in the last week he has done enough to put off most TB fans with his comments (does he really think they will vote for the man who aspires to the TB crown by dis-respecting him)?
If the blue rinse and Pringle jumper brigade are staunchly behind him I will eat my hat.
Nice to know we will have an extra holiday to celebrate conservative day though!

Barry

"The Tories would, for instance help train an "army" of 5,000 or so community organisers, and there'd be a Big Society Bank to direct funds towards social enterprises."

Plenty of decent ideas but this one is odious.(And jumping on the bandwagon of hopey-changey Obama) Bureaucratic. What happens when the 'community organisers' go against Government wishes?

Either Dave has faith in communities organising themselves or he doesn't, and he plainly doesn't as he wants to send out an army of wonks to shape communities as he sees fit. Sod off.

We have community organisers - local councillors! Parish, district and county. We don't need any more representing it just needs to work better. More power to them and less to council executives. At the moment executives parrot the central Govt. line and are immovable on policies. That isn't local Govt. in any way, shape or form and must be put right.

Herbert Thornton

It all sounds cuddly-fluffy and feel-good - but the problems of immigration; the existence of No Go areas; the kid-glove treatment of - & even generous support for - anti-western fundamentalist clerics; the fact that they are allowed to incite young Muslim men go to the Middle East and Pakistan to become jihadists; the fact that such young men do so without being actively prevented or even incurring any penalties; the proliferation of terrorist cells; and nation's forced metamorphosis towards becoming an Islamic State; all are completely ignored.

It demonstrates that Cameron's policies are characterised by timidity and emptiness. It is enough to make one think that he is entirely content to watch the spectacle of Gordon Brown rubbing his countrymen's noses in it.

Adam

Woolly nonsense which will never work. As though 5000 trained volunteers paid for by the state are going to make a jot of difference when 1 million additional workers since 1997 paid for by the state have had no impact on services. Cameron sometimes make you despair with the cr*p he comes out with which makes it much harder on the doorstep when out canvassing.

Matthew Lagden

I was at the event today, and I thought the whole thing was a superb bit of policy - intellectually coherent, philosophically absolutely in line with classic toryism, Mrs T would have loved it, but it acknowledges where we actually are, not where a lot of tories would like us to be (IE the Spring of 1952).

Verity

Wot the chaps above said.

Every time Dave opens his weak little mouth, vacuity drools out.

I am guessing that he got his pr job at the TV company by contacts and patronage, because the man does not have the intellectual wherewithal or the moral fortitude to be the head of anything, much less a government.

I am absolutely baffled by what group was powerful enough to put this ninny in as leader, given that he was running against a man of strong convictions. Whatever you think of David Davis, he has an acuity and sense of direction that Dave lacks ... except for the strong, and baffling, belief that he somehow deserves to be the leader of the British nation.

"Cometh the hour, cometh the man". You must be 'aving an larf. The British political landscape is empty of leaders.

AF

The problem will be entryism when dedicated groups with hidden agenders take over these local groups first by stealth and then force of numbers,this is a great Marxist M.O.not lost on radical Islamists.

PayDirt

I fear the DOOM of last week is really more appropriate. "As Mao Zedong put it: There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent." See http://www2.lse.ac.uk/publicEvents/events/2010/20100701t1830vSZT.aspx

Percy Plectrum

Who needs Ant and Dec when you have Richard and Verity to make us laugh - keep your posts coming because you brighten up my day when I read the nonsense that you post.

Richard

@Verity,
We agree...I am shocked.
The man is a pole turtle as in the American political joke.....google it but you will like it I promise.....it fits him so well.
He got his job at Carlton because his mother in law put in a good word for him...nice woman Lady Astor.

Ian C

Give it a break, whingers and give him a chance.

To be elected and to have any time to do any good you need a minimum of 2 terms. To get that when he can expect a maximum majority in May of 30 (MAX) he has to have ideas with where we are and present a positive future for that.

So adopting a conservative motivation for adapting the Alinsky model to modernise the welfare/nanny state will sound reasonable and decent to those he needs to win over in the middle/left ground. It is consistent with 'the state not being the same as society' while offering a positive development thereof without saying where society is is rubbish - which is what you whingers want him to say, which while it may be true it is very bad politics to rubbish the existence of those who he needs to switch their vote.

It may be Obamaic language (which certainly sticks in my craw) but it has been known to work.

Give him a break or wich Brown back for 5 years.

Maggie

This morning's speech came over as a load of incoherent waffle. There was mention of 5000 specially trained busybodies who would make a nuisance of themselves all over the country and namechecks for half a dozen people known only to Dave. Then it sort of fizzled out without a proper ending.

David Hatfield

Let us all hope the community organisers don't end up like Acorn.

General Zod

No, of course he doesn't have the intellectual wherewithal, Verity. After all, he only got a first at Oxford.

what did you get?

Ghengis

"We have community organisers - local councillors! Parish, district and county. We don't need any more representing it just needs to work better. More power to them and less to council executives. At the moment executives parrot the central Govt. line and are immovable on policies. That isn't local Govt. in any way, shape or form and must be put right."
BARRY: FOR THE GREATER GOOD, YOUR LAST PARAGRAPH MUST BE EMPHASIZED.

Richard

@General Zod,

Well done for him....I am sure it was mummy and daddies money weel spent.....at least if he doen't make it as PM he can be a teacher with Goves. Unlike Vorderman who only got a third.

Vulture

Just got back from lunch with a seasoned and dedicated political psephologist.

He proved ( to my satisfaction at least) that the Tories CANNOT win the election outright - the swing they would need to take seats like Watford, a three way marginal, is clearly beyond them, as is Scotland and large swathes of the north.

Dave could have won by shooting UKIP's fox and committing to an In/Out referendum. That would have been worth a cool million votes - but he chose to go the EU way. He also, as many here point out, refuses to say a word abt immigration/Islamification ; the No.2. concern of most voters after the economy. As a result, even the BNP may pick up a couple of seats (Barking and Stoke central).

So the likely situation - not the desirable one but the likely one - is Tories the largest party, but way short of a majority.
Most Lib. Dems. prefer to ally with Liebore
so will likely link up with a Bruin-led Liebore party. (Clegg cannot act unilaterally, and a party conference will have to approve any coalition).

So boys and girls, the nightmare scenario facing us on May 7th is : Bruin to stay in No.10 and a permanant Lib-Lab Government.

And it could all have been so different.. if only Dave had been a Tory instead of a useless weakling.

Holly ......

Hopey, changey,touchy,feely,beats nasty,
spiteful,vindictive crap any day of the week.
For years I have wanted to open a centre for our local youngsters,who would love it.
No backing,too many daft rules,H&S rubbish,
personal checks,registers etc,it would cost me far too much...I would be setting up from my redundancy money.
Maybe It will happen under a like minded government.

Verity

Thanks, Richard. I suspected it was family. Who got him the leadership spot in the Conservative Party? It was not won on merit.

PR is very short term, especially in the entertainment field. He's not qualified and he's in way, way over his depth.

LloydJ

This comments section seems to have been highjacked by the LIEBOR crew. No ideas of their own so they have to try to rubbish the only party who have any strategy of getting us out of the mess created by their pals over the past wasted years.

jennywren

Well said Holly, and I hope that people welcome Cameron's initiative which I am sure is well meant.
However, I have been trying over the past few weeks to get together a community board to meet every month for only one hour to set priorities for the local Safer Neighbourhood Team (council officers, PCSO's, police officers, fire officers and the like). Although the meetings have been quite well attended no-one actually wants to get involved regularly apart from the 'usual suspects' from Parish councils etc.
I do have my doubts about the desire of most people to do anything other than sit at home and hope that others will care about 'the community'.
The only time most people turn out is to complain when appropriate.

Ghengis

Vulture: I prefer to wait until the fat lady quietens. At the moment we are in cloud cuckoo land.

JONNY

What's this I read?
A Richard-Verity love-in?
A marriage of true minds?
I won't admit impediment to that.

TGF UKIP

You missed a trick here Pete. You could have used your report to also announce a competition for Coffee Housers to come up with a name for the community organizers' quango - how's about ACORN, they're going underground in the US so Dave's mate Obama can continue to bung zillions to them and their fellow marxists so the name is free for Dave over here.

JONNY

And then we have Vulture and his
"dedicated psephologist"
Did he order raw carrots for lunch?

General Zod

Verity and Richard in alliance. Hilarious.

(unless she really is just a Labour troll, as opposed to a lunatic far-right type)

Tiresias

The first paragraph of Peter's post points up the problem. And it is not the mention of the world's most famous community organiser.

It is simply not sensible to be full of gloom one week and back basking on sunlight uplands the next. The messages are at odds with one another. Nothing is sustained, so the core message does not permeate to a level where voters can absorb it and assess it. All that is left in the memory is confusion and a vague, but genuine, sense of contradiciton. This in turn leads to a sense that the Conservatives are slippery, not to be believed and, of course, it provides easy ammunition for opponents to fire in order to deflect any Tory point. This was the best counter to Monday's NI announcements: that it flew in the face of what had been said the previous week.

This sort of bipolar politics is disastrous.Consistency matters ina ll little aaspects of life. For example, having decided to run the debt coounter beside the headlines you editors of the Coffee House do not turn it off during weeks when you think the posts are too miserable and our spirits might be lifted by, say, an impression of a marvellous new sculpture by Anish Kapoor. The counter ticks remorselessly away and eventually its ubiquitous presence gets the point over and convinces me that the Spectator thinks that the level of debt actually matters. And if you did put it up, then down and then uip again we would all say what on earth is the point of that.

I do not get that feeling of remorseless concentration from the Conservatives. It might seem intellectually flexible to be able to skip from one theme to another. But this is (I would have thought self evidently) not an election that calls for that sort of postmodern politics. Seriousness, discipline and rigour are what is needed now. Flitting from one tone to another like a diva showing off her vocal range is intellectually lazy, because the "optimism" fills, with platitudes, the space that should contain the development and elaboration of the arguments about eliminating the deficit. Take the central idea and build it out to a compelling or at least coherent proposition.

In these times no politican can carry off this apparent lack of single mindedness without losing credibility. Some like Alistair Darling have fitted themselves to the mood of the times and gradually built credibility by doing so. For Cameron and Osborne, who do not start with an excess of gravitas and must disarm claims that they are lightweight, this is true in spades. If for the past year the message about a debt crisis had been pressed persistently week after week after week it would have hit home by now. No doubt the crisis rhetoric will be brought out again after Easter, but it is too late now to convince. They appear to me to be two guys always going on a diet, sustaining it for a few days and then going out for a big dinner and a few drinks to lift the spirits and dispel the gloom. But it doesn't shift the weight and it doesn't convince your friends you are serious.

The counter in the corner of the page has ticked up a bit more while I have been typing this. Taking on 5,000 full time, professional community organisers is not going to slow it down. The counter matters - massively - because we are sunk as a country unless someone can master the momentum of that little thing. I am afraid that a message that says "deficit refuction is just so last week..." does not convince me that these guys will do it.

Paddy

We have to help Dave. He may not be perfect but he is our only hope of getting rid of these lying, cheating labour thugs.

Just seen that Phil Woolas - immigration minister on channel 4. What an uncouth toad he is.

Herbert Thornton

After mentioning that Cameron got a first in PPE at Oxford, General Zod enquires what Verity got. To ask that seems, to me, to rather miss the point. Possession of a PPE degree is hardly a reliable indicator of either greatness or wisdom. Here is a list of other people who also received PPE degrees from Oxford. Cameron obviously has a great deal in common with a good many of them - and that, surely is what the problem is?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notable_people_with_PPE_degrees_from_Oxford

AB

It's a dreadful program in lots of ways but I'd urge the sceptics to watch "The Secret Millionaire" some time. What comes out in every episode is just how many people up and down the country are already doing great things for their communities, providing invaluable services in dire circumstances for little, if any, financial reward. In all cases, they are having their meagre state funding cut, no doubt so that Labour can employ some more disabled, lesbian diversity officers. With a bit of flexibility and intelligence the state could be helping these organisations to flourish. Bottom up welfare always works better than Whithall diktat.

Athesius the Facilitator

Verity I watched your hero David Davis on the Daily Politics on tuesday. If you didn't see it watch it on i player. He for some reason finds everything "funny"; sorry Verity, he is not the man and never was.

General Zod

Herbert, Oxford doesn't hand out firsts. They have to be earned.

echo34

Its a blind date blogfest.

Rich,

You'll be jetting off to sunny Mexico soon.

Verity, you can learn the secrets of podiatry in a romantic trip for two to Tel Aviv.

I'm so pleased for you two!

JONNY

So we're getting there at last:

1. We don't think Verity got a 1st at Oxford in PPE.
2. We think Herbert Thornton doesn't care if he did or didn't. Because even if he did, it doesn't prove he's achieved greatness or wisdom - quite yet.
Now that's settled.

T.I.N.P.V.C.

Dave & Co. are in thrall every leftist flop.

Chicago’s Real Crime Story
Why decades of community organizing haven’t stemmed the city’s youth violence

www.city-journal.org/printable.php?id=5842

Herbert Thornton

Gen. Zod - Your knowledge of how Oxford operates is unexpectedly impressive.

Jonny - Yes it's quite true that I don't care whether Cameron did or didn't get a first. We should be more concerned about whether he's likely to be beneficial for Britain. Looking
at the list of others who also read PPE, I'd say that the omens are not propitious.

General Zod

Oh, I'm full of surprises, Herbert. The Varsity didn't hand me a first though, the mean sods.

Major Plonquer

I don't think the recent swing to teh Tories has been much inspired by Cameron. No. Then again I think its odd that the swing to the right started at exactly the same time as Richard started posting his inane leftist drivel across many Internet blogs. The more the people of the UK hear about and comprehend the Left the more they swing to the Right.

Are the Tories the beneficiaries of a 'Richard Bounce'?

Verity

T.I.N.P.V.C. You make a very good point.

Dave's latest floperoo is "a citizens' army" ... to do, well, uh, whatever Obama's "citizens' army" was going to do before the American people said, "Whoah! We've got a huge military and we've got police forces all over the country, plus sheriffs, marshalls and deputies. What the hell is this 'citizens' army' deal? What are they going to do, exactly?"

Obama perservered with this 'citizens' army' as though it was going to be this mystical force for good ... in fact, it was going to be something like JFK's Peace Corps, except instead of going to the Third World, it was going to be at home! Why? No one knew!

Anyway, Americans are politically cannier than the British and they said, in effect, "You and whose army, bro'?"

So, now Dave has picked up on one more of Obama's losers. Is there no beginning to this man's political acumen?

Barry

Holly,

Great! More power to your elbow. The point that should be concentrated on is that the State has made it so you need to jump through hoops to satisfy them which makes it time consuming and expensive to show any initiative - frequently to the point where a bit of taxpayers money appears for projects that get the nod from politicians so only anointed schemes that meet certain political criteria blossom.

My view is that we should be removing the hoops and costs rather than imposing more hoops and costs and by effect, increasing the burden on taxpayers, while at the same time creating a procedural Zil-lane for those who find favour with a community organiser.

Communities already organise themselves and would do more if it wasn't for the kind of obstacles you have encountered. We don't need state backed community organisers.

When there is too much state regulation and red tape holding back communities doing their own thing the answer isn't a knight in shining armour who can speed their chosen few through the battlefield while a great many more suffer the slings and arrows of the bureaucratic mire but, to remove as much of the regulation and red tape so all who want to show some initiative can do their bit.

John Richardson

'T.I.N.P.V.C.'

I've just read that essay an Chicago.
Thank you.
Interesting.
In the same way Treblinka is interesting.

Regs.

JONNY

I didn't say you didn't care if Cameron did
Herbert Thornton
I did however suggest you didn't care if you yourself did
Just as well maybe, because it looks rather unlikely

Herbert Thornton

Jonny -

No I indeed don't care. Cameron's having a First does not automatically make him worthy of being P.M. and his complete indifference to the real interests of his country evince a moral emptiness quite as destructive that prevailing in the Labour Party.