Reverting To Type
After the Wednesday Newsnight interview with David Cameron, the BBC and the papers have made much of his comments on immigration.
The Daily Mail and Telegraph believe that the Conservatives are reasserting their authority on issues which they have currently avoided such as immigration and crime, while the left-wingers at the BBC and Guardian have used David Cameron’s comments as an opportunity to present the Conservative party as returning to the core vote and ‘lurching to the Right’.
The reactions from Nick Assinder at the BBC and the neo-Marxist Seumas Milne in the Guardian were typical of the overall vein of the attacks launched on Mr Cameron. Yet, both miss the mark completely (and probably purposefully too) because in reality Mr Cameron has not said anything new than he hasn’t said before and thus cannot have moved to the Right.
Wednesday’s BBC Newsnight really was a first class example of how the news corporations (in this case the BBC) actually make the news and then report upon it – and in doing so, how they can both dictate and manipulate the political agenda.
Gavin Esler tried his hand at manipulation while questioning Cameron on immigration. He noticeably made great efforts to put the word ‘swamped’ into Mr Cameron’s mouth by constantly repeating it at least half a dozen times. This was most likely done so the BBC could have a headline report the next day saying that David Cameron had said ‘immigrants are swamping Britain’. As it was the Conservative leader didn’t fall into that trap.
The BBC journalist, Stephanie Flanders, also tried a similar ploy when she pronounced in haughty tones that she was a single mother with a young child, and then immediately questioned Mr Cameron’s policy on a possible tax break for married couples by saying, ‘You would give me, just for getting married, twenty pounds a week? Is that really a good use of scarce public resources?’ Here we see once again the BBC’s usual leftist, progressive, pro-government mentality shining though.
Firstly, it would not be a Conservative Government giving married couples twenty pounds, but in fact allowing them to keep twenty pounds of their own money every week. Those twenty pounds are not the public’s resource, but the individual’s. The state has no right to them as Ms Flanders infers, and to that end, a tax allowance therefore cannot be the use of ‘scarce public resources’?
What’s more, public resources are far from ‘scarce’ as it is. The Government and state has never spent so much of our money than now; nor has it wasted so much before either. ‘Wat Tyler’ at Burning Our Money continues to prove just how incredibly wasteful the British Government often can be.
Further to that, as Peter Hitchens points out in detail on his blog; politicians such as David Cameron who praise single mothers needlessly, even when they have said nothing against them do so because, ‘they have implicitly accepted the argument that this is a matter of prejudice against certain individuals, rather than a moral stand in favour of a beneficial but often rather tough and demanding institution - marriage.’
So, getting back to the initial premise of all this: are the Conservative party returning to type? Have they ‘lurched to the Right’? No, of course they have not and more’s the pity. Cameron has simply repeated what he has said in the past, which is, in my opinion, not particularly ‘right-wing’ at all.
Furthermore, to say that immigration should be reduced is not necessarily a right-wing belief either. For instance, Jon Cruddas, along with many MPs on the Left of the Labour party have questioned the reasoning behind allowing such a high influx of immigrants to enter Britain.
However, I would say that the Labour party and Gordon Brown certainly are reverting to type – if they had not done so already. When was the last time that Labour actually launched a new policy? When was the last time that Labour actually campaigned positively on a new issue?
Labour have spent the past few weeks attacking Conservative policies and Conservative politicians through their mouthpieces in the media – an acknowledgement that they have probably lost the political argument on the given issue and have consequently resorted to falling back on negative campaigning.
Take Boris Johnson’s potential candidacy for the Mayor of London. Boris is a buffoon – that much is quite obvious – but he is certainly no racist as the Compass report on him claimed. Ken Livingstone has already conceded that he believes Boris will be a very strong candidate, and so the negativity and sniping has already begun.
Much of this attacking and criticism in recent weeks will be tactical. In constantly criticising the Conservatives through the media, Labour and their friends prevent a discussion of their dire and indefensible record in Government by laying a constant negative focus on the Conservative party. Here’s the Independent doing Labour’s dirty work today as an example.
Gordon Brown and Labour have fallen back on the tired old argument (if it can be called that) that if you don’t vote Labour, then those nasty, old, racist, public service crushing Tories will get back in. It worked the past three times round – but after ten years of misrule, the public are beginning to wake up. They just need convincing that the Conservative party has a new vision for the country that will benefit them.
