Too hungry, Dave -- and the people don't like it

Colin

I hope I'm wrong, but in the absence of a credible alternative to the existing regime, the electorate may well decide that it's better the devil you know.

Why take a chance? In terms of policy on defence, crime, tax, the EU, immigration and welfare, I can't spot any real difference between the tories and labour.

Grumpy Old Man

I cannot think of any circumstances where the actions of Mr Hassan could be construed as "reasonable force". On the other hand, will the criminal ever be able to continue his evil career?

Austin Barry

"It derives from Cameron’s strategy of adopting whatever he thinks people want to hear. So he bends with every populist wind that’s blowing, utterly heedless of any principle whatever."

Except, as you point out, with respect to the EU, which rather negates your argument.

just Louise

Melanie, I blame Maggie for not nominating a clear successor and letting Major (Minor) become heir apparent virtually by default. It was downhill all the way from there until the "reforms" of F. Maude & cronies.
"Call Me Dave", you're hungry for power. The electorate's hungry for change. But the difference between you and Gordon is like a choice between "potatoes mashed" and "potatoes creamed". How about offering the British people some robust British fare - and with it some hope.

But no lover of Israel should be tempted to vote Lib Dem - their leader Nick Clegg has been swift to echo the swipe against Israel made by the just released report of charities including Amnesty Int. and Oxfam.

david elder

Mel, sounds like your Tory leader is in thrall to the fads of what in my Australia would be called the inner urban trendies. Or 'doctor's wives' electorates. John Howard won four elections by talking over their heads to the average voter; he lost fifth time round, partly out of electoral desire for change, partly because the ALP had found someone in Kevin Rudd who on three issues out of four sounded and even looked like Howard.

mark

On self defence I think it i instructive that we hear of so few of these cases as set against the number of probable cases there must be. Doesn't that suggest that most are uncontroversial? If so, why.

I suggest it is because the law of "reasonableness" fits the circumstances as well as it could do, and above all because juries made up of ordinary men and women are well able to deal with the detailed circumstances they face in a trial. They would always say "there but for the grace etc" and only fail to acquit in the most extreme cases - like that of Mr Hussein. Interestingly I understand the Tories have said that their proposed legislation would not actually have helped Mr Hussein - so what exactly has prompted the suggeetd law change?

Chris

It is (as always) the economy. The Tory failure to seal the deal must partly be put down to Osborne. We have in Brown a Chancellor and now Prime Minister, of mind blowing, monumental, financial incompetence. In everything he has touched he has failed (once he left behind Tory spending plans), yet true or not, the public perceive Osborne as hardly having laid a glove on him. Presentationally Osborne sounds like a sixth former. Yet Cameron has loyaly stuck to him, even after the debacle of the yacht affair. This has been a great mistake.

Cameron has also alienated many of his core vote, his positive discrimination idea, in favour of women is one such nonesense. The appropriate answer to lack of good women in politics would be to go out and find them, not to discriminate in favour of those who do apply.

You are right, the deal is far from sealed. UKIP appeal to too many. Others, after the expenses fiasco, are saying a plague on all your houses and may not vote at all.

A change of Labour leader-which could still happen, would cause even greater anxiety for the Tories.

Stephen Lord

A devastating and deeply depressing analysis. I think Steve Hilton has a lot to answer for. Conservative front benchers are afraid to speak until they've been given the line by someone who hardly lives in this country. No wonder they're out of touch. And their spontaneous policy-making shows how little of the common touch they have. I don't give a lot of money to the Cons because they do not seem interested in the views of their members, they listen to $$$ Steve Hilton instead. And they don't go after the small donations anyway. How do they think we can win by appealing to such a narrow, effete circle?

In the Wilderness in America

Melanie, don't know a lot about British politics, but Cameron seems a lot like John McCain of the Republicans here in the U.S. Politicians like McCain are called RINOs, that is Republican in name only. Perhaps Cameron should be labeled a CINO, Conservative in name only. On second thought, maybe your whole Conservative Party should be called CINO.

RW

It is a rare day when I disagree with Melanie Phillips, but in the case of three thugs tying up a family and threatening them with knives, and the fear that that must have elicited, did not justify a prison sentence dished out in a cold, sanitised court: a suspended sentence would have been appropriate.
Mob rule was not involved - only one householder.
Those burgled should have the right to pursue burglars and make a citizens arrest to prevent escape. Burglars do so at their own risk.

Everything you say about the charlatan Cameron is spot on.

Neil Craig

Cameron should urgently bring David davis back to a top position. We do know that Davis knows what he stands for because he put his parliamentary career on the line to discredit ID cards & succeeded.

He is also a highly capable Parliamentary performer having secured the "scalps" of an immigration minister & 3 Home secretaries. The Tory front bnch needs such vim & the party will not forgive Cameron if it loses, or even wins less thoroughly than it could because of he has been to willing to select loyalists.

Dixon

I so agree.

Frank P

Listen up Dave! Melanie describes it as it is - as always.

Here is another who wants to remove the deeply insidious infestation from Downing Street and who needs an alternative to vote for. Be aware, there are millions of potential voters like me who aren't yet convinced you are 'The One' even though we want you to be.

Melanie could have added the issues of the Neather revelations to her list; the matters of enforced multiculturalism and deeply unsatisfactory and inadequate immigration control. At the moment, a vote for the Cameroons - on what they have so far offered in their measly prospectus - cannot even begin to satisfy our reasonable desire to save what's left of our sovereignty, our culture and our heritage, let alone gradually reclaim what has been deliberately frittered away.

Prevarication and PR won't do it for you. Let's see some conviction; show us the fire in your belly; a little heavy-breathing would help.

And I agree entirely about the nonsense of Grayling's proposed change in the 'reasonable force' element of self defence; this case was not a good one to justify further changes in the law, even though the judges these days do seem bereft of wisdom after 12 years of Cherie Blair patronage.

We are looking for principled leadership, not rabble rousing.

Straydingo

We want Boris

EC

"If the Conservative party does not understand what it is that it should be conserving, then the question I have repeatedly posed becomes ever more insistent: what on earth is the point of it?"

Precisely!

DaveM

Elections are won in the middle. Cameron is chiselling out a place in the middle which New Labour, thanks Mandleson's genius, have not yet fully vacated. It's fortunate that the voters who will decide the election aren't reading this column or the comments. Electoral success and emotional satisfaction are not the same thing

Watt Tyler

As I have been saying, the Tories have decided that the Cultural War cannot be won, and have repositioned themselves so that they argue within the context of policy accepted by the Left. Their HQ itself admitted that they need to appeal to the protest vote - which means that they need to appeal to Liberal Democrats - which means not really stand for anything.

In the meantime, they are making conservative sounding noises because they are banking on good and honest people to vote for them unthinkingly. However, these people are being decieved.

The thing that I cannot forgive the Tories for is their silence over the AGW scam. It IS a lie. It IS a money making scam. And the Tory Parliamentary party are letting Cast Iron Dave get away with wholesale dishonesty over the matter all for the purpose of getting the trappings of being the biggest party at Westminster.

No, he doesn't need to bring back David Davis. The whole lot of them need to be consigned into the garbage of history. They don't represent conservatives. Vote for UKIP

Sam ARMSTRONG

Hear hear

Watt Tyler

@DaveM

What people need to understand is that the Middle has been skewed. For 50 odd years we have been made to think that Socialist-Marxist policy is the best for us. When implemented, such policy is indeed easier for us. It doesn't place importance on duty or responsibility. The Middle that we think we occupy is well off to the Left. Until we recognise that, we will continue to have the shattered society, teh willingness to put up with an inadequate health service, the willingness to kiss our freedom away to a foreign power. A conservative party should be setting this concept out and explaining it. With the proper realignment, the middle would look like a completely different country.

But the Tories are not a conservative party. Vote how you will, of course, but know, they are not a conservative party.

Jez

Straydingo.

Are you insane?

He's the collin's dictionary example of why politics and politician's are seen by (a major and ever resented) proportion of the electorate as a complete waste of time.

What exactly is that guy sitting over and celebrating so loudly?

smog

Why vote Tory when you can have the real thing by voting Labour?

The alternatives: either a spoilt ballot or UKIP.

Coeur de Lion

Do you suppose Conservative Central reads this article and blog? I do hope so.

Herbert Thornton

Apropos Melanie's final question - the Conservative party is not confused about what it wants to conserve. Cameron and his party obviously believe in conserving whatever happens to be in place.

However that does not, it seems, apply to Chris Grayling. At the same time, I think Melanie's reference to "mob rule" and her saying that the policy that Grayling proposes would amount to enabling householders to kill burglars in cold blood is an unfortunate exaggeration. Must it be a householder's first duty, when confronted with a burglar, to remain in a calm and entirely cool frame of mind, and to measure his response accordingly? To require that seems to me to be unreasonable.

I am uncomfortable too with Melanie's assessment of Hussein's actions. I believe that they were connected so directly with the heat of the struggle that took place in his house that they were really an inseparable part of the same incident.

If Hussein had, instead, waited for a few days and then lain in wait for the burglar, hidden in some alleyway and then attacked him in cold blood, it would be arguable that it was a quite different matter.

Iris

As ever America is leading the way where the Obamacare opposition 'tea parties' have been generated by ordinary people. They're not waiting for the Republican Party.

Is anything worse than Gordypoos? Probably not.

But why should Dave's natural supporters want to vote for him if they feel he's going to throw them under the bus?

Under Labour's bus or under the COnservatives' bus? Might as well join Peter Hitchens and not vote at all.

Gareth

I think it is perfectly reasonable to cripple a knife-wielding criminal for life, and I think the law should also take that view. There have never been enough policemen to provide bodyguards for everybody; people have always had to defend themselves from time to time. When an ordinary citizen does have to take on a violent criminal, the only sensible policy is to use the maximum force available. If the criminal ends up dead or maimed for life, so much the better - it will help to deter other criminals.

Jimimac

With such an ineffective and misguided police force and the numerous examples of injustice within the current "rule of law" there might be a growing feeling that mob rule is preferable to the uselessness of awaiting justice by formal means. Uncomfortable to contemplate, but this is what our police and politicians must address, and soon.

TGF UKIP

Brilliantly incisive, as ever, but what I would say on the Munir Hussain case is that the reason why he has attracted so much sympathy and support and why there is so much outrage over the comparative treatment of him and the invader is the absolute lack of public confidence in either the police or the justice system.

Neither of which Dave, with his PC agenda and appointment of Grieve, seems willing to tackle or even want to tackle.

No Society

Was Thatcher not a tactical silent assassin in the run up to 1979?

Uri

Great piece Melanie!

What indeed is the point of the Conservatives under Cameron? An interesting and related point is who is going to vote Conservative in the forthcoming GE?

The way I see it, it's becoming a party for disaffected Labour and Lib Dem voters. It's an easy path, Dave is deliberately making it so. No nasty prickly policies that change much of their status quo to put them off.

But what of the Tory core? Apart from the obvious and much needed talk of public sector reform, and the maybe sometime increase of inhertiance tax threshold, what's Dave doing for them?

Buggered if I can tell. He seems quite happy to wave them off to UKIP. I really hope he pays for that (or remembers what Conservative principles are) because a party with no core of principle is what got us where we are and we've had enough of that.

Bill Bogg

No Melanie you are wrong :
The Munir Hussain case represents a retreat by the conservatives not a new policy. Does anyone remember their pledge to abolish the Human Rights Act ? If they had gone ahead with this it would have automatically dealt with this problem . Instead we see them trying to cherry pick the most notable & publicised failures of the HRA .In this instance the fiasco arising out of the Martin case.There are far too many lawyers in the Tory party for its own good - protecting their own.Accomodating the HRA within the Common Law is impossible you run into anomalies everywhere.It is like being caught in a maze. I am increasingly inclined to vote for UKIP. The Tories who are meant to be the party of the constitution do not seem to realise the extent of our problems

George Steiner

I have no dog in this fight, but I will wager a fiver that your political pigmy will loose the next election.

daniel maris

Well it's true he hasn't sealed the deal. This probably has more to deal with the perception of a threat to public sector workers and their conditions of employment, which the Tories have allowed to grow. After all, to "seal the deal" - all he needs is another 5-7% regularly in the polls.

As for your points -

1. EU - the Tories are not UKIP. Do you want us to leave the EU? OK, if so then what you propose makes sense. But if not, then no - it would be a running sore for a Tory government. I, by the way, favour withdrawal.

2. Capitalism. 50p is not a high rate by European standards. Whether it makes great economic sense is another matter, but it is hardly a deal breaker.

You can hardly call giving bankers thousands of millions of pounds a "witch hunt". Most people are rightly disgusted with the behaviour of the bankers - before and now.

3. Mob rule. A very one-sided portrayal of the case. If someone has tied up your family and threatened you with death, it is not a simple burglary. We are talking about a perception of attempted murder - not burglary. It is at least arguable someone has the right to immobilise the offender in those circumstances. If you let them run away they may return in a vehicle with help or additional weaponry and really finish you off.

The problem with the Tories is they offer no credible, radical and populist programme. What have they got to say about constitutional reform - giving us the right to referenda like the Swiss? Nothing. What are there policies on tackling welfare dependency? - very, very weak and not convincing at all.

Roger K

Don't think for one moment you people in the U.K. will get any discernible change if you vote in Cameron and his conservatives.

Just take a look at countries like mine, New Zealand, which got so sick of nine years of Helen Clark, Socialist and voted in John Key, National. I don't know what is going on but most of what he has done puts him to the left of Helen Clark because he is so weak and depenent on the Maori Party. He has created division in this country and gone completely against the National Party core base and even what he was saying before the election. Watch this country during the Rugby World Cup.

Helen Clark, yes her who will get the the General Secretary of the U.N. job in one to two years with the connivance of Gordon Brown, Tony Blair and others of the Socialist International. Please see Ian Wishart, 'Absolute Power' and Invetigate mag.

phil

In this case I must disagree with Mel .How on earth could DC have held a referendum ? I haven't missed an election have I ?
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The conclusions that Mel puts here seem to tell us that the victim should give the perpetrator the bus fare home and a bag of butties to help him on his way .The man set out probably to kill if necessary in the pursuit of his criminality and in my unhumble opinion deserved anything that happened to him and this opinion has been heartily franked in Rod Liddles column ,where I sent a copy of an article in the MAIL which is well worth reading
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Debate is what we do here and MELS opinion of DC is something she is entitled to ,but it is totally negative and without constructive suggestions .
I accept being one of the" mob" here but I am unhappy at being set off like a baying hound on some crazy mission to rant and rave which this column no doubt will descend into -personally I would much prefer David Davies ,who has both presence and knowledge or even another coming of William Hague ,but of course I am not deterred by his accent or his baldness ,he is quite the brightest Tory I have ever come across .His immediate dissection of the budgets was astonishing to anyone who understands financial matters and we are the fools for letting him down .
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I wonder if Mel has a man for all seasons for us .I certainly will not go for the offensive nick g nor would I dream of voting for Nick Clegg ,so lets hear it loud and clear who!!!!?

Herbert Thornton

A question for everybody - should the author of this quotation be labelled as "a member of the mob"? -

"There exists a law, not written down anywhere but inborn in our heart; a law that comes to us not by training or custom or reading but from nature itself, if our lives are endangered, any and every method of protecting ourselves is morally right."
(Cicero).

Common Sense

The State has a contract with the Citizen in which the latter agrees not to take the law unto its hands in exchange for the protection given by the former. The moment the State fails to do its part there simply is no more contract. The criminal is the one who broke the law, if as a result of his actions he gets punished by a citizen, and loses life and limb in the process, it is entirely his responsibility. The State has no moral authority anymore as it failed in its part of the agreement. Simply, breach of contract.

Herbert Thornton

From the viewpoint of the concept of there being a Social Contract between a government and its people, Common Sense (Dec 25th 5.41am) assesses the matter entirely appropriately.

From the viewpoint of morality as stated by Cicero, the failure of government to adequately protect its population from criminals is also a moral deficiency.

But in the case of Munir Hussain the matter goes beyond mere deficiency. By imprisoning Munit Hussein, the law punishes him for acting morally.

Treating Munir Hussein as a criminal is in itself fundamentally immoral.

People would have felt more respect for the judge in the case had he recognised this and decided that rather than apply an immoral law, he preferred to resign.

In the Wilderness in America

Herbert Thornton

Agree what you said about that case and the moral imperative needed. But why would the judge have to resign? He could make his judgement based on moral grounds (a la Cicero) and let the chips fall where they may. In other words, make a stand to change the law. That would have garnered an abundance of respect.

Herbert Thornton

I.T.W.I.A. -

I agree with you that
resignation was not the only course that would have earned him widespread respect.

However, Public Opinion counts for so little that if he had taken the other course, the establishment would be ensuring that his career in the judiciary had - to put it mildly - no hope of prospering.

In the Wilderness in America

Herbert Thornton

Tis a pity that public opinion counts for so little that the establishment rules whether the people like it or not. But, hey, that's the reality. That public be damned attitude is the way it is in America as well. But the times are changing, and that kind of arrogance will, hopefully, not be elected in the future. We live and hope that decent and reasonable people will prevail both in Britain and America.

Augustus

Obviously you need a clear alternative to labour. But funnily enough you also need someone who relates absolutely to ordinary working people, and importantly, someone who is a heavyweight. I wonder, is Cameron those things? It'll be touch and go if he isn't!

David Lonsdale

Melanie,
A criminal breaks into my house, murders my son then rapes and murders my daughters. I arrive on the scene too late but I am able to pick up a gun which he dropped whilst escaping down the garden. By your logic I do not shoot him in the back because he is running away.
He then goes to your house and rapes and murders your family and is still on the run to repeat his crimes.
Had I shot him would I have been breaking the law or upholding the law? Can only a representative of the state uphold the law? Now that your family has been murdered was I right not to shoot the felon in the back?