Redwood Amusement

It’s always amusing when you hear someone tell you that a particular Conservative MP is secretly very much anti-EU despite that Member of Parliament completely lacking any kind of public comment backing up such a statement.

One such friend of mine claims that John Redwood would privately like the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. Now, I can’t say I agree with my friend that John Redwood is secretly in favour of leaving the European Union.

If John Redwood was really so much in favour of the UK leaving the EU then he would have said something about it by now – but surprise, surprise he hasn’t.

Rightly or wrongly (and I would argue that it is probably wrongly), John Redwood is still held with some regard by Conservative party activists and lesser backbench MPs. If John Redwood were, for example, to sign the Better Off Out campaign pledge (okay, David Cameron has banned all Conservative MPs from doing so, but he could still be defiant) then many other Conservative MPs and activists would look at his actions and think that, well, if John Redwood has done something like that then so can I. The number of signatures to Better Off Out would surely increase.

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The Continuation Of Failure

The conference season in this country was, as fully expected, entirely predictable. Politicians from all parties rose to the stage in turn to feign concern and tell of the need for ‘hope’, ‘optimism’ and of course that old favourite, ‘change’.

Yet, despite an entire lack of real substance emanating from any of the party conference halls, the career-minded journalists and media groupies still blindly held court at the politician’s feet, seemingly hanging on every word that was uttered as if it were something of great importance.

Sadly, and as has become abundantly clear within these past few years, we in Britain no longer live in a democracy, but have in fact entered a post-democratic era where the façade of elections and freedom remains cunningly intact but their true attainability has long since been stripped away.

The Conservative conference in Birmingham this week confirmed yet again that we no longer have an effective opposition in this country, with David Cameron pledging to persist with the majority of Labour’s failing policies with only a few minor alterations.

And even if the Conservative party was actually attempting to be radically different to the current Labour administration (which the party leadership have no intention of doing, nor the liberal media any intention of allowing) and then also managed to win the next election (which is not actually as likely as is currently made out), then they would still only be in office, not in power.

For we in this country do not, for the most part, run our own affairs or elect those that actually govern us. Over decades our power of self rule has been frittered away by politicians from all parties who have cared more about themselves than the future of the British citizenry.

Our lives are now ever increasingly governed by corrupt, undemocratic European institutions and an unaccountable and stifling domestic bureaucracy - and, for the moment at least, there is very little we can do to extract ourselves from this mess.

Illusions Dispelled

Any illusion that ConservativeHome still spoke up for conservative values has been dispelled today with the introduction of a new front page banner on the website which reads ‘comprehensive coverage of Britain’s Conservative Party’.

Even before Samuel Coates had left the ConHome fold to work for David Cameron’s bland speechwriting team, the website had become almost entirely sycophantic towards the Conservative party leadership and the site’s front page often resembled little more than an MPs press release area.

In changing the text of the banner I suppose Tim Montgomerie has at least now had the decency to publicly admit that the true purpose of ConservativeHome is to pursue the interests of the Conservative party and that he will use his site to focus almost entirely on the David Cameron project which has itself very little in the way of conservatism behind it.

In recent months ConservativeHome’s pages seem to have been increasingly filled with the strange and often absurd witterings of those like Louise Bagshawe on CentreRight (a woman who is for some peculiar reason taken rather seriously by some few Conservative party members and MPs) and almost entirely devoid of critical comment and opinion. As such it is neither independent in content or comment and therefore, I would have thought, no longer a website that merits more than a cursory glance.

Divide And Rule

News has finally and officially broken that the Deputy Editor of ConservativeHome, Samuel Coates has accepted a job in David Cameron’s office as part of his speechwriting team.

Some websites have been wishing Sam Coates well, and I suppose for me not to do so would seem somewhat mean-hearted considering what a golden political opportunity this is for him. So, very well done and congratulations to you Sam – best of luck in your new position.

I remember once meeting Sam outside the Highcliffe hotel on the cliffs of Bournemouth at the Conservative Party Conference in 2006. The poor boy was standing by the garden gate handing out some expensively produced 18 Vanity (Doughty) Street adverts to those leaving that day’s conference proceedings.

I spoke to him for about ten minutes or so and thought he seemed like a decent enough chap – but then most of the people in this party do until you really get to know them. I have also been pretty certain for some time now that Sam would eventually move on from ConservativeHome to pastures new because he had been in a position to build up a long list of contacts.

However, one does have to express more than a little scepticism at the decision by Cameron’s office to bring young Sam into the inner fold. Taking nothing away from Sam who is I’m sure a fine upstanding young man with all the qualities a speechwriter requires, the motivation behind this is actually, I think, a classic case of divide and rule by David Cameron – a tactic of which Tony Blair and the Labour party have in the past been very fond.

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