So how radical is David Cameron? I was on a Radio Four panel yesterday for “Beyond Westminster” (now online) where, for once, I was not the only token right-winger. It was presented by Iain Martin and had Bruce Anderson, who wrote this week’s cover piece about Cameron, and Jackie Ashley. I was begging Iain to introduce her as being from “the left-wing Guardian” to repeat the intro that the BBC so often gives the “right-wing” Spectator (“Warning: the views you are about to hear are not from the consensus”). Iain asked me if I thought Cameron had the courage and the character needed to transform Britain. I concluded with words of endorsement that had TGF UKIP choking (on another thread). In spades, I said. He can be not just a good Prime Minister but a transformative Prime Minister – and actually able to turn around all of the dreadful problems we’ve talked about.
Even Iain seemed quite taken aback at that. But I firmly believe it is true. Cameron has the energy, the intellectual dexterity and determination to be in the mould of Thatcher and Reagan (not John Major, George W and Heath). For example, if he applies himself, he could transform welfare. The plan is there, IDS has costed it. A civil service is waiting to implement it. Schools reform can transform parent choice (but, as one of the architects of Swedish school reform says in the latest issue of The Spectator, only if they are allowed to make a profit). When Cameron is deciding policy himself (which he pretty much did in the near-death experience of the 2007 Blackpool conference, rather than relying on the utterly useless 18 month policy review that Letwin had commission), bold and visionary plans come through.
A lead article in the sober-sided New York Times is seldom funny. Yet ‘A New Surge in Power Use is Threatening US Climate Goals’ earlier this month cracked me up. Check out this sternly dramatic first paragraph: ‘Something unusual is happening in America. Demand for electricity, which has stayed largely flat for two decades, has
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