On A Hiding

                                              

David Cameron has sent a “love letter” to conservative activists. In it he claims:

I am proud of what you do. And I would never have around me those who sneered or thought otherwise.

We are a team, from parish council to local association to Parliament, and I never forget it.”

This, of course, comes in the wake of newspaper reports that somebody from his inner circle referred to party activists as “mad, swivel-eyed loons”.

There have been denials from the man identified to have made the remark, Lord Feldman, and David Cameron (above) obliquely denies it as even possible.

Then enter the BBC’s Jeremy Paxman, who said that he has heard senior Tories make similar remarks.

So who are you going to believe. The self-proclaimed “heir to Blair” or the newspapers who are sticking to their stories, and Paxman.

Surreal as it feels, I find myself in the same company as Paxman.

But here’s the thing. It doesn’t matter if a top Cameron aide said it or not. Forget about an off the cuff comment that may not even have been made.

It doesn’t matter, because Cameron himself has already used the same sort of language to describe conservatives. When he described the supporters of UKIP as “fruitcakes and loonies and closet racists” he was describing disaffected Conservatives, indistinguishable from his own activists.

And it doesn’t matter because every day Cameron and his ruling clique act as though they thought conservative people were something to occasionally be scraped off the soles of their shoes.

Q. Why did Cameron push legislation for gay marriage?

A. Because he is not conservative.

Supporting marriage is part of the irreducible core of what it means to be  conservative. This is not only because it is an ancient institution. But because it’s one which all studies prove is the best arrangement in which to bring up children.  It’s venerable; it’s key; and it works: the conservative trifecta.

Nobody is denied marriage. Homosexuals are as free as anyone to marry as long as they marry somebody of the opposite sex. That’s what marriage is.

We have been told that allowing gay marriage will leave everybody else’s marriages unaffected. That it is merely about the extension of the right to marry to include gays. That is a lie.

Marriage is designed for the procreation of children. This why non consummation is grounds for annulment. But as there is no clear idea of what constitutes consummation for homosexuals, so that part of the law for all marriages is now defunct. For the same reason there will now be no clear idea of what constitutes infidelity as grounds for divorce. The opposite sex element is not just the dictionary definition of marriage, but the whole point.

Now, of course, it could be argued that this is outweighed by the feelings of homosexuals or the ideal of absolute equality.

It could be argued, but no Conservative leader should be arguing it. Heterosexual marriage is the tradition, it’s fundamental and it works, so no real conservative leader would touch it. As president Reagan so aptly put it about conservative policy generally, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.

If it is widely acknowledged by society that gays should have some sort of legally recognized formal union, give it to them. But no true conservative should pretend that formal gay relationships are marriage.

Leave that to the progressives to fight for in their endless quest to undermine society.

But Cameron's gay marriage crusade is not a lone forgiveable kink in an otherwise sound conservative line.

In Britain we already had two out of three of our major parties advocating a progressive agenda. The Conservative leader has made that three out of three. In fact, there is hardly a coalition policy that a returning Brown government wouldn't have been comfortable with.

Far from reducing the spending which is bankrupting Britain the coalition has increased it every year and is on course to double the national debt in 5 years.

Everybody realizes that his promise of a vote on EU membership was a tactical ploy to undermine support for UKIP. Nobody believes he means it because of his history of broken promises on the issue.

He has committed Britain to £100bn programme of worse than useless wind turbines.

In his drive to diversify the appearance of Conservative MPs, he has pressured associations to adopt non-conservative candidates.

He has given the uncaring, socialist, bureaucratic monstrosity, the NHS, protected status.

He sided with Turkey’s  Islamist leader to describe Gaza as a “prison camp”.

“Hug a hoodie!”

And the list goes on, and on, and on.

But today after the final bruising passage of his gay marriage law it will now apparently all be different. Cameron has pledged that from now on, cross his heart and hope to die, he’ll be “absolutely focused” on the “big picture” issues like the economy and education.

And many commentators are pretty confident that Cameron will weather this crisis and even go on to win the next election in 2015. Their confidence is based on their belief that any support for UKIP in the upcoming EU elections will only be a “protest vote” and that come 2015 the “swivel-eyed loons” will have to return to the fold and vote for Cameron to avoid the even greater disaster of a Miliband government.

But many of those same voices also lauded Cameron’s adoption of progressive policies as a way of rebranding the “nasty” party and capturing the centre ground at the last election. And look how that worked out.

In the worst economic slump since the 30s with the Labour government’s profligacy and incompetence fully exposed, and the Liberal party keen to outbid even Labour’s idiocy. In the context of all that, caring, sharing Cameron scored just over a third of the vote and had to form a coalition with the Liberals to take power.

The basic problem for Cameron’s re-election strategy is that much of the support for UKIP is not a protest vote.

Why vote for Cameron's newly detoxified progressive Conservative party when you can vote for the real thing in the form of UKIP.

UKIP have an enormous mountain to climb. They’ve got to build the infrastructure of a national party and at the same time deal with a firestorm of media attacks and misinformation from organizations and journalists committed to the three main parties. But as long as the Conservatives leave conservatives unrepresented, UKIP will have very substantial support which will preclude any possibility of a Cameron victory.

The European elections will see enormous gains for UKIP.

                  

But our next government will be either Labour or a Labour/Liberal coalition.

                          

So no change in policy then.