Cracks Appear In The Facade

There was an extraordinary intervention by Lord Tebbit in the Daily Mail on Monday, repeated again by the Peer on Tuesday on the BBC’s Today programme and then later that day in a televised interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson.

Lord Tebbit called for the electorate to withdraw their votes from the three main political parties at the European elections in June in order to send a message to those parties that their votes should not be taken for granted. He wrote:

Local elections, the great British public should treat just as normal but at the European elections, in my judgment they should send a very sharp message to the leaders of the three national parties by not voting for any of the national party candidates.

He went on to add in later interviews that the electorate should steer clear of voting for the socialist and racialist BNP, but other than that he did not mind who people voted for (or not at all), just that they didn’t vote Lib Dem, Labour or Conservative.

Even less than a decade ago this story would have caused a media storm. There would have been multiple front page news headlines detailing ‘furious’ Conservative splits over ‘Europe’ and the culturally leftist BBC would have had a field day.

Things though have since moved on. The Conservatives are still irrevocably split over the European Union, but the official media and political narrative has changed. Today’s official line is David Cameron good; Gordon Brown bad. In order to facilitate a change of Government, or rather Westminster administration, the media, having failed to make David Cameron popular, are now trying the other option which is to make Gordon Brown unpopular.

Therefore, any stories that might portray Cameron in a negative light are now willingly suppressed by the media. How else could one account for the complete lack of coverage over Lord Tebbit’s intervention, especially by the BBC, and the establishment papers of the Times and the Guardian?

It is not as though Lord Tebbit is a minor party figure either. As a former Chairman of the Conservative party and self appointed keeper of the Thatcherite flame, his comments carry weight within many circles and thus there is even more reason, one would have thought, for a fuss to be made about his public dissent.

During a press conference, David Cameron was asked about the action he would take over Lord Tebbit’s intervention. He said:

As a former party chairman, he should know a thing or two about party discipline and he should probably know a thing or two about the rules about supporting other parties. He was treading a very careful path and I would warn him, if he slips off that path he’s sitting as an independent.

Yet, as Cameron and his Conservative leadership well know, the party need Lord Tebbit more than they are prepared to publicly admit. Their pursuit of office lies in the knowledge that their core conservative vote must come out at the election and send them into office. If the party were to publicly ditch Lord Tebbit then this may act as a sudden wakeup call to tribal Conservative voters that perhaps their party is not quite what it may seem.

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