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The Glasgow Doctrine

Wednesday, 9th July 2008

The Spectator on David Cameron's speech on the need for morality.

Mr Cameron was well aware of the risk he was taking in marching on to this terrain. But — as he said in his speech — the very fact that politicians are so nervous of doing so is the heart of the matter. ‘We as a society have been far too sensitive,’ he said. ‘In order to avoid injury to people’s feelings, in order to avoid appearing judgemental, we have failed to say what needs to be said.’ Indeed: tact has become more important than honesty in most public discourse.

As Rod Liddle observes on page 16, Mr Cameron was more explicit than he has ever been about the need for greater personal responsibility. Not every predicament is a form of victimhood — obesity, for example, is usually caused by eating too much rather than genetic misfortune — and any society that strips free will and the recognition of blame out of its public policy is asking for trouble.

The Left has been the principal culprit since the war, enforcing this orthodoxy in town halls, professional bodies and quangos. But the Conservative party, to its shame, has often joined in: it was a Tory home secretary, Reggie Maudling, who most overtly described criminal behaviour as a curable affliction. ‘If it is possible by treatment to cure criminal tendencies,’ he mused, ‘how can you distinguish between crime and an illness?’ It was not until Michael Howard went to the Home Office in 1993 that the party began to atone properly for its craven complicity.

Mr Cameron’s attack on ‘moral neutrality’ is very welcome and will strike most voters as mere common sense. It is mysterious to the vast majority of people that the scourge of knife crime cannot be dealt with by the various agencies of the state with a clear sense of moral purpose, urgency, coordination and uncompromising leadership. It was pre-dictable that the Tory leader would unveil a ‘Knife Crime Action Plan’ on Monday. Much more impressive was the robust manner in which he did so: the sense he communicated that, as Prime Minister, he would not just announce ‘action plans’ but might actually ensure that they were implemented.

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Dwight Vandryver

July 11th, 2008 1:43am

Wonderful: David Cameron aims to be to politics what Jeremy Kyle is to television. It doesn't work for Mr. Kyle and it won't work for Mr. Cameron. Cameron's target audience learns its "morality", or rather amorality, from the Soap Operas to be seen every evening, just as the middle classes get their behavioural cues from programmes like "Sex in the City". Morality as a concept has been debased to the extent that it is meaningless. There is no point in setting the goal posts so high that it becomes laughable. Just to achieve common courtesy and be tolerant of others would be exceptionally fine things. Tolerance is not on the political landscape, however: first it was smokers, then the overweight, and probably drinkers and motorists to come. To see how far intolerance has gone, the reader only needs to look at the first two paragraphs of Rod Liddle's article in these pages. "Setting fire to the fat hag with his Zippo lighter" was what he was minded to do. What was the moral imperative that prevented him from actually doing it? Probably none: more likely to be the vision of being pilloried in the press. So, is this the "social responsibility" to which Cameron referred?

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